The Queen of Folk Joan Baez 'Fare Thee Well' Tour 2018-19

Joan Baez is 77 and her voice, as she freely admits, is not what it was. That outrageously pure soprano is long gone, replaced by a lower, less reliable instrument. 

Her set is a clever combination of songs from the new disc and classics, among others Bob Dylan’s 'Farewell Angelina', a powerful rendition of Woody Guthrie’s 'Deportee', as relevant now seven decades on as she points out, and a fresh version of 'Joe Hill'. 

Joan's slow, more-wistful-than-angry Diamonds & Rust, her great lament for former lover Bob Dylan, who she introduced to the world inviting him on stage to perform alongside her at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, is brilliantly melancholic. 

It is a tribute to the new songs, including the heartfelt The President Sang Amazing Grace, a modern civil rights song echoing the struggles of the 1960s, recited rather than sung, that didn’t pale in that exalted company.

Her protege, Grace Stumberg, accompanies her on 'Diamonds & Rust', and the power and flexibility of the younger woman’s voice sometimes emphasises the decline of Baez’s own. But that is the point really; none of us are what we were, but we are still standing, still fighting, still singing. “Ten years ago / I bought you some cufflinks / You brought me something / We both know what memories can bring / They bring diamonds and rust,” she sang back in the 1970s. That famous doomed relationship forever receding, “10 years” becomes “50 years”. It’s been a long, sometimes painful journey, but Baez is here, beautiful and assured to proclaim victory.

SETLIST

Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright (Bob Dylan)

God Is God (Stephen F Earle)

Farewell Angelina (Bob Dylan)

Whistle Down The Wind (Tom Waits / Kathleen Brennan)

Silver Blade (Josh Ritter)

It’s All Over Now Baby Blue (Bob Dylan)

Deportee (Woody Guthrie / Martin Hoffman)

L'Auvergnat (Georges Brassens

Diamonds And Rust (Joan Baez)

Me And bobby McGee(Kris Kristofferson / Fred Foster)

The Times They Are A’Changin’ (Bob Dylan)

The President Sang Amazing Grace (Zoe Mulford)

Joe Hill (Robinson Earl - Hayes Alfred)

Seven Curses (Bob Dylan)

The House Of The Rising Sun (Woody Guthrie / Traditional)

Darlin’ Corey (Traditional)

Gracias A La Vida (Violeta Parra)

Imagine (John Lennon)

The Boxer (Paul Simon)

Here’s To You (Joan Baez / Ennio Morricone)

Recorded at the Paris Olympia June 13, 2018 

Born Joan Chandos Baez on Staten Island, New York, January 9, 1941, the American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist's contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest or social justice. 

Joan has performed publicly for over 60 years, releasing over 30 albums. Her professional career began at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. 

Following that appearance, she recorded her first album for Vanguard, 'Joan Baez' (1960), a collection of 13 traditional folk ballads, blues, and laments sung to her own guitar accompaniment recorded in the summer of 1960. Later reissues included three additional songs. 

Her debut album was inducted into the Grammy® Hall of Fame in 2011 by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences and selected to be preserved in the National Recording Registry in 2015 by the Library of Congress.

Many do not know that this 1960 album really is not Joan's first recording. She started her folkie adventure at an early age, performing in coffeehouses in Boston and Cambridge, until finally she became the folk queen of Club 47, where Sunday after Sunday she amazed the audience with both her old and new songs. The enthusiasm of the moment launched Joan Baez with Bill Wood and Ted Alevizos, unknown young people, to record Folksingers 'Round Harvard Square'.

Joan Baez and the Cambridge Folk Scene 1958

She made her New York concert debut on November 5, 1960, at the 92nd Street Y and on November 11, 1961, Baez played her first major New York concert at a sold-out performance at Town Hall. Years later when Baez thought back to that concert, she laughed, saying: "I remember in 1961 my manager sending me this newspaper clipping in the mail which read, 'Joan Baez Town Hall Concert, SRO'. I thought SRO meant 'sold right out' I was so innocent of it all." 

Her first three albums, Joan Baez, Joan Baez, Vol. 2, and Joan Baez in Concert all achieved gold record status, and stayed on the charts of hit albums for two years.

Beginning in the late 1960s, Baez began writing many of her own songs, beginning with 'Sweet Sir Galahad' and 'A Song For David', both songs appearing on her 1970 '(I Live) One Day At A Time' album.

Fluent in Spanish and English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages. Although regarded as a folk singer, her music has diversified since the counterculture era of the 1960s, and encompasses genres such as folk rock, pop, country and gospel music. She came to be considered the 'most accomplished interpretive folksinger / songwriter of the 1960s'. Her appeal extended far beyond the folk-music audience. Of her fourteen Vanguard albums, thirteen made the top 100 of Billboard's mainstream pop chart, eleven made the top forty, eight made the top twenty, and four made the top ten.

Her last album 'Whistle Down the Wind' released on March 2, 2018, is her first studio album in almost a decade. Featuring Joan on vocals and guitar the album is a tasteful and carefully curated collection of new emotional and thought-provoking starkly contemporary songs by some of her favorite composers. 

She was one of the first musicians to use her popularity as a vehicle for social protest, singing and marching for human rights and peace. Pete Seeger, Odetta, and decades-long friend Harry Belafonte were her early social justice advocate influences. In 1958, at age 17, she committed her first act of civil disobedience by refusing to leave her Palo Alto High School classroom in Palo Alto, California, for an air raid drill.  One of the outstanding figures of counterculture; she raised her voice against the Vietnam war in Woodstock (1969), demonstrated alongside Martin Luther King Jr, taken to the fields with Cesar Chavez and had denounced dictatorships all over the world, things that are as passionate to her today as they were in the 1960's. 

On March 18, 2011, Joan Baez was honored by Amnesty International at its 50th Anniversary Annual General Meeting in San Francisco the inaugural event for the Amnesty International Joan Baez Award for Outstanding Inspirational Service in the Global Fight for Human Rights. She was presented with the first award in recognition of her human rights work with Amnesty International and beyond, and the inspiration she has given activists around the world. In future years, the award is to be presented to an artist - music, film, sculpture, paint or other medium - who has similarly helped advance human rights.