On Tuesday (10/14), James Taylor [ tickets ] was five nights from concluding a one-year world tour. Before playing "Raised Up Family," off last year's "October Road," he half-joked, "Most of these songs have a theme of looking for home. There's a theme here."

Later, after encore "Your Smiling Face," he proclaimed, "This is our last show in L.A. for a while. I don't know when we'll be back."

In between those declarations, the accomplished singer/songwriter plied his trade on a capacity crowd at the Universal Amphitheatre. Taylor quickly won over the audience with a mellow, genteel performance that was as much assured as it was accomplished.

James Taylor has been around for a while and he knows how to work a room. Over the course of two hour-long sets, Taylor, now 55, gave his fans nearly every trick in his bag--all with the help of a solid ten-piece jazz/blues ensemble.

Taylor made a timeless move when he offered a trio of hits early on. "Copperline" saw fiddler Andrea Zonn tracing the song's elegant rhythm with a soothing bow. Next, background singer Arnold McCuller fused "Shower the People" with fearless Sunday morning soul, bending Taylor's 1976 hit into an instant gospel classic. And before all that, the entire band wove an intricate album-worthy arrangement of "Something in the Way She Moves." On each song, Taylor stepped back and gave his other players the spotlight.

Between nearly every song, the stage lights would go dark except for a pair of spotlights beaming down on Taylor's wide shoulders. Dressed casually in faded black jeans and a buttoned-down shirt, the singer/songwriter allowed the silence to build until, inevitably, screams of "I love you James," and even, "James, take me home!" came from pockets of diehards throughout the auditorium. The singer accepted the lobs of praise from the black room gracefully. When one especially needy fan yelled, "Say you love me James," Taylor shrugged, clasped his hands, and delivered a hurried, "Love you" into the microphone. He was a total ham, and he was good at it.

The night saw performances of "You've Got A Friend," "Carolina On My Mind" and "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)." Taylor also let loose with "Steamroller Blues," his go-to live barnburner. Indeed, it was a fierce performance--one of those songs where the lights all go crazy and the guitarist plays too many notes, and the frontman is hunched over and you start to wonder, "Hang on--is this James Taylor?" Moments later, when that same man is sitting on a wooden stool singing, "Fire and Rain," to a roomful of silence, you say to yourself, "Yeah, this is James Taylor."

Like I said, the man knows how to work a room.

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