“I was a political entity before I was a singer,” Joan Baez told me during our first phone interview, in 2005. Four decades before that, she’d been the defining female musical voice of many movements we were involved with as youths, against racial injustice and the war, for the empowerment of the people. She’d found her own voice and finger-picking guitar style in the coffee shop folk scene in Boston, a few years before I got there. In the early ’60s, Baez and Bob Dylan (who were romantically involved during that period) proved that recordings of folk and protest songs could go gold. Both went on to explore other genres and electrified instrumentation, though Baez remained more overtly politically demonstrative, and more rooted in acoustic folk music. During her five-year marriage to antiwar activist David Harris, she gave birth to a son, Gabriel, and began blossoming as a songwriter.
Turning 71 in a month, Baez lives with her mother, known as “Joan Senior” or “Big Joan,” in Woodside, on the San Francisco Peninsula, from where she spoke with SFCV. She continues to record, to tour internationally, and to visit contemporary sites of social activism, and she appeared locally at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival and in concert. She joins Michael Morgan and his Oakland East Bay Symphony on Dec. 11 for “Let Us Break Bread Together,” their annual holiday celebration.
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Joan Baez brings her song Where's My Apple Pie? to Occupy Wall Street last month.
Did you get back here from your European tour partly to be able to share the holidays with your mom and your son and your grandkids?
You bet! It’s like coming home to paradise. I love touring, and when I’m out on the road, I think, Why am I stopping? But then, when I’m home, I think, Oh God, am I really gonna pack again and go on tour?
Is music part of your family’s celebration?
That’s a good question. I have a sensitive older sister [Pauline Baez Marden, who wrote the song Pack Up Your Sorrows], so I don’t usually burst into song, when it’s just family. I don’t make an issue of giving a family concert, but there’s always music playing.
I assume you’d have plenty of collaboration if you wanted it. Is Gabe still doing music?
He’s drumming [with Rhythm Village, based in Marin], and we play together sometimes. And I have a niece [Pearl Bryan] who has a beautiful voice, so when she’s here, we do something.
Six years ago, you told me you’d reached the point where you can do what you want to do.
Happily, I love what I do, and I’m always surprised at that. But my voice is way difficult; I don’t have soprano anymore, without a lot of work. But it’s an acceptable challenge, because I still like the results, and the feedback from the audience.
Which has been sustaining you for a wonderfully long time.
Sometimes I’m standing up there on the stage and I’ll look out and say, “This is crazy, that I’m still doing this. And what’s crazier is, you’re still here listening to it!” [Chuckles]
Has the change in your voice made you transpose your music?
Happily, I love what I do, and I’m always surprised at that. But my voice is way difficult.
Yes, it has. Almost everything has come down half a tone, sometimes a whole tone.
Are your guitar-playing fingers nimble as ever?
I don’t think so, and I think that’s a good question. It’s one of those things I don’t think I can do that much about, unless it’s the way I did in the beginning, when I did it 24 hours a day, and in my sleep. It isn’t as simple as it used to be, to grab onto something new and play it.
Are there exercises?
That’s another good question; I should probably have some. But I have a woman who comes, Carol McComb; if I have a song and I’d like to do something interesting with the arrangement, she helps me. And I have a musician with me, though he won’t be in the Oakland event. He plays six instruments. His name is Dirk Powell.
I saw him play with his wife, Christine’s, Cajun group, Balfa Toujours, down in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana.
They’re wonderful, and he’s just brilliant to travel with. His idea of hurrying up is a freeze-frame. He’s just a Louisiana boy; he’s fantastic.
You appeared last month at the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York. What did you sing?
It was Veterans Day, and I remembered this song I wrote, called Where’s My Apple Pie? But I hadn’t sung it in 40 years. I wrote it for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Then all of a sudden this song came out, and it was really perfect, and the audience could sing along with it. I’d worked on a version of [her original] Salt of the Earth, and that also was appropriate. Then, my merch man [responsible for the sale of CDs at her shows] sent me a link to this kid from [the] Occupy [movement], where he introduces a song, never giving the name of who wrote it, and says, “I’ve always loved this song,” And then he sings All the Weary Mothers of the Earth, which is something I wrote about 30 years ago. I so love it that some kid, who doesn’t know anything about the past, just likes this song and thinks it would be great for Occupy.
So has the Occupy movement ...
... been “occupying” my mind? [Chuckles]
I so love it that some kid, who doesn’t know anything about the past, just likes this song [All the Weary Mothers of the Earth] and thinks it would be great for Occupy.
Yes, and sparking your long-term relationship with music as the sound of social causes?
Well, I’ve always been happiest wearing both hats at once, and until the right thing happened, there wasn’t any place I wanted to throw my mind and body into. I’ve shown up for different things — but this has done what I think all of us felt Obama would do, which was bring us together in some kind of community with some kind of sense that we’re going somewhere. I’m so grateful for whatever triggered it, and I don’t care if they don’t have a “program.” If it’s not obvious, sitting down by a bank on Wall Street, whaddya need a program for? [Chuckles]
Has the force of social activism ebbed and flowed through you?
I think that’s a good question, and the answer is probably “yes.” I’ve been through periods of time when I just won’t sing We Shall Overcome, because it’s just sort of memorabilia; it needs to be sung when it’s needed, not where people want to take a nostalgia trip on it. I’d sing it only in countries that were on some level of strife. And I don’t feel comfortable singing the “old” songs at Occupy Wall Street, though at some point, if they adopt them, I’d be more comfortable. They’re kids struggling to write their own stuff, and they’re not [Bob] Dylan, but they just gotta hack it out on their own, until they come up with something.
Have you been writing your own new stuff?
I have not, for years I haven’t, and I’d love to. If it came bubbling to the surface, I’d be delighted.
I hear that you and your mom showed up at the beginning of last year at an Oakland East Bay Symphony program.
It was wonderful — everything I thought it would be.
Maestro Morgan told me he thought you’d connect with his ensemble’s focus on the community.
[Occupiers are] kids struggling to write their own stuff, and they’re not Dylan, but they just gotta hack it out on their own.
I think my saying “yes” to this upcoming event was a desire to head in that direction. This side of the Bay is too isolated from that side. I want to connect across the Bay.
On the OEBS program, you’ll be singing Steve Earle’s God Is God. What is it about that song?
It’s simple, sweet, and has a hook that isn’t dumb. And it’s audience-friendly, not a new song you’d have to struggle with. It’s a new song that settles in, in a beautiful way. It fits people who are in recovery. [Earle performed it at the 2010 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.]
Then there’s Jari Ya Hammouda, which you’ll do with Kugelplex, the klezmer group.
I was in Tunisia 40 years ago, looking for a song, and the mayor of the town took me to this house where there were five women perched on a bench, and they sang this song into my tape recorder. I don’t remember what it’s about, ’cause I never put much emphasis on that.
What is it you like about it?
I dunno. You’ll hear, it’s very happy.
Will you be accompanying yourself?
I’ll sing God Is God with the guitar, I’ll sing my own version of Swing Low with the guitar, and then if we do Salt of the Earth, it’ll be with the chorus. That should be fun.
Will you feel like joining in on any of the carols?
I don’t know, we’ll see.
What are your plans for the New Year?
Do you mean the New Year, or New Year’s Eve? I don’t do anything on New Year’s Eve. [Chuckles] But I do have a tour planned, to the British Isles, at the end of February. Beyond that, there are things in the making. But I don’t wanna hear about it yet. I want to be part of the planning, and I’m not ready to plan yet.