James Taylor loves touring - not just being on stage but everything from the long bus rides to the fans clamoring for autographs. If a trek every year or so to one of his outdoor gigs is a kind of homecoming for much of his audience, it's not so different for him.

"Particularly with these summer tours, this is something we've been doing for a while. And I know these places," Taylor, 57, says in his quiet, understated fashion. His current tour stops at Coors Amphitheatre on Friday.

"I think it's a matter of pacing. If you can go out for a couple of weeks and then make it home and recover a little bit and make it back out, I actually love riding on the bus. Because the people I play with are also my friends, and we go back a long time."

Yes, a long time. The son of a Southern doctor and his musical Yankee wife, Taylor was raised in Chapel Hill, N.C., with summers spent on Martha's Vineyard. He got his break in 1967 in London when Paul McCartney and Peter Asher signed him to Apple Records, the label that issued his debut LP in 1968.

Asher took Taylor to Warner Bros. after Apple crumbled, and the hits began in earnest with the release of Sweet Baby James in 1970: Fire and Rain, of course, Country Road and 13 more studio albums for Warner and Columbia with hits like You've Got a Friend, How Sweet It Is and Your Smiling Face. His newer records may not get played on radio much, but they still sell.

His latest, 2002's October Road, has gone platinum, and more important than the numbers, a case can be made that he's doing some of his best work later in his career rather than earlier. His signature low-tenor croon is fuller, his distinctively jazzy, syncopated guitar style a little more intricate, the harmonies even sweeter and surer. Musically and lyrically, tunes like The Fourth of July, My Traveling Star and Belfast to Boston cut as deep as anything he's done.

Because many in his audience are repeat customers, Taylor tries to strike a balance between playing the hits and offering something new, like a Ray Charles tribute.

Taylor always performs a few tunes solo as well as some that give his kickin' band a chance to stretch out and blow. Which brings us to this year's players: Steve Gadd and Luis Conte, drums and percussion; Jimmy Johnson, bass; Mike Landau, guitar; Larry Goldings, piano and keyboards; Lou Marini, sax; Walt Fowler, trumpet; singers Arnold McCuller and Kate Markowitz; and a new face, vocalist-violinist Andrea Zonn. McCuller has been touring with Taylor the longest, since 1977.

The summer shed tours, playing to 20,000 people or so a night, have made Taylor one of the highest-grossing acts in pop music. In 2003, for example, he earned $27 million from 65 shows, according to Billboard magazine. In 2001, he was No. 19 on the year-end list of moneymakers, according to Pollstar magazine, taking in $23 million.
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