Joan Baez: ‘I’ve grown into my own skin’
’60s folk icon performs Wednesday at Botanical Garden
For the AJC
Sunday, July 19, 2009
It’s been 50 years since Joan Baez walked onstage at the Newport (R.I.) Folk Festival as a nervous teenager and released her soaring soprano to a generation still searching for its voice.
Since then, her voice has remained a beacon of purity through turbulent times.
Dana Tynan
Joan Baez says she had stage fright as a young performer, but it’s not an issue now.
She’s used it to serenade the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to speak out against war and to champion songwriters — including her then-unknown former protégé Bob Dylan, whose lyrics still slip into her conversation.
The folk icon’s storied past is being celebrated with the re-release of her autobiography, “And a Voice to Sing With,” and an “American Masters” documentary that will air this fall.
Yet the forward-looking Baez titled her latest CD “Day After Tomorrow.” Produced by Steve Earle, the Grammy-nominated recording includes material by Tom Waits, Elvis Costello and other contemporary composers.
Before embarking on a tour that brings her to the Atlanta Botanical Garden on Wednesday for a sold-out show, she spoke from her Woodside, Calif., home about politics, performing and how she seems to stay forever young.
Q: Is the atmosphere different at your concerts since President Barack Obama’s election?
A: Good Lord, yes. In the Bush administration there was a funny dynamic that happened for me, sort of the Bush kickback. I mean, he was the best publicity agent I’ve ever had in my life! Really, I would go to a state that was known for being conservative, and everybody from here to kingdom come would go to that show because they needed some kind of pocket of sanity. (Laughs)
Q: After 50 years, how have you changed as a performer?
A: I’ve grown into my own skin in way that I certainly never thought I would be able to when I was younger. It’s a joy. When I was young and had stage fright and also had on my mind so many things I had to do — or thought I had to do — I really couldn’t enjoy it the way I do now.
Q: You dedicated this CD to your 96-year-old mother. Living with her must teach you important life lessons.
A: Well, I think you’ve got to learn them, especially about getting old in a country that’s so scared of it. I’m going to keep these wrinkles if it kills me. (Laughs) I saw myself in this documentary that was just made, and the producer said, “Now you’re probably going to wake up in the night, and your stomach’s going to be churning about something. You’re going to see your childhood and everybody you knew.” And I thought, “Oh, god.” So I was awake half the night, and I didn’t know what it was. And in the morning I thought, “Oh, geez, it’s the wrinkles!” But you know, you got to live with it.
Q: Well, I’d swear you’ve discovered the fountain of youth.
A: Well, I tell you, it’s discipline. It’s eating properly. It’s exercise. It’s meditation. There’s a posture discipline that I do, a method that I’ll probably write about on my Web page. So it’s all that stuff.
Q: With your autobiography’s rerelease, is there a chapter in your life you’d like to rewrite?
A: No, I don’t think that anybody can think that way, partly because it’s hypothetical stuff, so it’s not worth thinking about like that. But I find all my regrets are just these little things. There’s nothing big. I always think, I was at a barbecue where people were selling lamb chops or something and there was a Mexican day laborer standing there looking at it, and I wasn’t paying attention to it. I was just sort of daydreaming. Then he got on a bus and left and I realized he was hungry. And in my lifetime I’ll never be able to forget that, that I could have bought him something to eat, and that it was too late, and it was too late forever. And that’s like a huge regret. It’s not something political that I was involved with that I regret, you know? It’s the little stuff like that.
Q: Are there public misconceptions about you?
A: Oh, sure, how could there not be? People don’t know me.
Q: Well, here’s a chance. Is there something you wish people knew?
A: (Laughs) Oh, I don’t know. I’m probably funnier than they think I am. I take things very seriously, but I don’t take myself very seriously.
Q: You’ve got to laugh at yourself, right?
A: Yep, or you’ll sink like a stone.
