Joan Baez brings songs, passion for peace to Montana

Published: February 24, 2009

“I have not felt this complete, not this calm … People used to say I looked that way. Now, I feel that way.” – Joan Baez (Photo by Dana Tynan)

By Kristi Niemeyer

I had just 15 minutes, on one of those rare sunny afternoons in February, to chat by phone with Joan Baez, who performs in Missoula and Bozeman in March.

What, I wondered, do I ask a woman who has lived such a large life? Which threads do I tug in that rich tapestry, in the amount of time that Montanans might spend discussing the nuances of today’s weather?

Baez has lent her remarkable voice to almost every American civil rights movement of the last 50 years – as well as supporting efforts to end apartheid in South Africa, protest Augusto Pinochet’s fascist regime in Chile and inspiring Vaclav Havel in his quest for freedom in the Czech Republic.

To distill her passions into a few words, you could start with, “and liberty and justice for all.” Add peace, and wrap those core convictions in an intense commitment to musical excellence and a willingness to mentor and celebrate new voices.

My questions touched on the prosaic and the profound, the political and the personal. She took as many as we had time for, in an interview that was, like her, full of grace.

From MLK to Barack Obama: “The immensity of it”

Baez linked arms with Martin Luther King Jr. to protect black schoolchildren in Grenada, Miss., joined him on the march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., and sang “We Shall Overcome” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the civil rights leader’s March on Washington in 1963.

“Of all the things I’ve witnessed, I didn’t think I could top that,” she said in a recent interview.

“But this did,” she added, of President Barack Obama’s election. “The immensity of it. The spirituality of it. What it’s done to people.”

Riding the subway into Washington, D.C., to attend the inauguration, she remembers, “People were giving high fives and hugging each other. At that moment, there was absolutely zero color line.”

Baez endorsed Obama last year, in a letter that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, and read, in part, “If anyone can begin the process of healing and bring unity to a country that has been divided for too long, it is Barack Obama. It is time to begin a new journey."

She notes that over the years, she has steadfastly refused to endorse any political candidate, and veered away from party politics. “It all seemed very unreliable,” she says. “But from the internal reaction I had to him, I thought I’d be out of my own habits not to endorse him.

Is she still feeling good about that decision? “He’s walked into the fire pits of hell, and already done some important things,” she says. “The fact that The Life of Mahatma Ghandi is among the top 10 books on his reading list tells me something.”

A lifetime, distilled in a voice

At 68, Baez perceives age as both blessing and bane. “We’d all be in better shape if we lived in Tibet and were Buddhists, who see an old person and say, ‘wonderful!’”

The Buddhists, she believes, are on to something. “They seem to know that self can’t be that important.”

In a culture that regards age as a pariah, Baez radiates an astonishing grace, and describes her own aging process with humor and a little chagrin. “Everyday brings another reminder of something slipping,” she says. “One night, it’s restless leg, and the next, it’s leaping leg syndrome.”

But the slippage that matters most is her voice, lauded by The New York Times in 1960 for its “purling, spun-gold tone.” Keeping that instrument limber “is an obvious and ongoing difficulty,” she says, and requires daily exercise, especially while on tour. “I wouldn’t have to work so hard if I didn’t care about the high notes, but I’m not ready to give that up yet.”

In the 1960s, “My voice was astonishing, but it was young,” she says. “I couldn’t hit one of those high notes again if you paid me to, but it’s been replaced with a lifetime.”

She regards her singular voice as a gift. “I can’t really claim it. I just do what I can to maintain and deliver it.”

Banishing demons

The grace that Baez exudes is hard won. “After a youth and between years of inner hysteria, this is looking good,” she says.

She reflects on spring as it unfolds outside her window: “The birds have been at it for a few days now, and the sky is clearing up from rain.”

“I have not felt this complete, not this calm,” she says. “People used to say I looked that way. Now, I feel that way.”

She attributes her newfound ease to meditation, and “years of therapy,” which helped her to “contain and even banish my demons. It makes me feel like a new person,” she adds. “I love to get on the bus, I love the musicians, I love the show.”

And she appreciates the ongoing challenge “to cut down the barriers between me and other people.”

After 50 years of performing on stages throughout the world (“I’ve been famous way longer than I haven’t been”), stage fright “is not just diminished now. It’s vanished. I’m totally relaxed – it’s a great freedom.”

Working with Mr. Gruff

The richness and texture of 50 years burnish her new recording, Day After Tomorrow, produced in Nashville by Steve Earle, who lends his voice, and three compositions (“I Am a Wanderer,” the opening track, “God Is God,” and the closing a cappella song, “Jericho Road”) to the project. He also plays guitar, sings harmony, and – on two songs – plays the eerie-sounding harmonium.

Baez regards the collection as “a bookends” to a recording career that began in 1960 with her self-titled debut.

The album also marks her first full-length collaboration with Earle, who contributed a song to her 2003 album, Dark Chords on a Big Guitar, a collection of works by contemporary songwriters that resonate with Baez; and to Bowery Songs, recorded live in 2004.

What does she enjoy about working with this fearless, demanding songwriter? “He’s a doll,” she says (she also calls him Mr. Gruff). “He picks the right music, the right musicians. He and I both like to do a recording really quickly – we put it all down in less than 10 days.”

From Dylan, to Willie, to opera

Her accomplishments earned Baez a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 49th Grammy Awards in 2007, and the Spirit of Americana Free Speech Award in 2008.

When she glances back at all those groundbreaking performances, she says the ones that still seem luminous occurred decades ago. “Even with the always-present angst, there are certain times back there – the Newport shows, and with Dylan – that still stand out.”

Baez first stepped on stage at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959, as an 18 year old, and would return to that venue again and again. She began touring with Bob Dylan and recording his songs in 1963, and was part of his Rolling Thunder Revues in 1975-’76 (and costarred in the resulting movie, “Renaldo and Clara,” released in 1978).

In fact, a Dylan song, “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts,” remains one of her favorites to wrap her voice around, as is her own “Diamonds and Rust.”

The Dylan song, she says, “is so much fun to sing, and the band loves to do it too.” But at 16 stanzas, she hardly ever performs it live. “It’s just too long,” she says.

Her own musical tastes are clearly eclectic: “Willie Nelson is on my car CD player right now, and there’s a whole sling of young opera singers I’m busy falling in love with.”

As good as it gets

Baez continues to find inspiration in unexpected places. “I was traveling across Germany by train recently, in the snow. Someone put Brahms on the radio, and I thought ‘this is as good as it gets.’

“Even with all the hideous things going on in the world, there’s so much beauty still expressed in the forms of nature and music.”

In a voice no longer stratospheric, but still supple, strong and elegant, she delivers these lyrics in “God Is God”: “We can all learn to sing the songs that angels sing.”

Perhaps. But some sing those songs so much better than the rest of us.