Joan Baez made a rare appearance at the annual Tibet House benefit in New York.
Joan Baez has been keeping a low profile since finishing her Fare Thee Well tour in 2019, only performing on special occasions. One of them took place Monday evening at Carnegie Hall in New York, during the annual Tibet House benefit, where she headlined an evening that included Maggie Rogers, Laurie Anderson, Maya Hawke, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Tenzin Choegyal and the Scorchio Quartet.
His mini-concert began with the song “ God Is God » by Steve Earle, which she recorded in 2008 on her album Day After Tomorrow. She then called on Maggie Rogers for a duet on “ Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right » by Bob Dylan. She ended with “ There but for Fortune ” by Phil Ochs, where she was joined by Laura Anderson and several members of the house band, including bassist Tony Shanahan and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty of the Patti Smith Band. The show ended when Baez launched into the Pete Seeger classic “ We Shall Overcome “.
The concert took place just twelve days after Cat Power recreated Bob Dylan’s legendary concert at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1966 on the same stage. It is a remarkably faithful concert in which she plays alone for the first half of the evening on acoustic pieces like “ Just Like a Woman ” And ” Desolation Row ”, then hooks up with a group for electric pieces like “ Tell Me, Mom ” And ” Ballad of a Thin Man “.
Don’t expect to see Joan Baez go on tour again. She’s one of the few artists in music history to launch a farewell tour and actually mean it, largely because of the strain touring puts on her voice. “ This voicemail was extraordinary, she declared to WECB in 2019. It holds up well, and I don’t want to try to use it forever. I know some people strive to sing until they’re 100 and drop dead on stage, but that was never my vision of the end of my career. »