Photos by Debra Rothenberg
It’s that time, when our early heroes grow old. Among the many announcing their retirement, Joan Baez has been staging a “Farewell Tour,” and here’s the Cliff Notes version: The music is wonderful, and it’s a perfect night if you don’t mind hearing only Baez’s lower register and come away feeling a bit sad, as Baez herself appears to be.
No one can fault the music, which hits all the high points of her career, or the music: with songs by writers like Baez, Dylan, Seeger, Josh Ritter, Kris Kristofferson, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Paul Simon, and her two formidable accompanists, percussionist (and Baez’s son) Gabriel Harris, and multi-instrumentalist Dirk Powell (who played equally impressive guitar, banjo, violin, acoustic bass guitar and piano, and also provided vocal harmony), it had all the makings of a perfect night. Baez brought on stunning vocalist Grace Stumberg for harmony and/or duet on a few numbers like “Me and Bobby McGee,” and most memorably for the first encore, where it was only the two of them on “Forever Young.”
Baez spoke often and sincerely between songs, and made frequent references to significant moments and people in her life. Starting off with Dylan’s “Don’t think Twice,” she not only flipped the melody around, but sang the verse “I ain’t saying you were unkind, You just sorta wasted my precious time” mimicking Dylan’s delivery, to the delight of everyone, including herself. After another Dylan song, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” which she recorded in 1965, Baez said, “That boy didn’t have much in the way of manners, but he sure could write.” Of “Diamond and Rust,” Baez noted, “If you’re only going to have one hit, that would be a good one.”
The night before, Baez had attended a Paul Simon Farewell concert at Madison Square Garden, and Simon asked her to stand so people could applaud her. (He also apologized that she didn’t have a better seat.) Baez had worked with Simon, and this night, in the encore, she dedicated what might have been her last song to Simon, and sang “The Boxer.”
The crowd didn’t want to let her go, however, and brought her back one more time. The final encore started out solo, a capella, as she sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” a fitting choice for the last of The Farewell Tour.
—Suzanne Cadgène
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