In this 1994 broadcast of The Dini Petty Show, James Taylor performs “Riding on a Railroad” solo in the Toronto studio, one week from the end of a seven-month tour. The song first appeared on his 1972 album One Man Dog, and it is not one of the hits — which is part of why the choice is interesting on a daytime programme with a general audience. He had a seven-month tour’s worth of crowd-pleasers available and picked an album track instead.
Played alone, with nothing but the guitar, it is the version of Taylor that the arena shows of that era had largely stopped offering. Twenty-two years after the record, and at the tail end of a tour long enough to have worn the polish off, he plays it as a piece of ordinary craft rather than as a showcase.
That context matters: this is the same visit in which he told Petty his own music was “lightweight” and insisted it had not moved anyone. The performance is the direct rebuttal to his own argument, delivered a few minutes away from him making it. The song itself is the argument: a 1972 album track, played without a band, holding a daytime studio audience on nothing but a guitar part and a melody. Whatever “lightweight” is supposed to mean, this is not it.
Unseen since its original broadcast, this master tape has been meticulously optimized and preserved via the official archive of The Dini Petty Show, safeguarding a solo performance of a deep cut from his catalogue.
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