James Taylor's Country Soul

His songwriting, he acknowledges, has slowed down — especially compared to the Seventies, when he kept close to an album-a-year pace. "Either I'm busier and more distracted now, or I'm slower or not as motivated. It's not as urgent a thing, where I have something I've got to communicate. Even when I write new songs, I probably am writing 15 songs over and over again, visiting themes that are important to me. But there is nothing more thrilling than getting a new song — when you think of the piece that will fit the puzzle."

Taylor wants to do all of this work at home partly to stay near his kids — but he's also preparing for a future with dwindling oil reserves. "I have the sense that energy will become more and more expensive, and people will need to exist in a more local way," he says. "And I feel sort of like a citizen of New England. I like living here and working here, so it may just be that my efforts are more and more sort of locally focused as time goes by."

He glances out his kitchen windows, at a vista of snowy hills and valleys. "When you have young kids, you sort of re-up your commitment to the future. And I can't seem to stop thinking about sustainability and about human activity on the Earth and whether or not what we're doing can continue. It can't. The thing I fear is that we'll have a collapse — and that will finally get people's attention."

Global concerns aside, Kim Taylor casts doubt on the idea that her husband might abandon touring the world. "I think he's kidding himself if he thinks he would ever give up that aspect of his life," she says. "He's just a creature of the road." And in any case, the twins went on tour with their dad this summer and loved it. "There was candy backstage, they were up all night watching movies," says Kim. "They really didn't want to come home."

Back in the barn, Taylor and the band push through Jr. Walker's 1965 R&B tune "(I'm a) Road Runner" — again. "Let's see if there's a groove to be gotten," Taylor says. The band has spent the past few hours recording this song, varying the tempo and feel, sometimes to minute degrees — at one point the musicians move from 120 beats per minute to 126, laying down six versions at that tempo alone.