Location: Hala Tivoli, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Concert date: March 29, 2007
Attendance: 0
Ticket price: 35.00€, 40.00€
After all these years, hardly anything has changed. The world still needs a representative, a spokesperson, who keeps pointing out the injustice, misery, violence and unfairness spreading into every corner of the globe, day after day, year after year, into eternity.
Joan Baez is one of those voices. But she’s been at it for almost 50 years now, and as she admits herself, sadly not much has changed. At least not for the better. Bob Dylan’s “With God On Our Side” still carries a message that has in no way gone stale. Sadly, it’s even all too relevant. But who is a singer supposed to sing to when the ears are deaf?
The whole show had a pretty consistent political, critical, protest-y streak. It’s not out to spark any new revolutions, it just quietly reminds us that everything isn’t necessarily fine just because it looks like nothing’s wrong. Of course, there were lighter themes too, mostly in songs like the opener “Farewell Angelina”, “Fennario”, the bluegrass tune “Blue Ridge Mountains”, which Joan only “got”, as she put it, once she hit her sixties, even though some musicians were already happily playing it back in the ’60s, and then “Wonderful World”, which really caught us off guard with its easygoing charm. As we learned, her love for light melodies like these goes back to the days before she discovered Folk music, when she listened to and played nothing but R & B songs! There were a few more like that, but “Gracias A La Vida” definitely stood out, sung as a “duet” with the entire hall.
Joan Baez has always been famous as an excellent guitarist too, which she certainly is, and she also has a great feel for working a crowd. She delivered a new little story between every song, partly because her guitar needs retuning for almost every number, and that took a fair bit of time. We heard about her friendship with the Eastern European dissident leader Vaclav Havel, how the song “Sweet Sir Galahad” came to be, and a few other things straight from the source. There wasn’t much talk about Dylan, but she said more about him through the songs, either his own (“Sweet Angelina”, “With God On Our Side” and “Love Is Just A Four Letter Word”) or her own songs about him, above all “Diamonds And Rust”, which she played in full for us, as she told us. “Usually people start yawning and rolling their eyes” when she tackles that one, since it’s pretty epic, but here it drew a proper wave of enthusiasm. She got a similar reaction with “Love Is Just A Four Letter Word”, when toward the end of the song she started mimicking Dylan’s way of singing, and finished with “Me and Bob say thanks!”.
Her voice, meanwhile, is still very much alive despite a rich and long singing career. Her signature vibrato, which she belted out with full force mainly in her first two decades on stage, is gone, though. You can also hear some huskiness that has settled into her vocal cords, making them a little less supple and a note or so lower. But that’s no weakness. If anything, it gives her a distinct stamp that reflects a lifetime in every spoken or sung note, like wine that gets better with age.
For some time now she’s been joined on stage by two excellent musicians, somewhat younger than she is, but they clearly understand each other very well and complement each other perfectly. When Joan comes in on one of the songs on her own instead of everyone starting together, she stops right away and asks Graham Maby, who plays bass and sometimes guitar, “shouldn’t we start this one together? Good morning!”. All three of them smile and this time they start together. After the song ends, Joan carries on right away, “you know, that ‘good morning’ was meant for me, not you two. I really love it when my boys make a mistake, which is very rare”. The other guy is Erik Della Penna, who plays several stringed instruments, such as lap steel, mandolin and, of course, guitar. He can color some songs absolutely magically with the lap steel in particular, its long, “dreamy” notes complementing Joan’s voice and her guitar, along with that “fat”, full bass line, in songs like Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne”, which in its original form is backed by nothing but a guitar. Together they form a truly wonderful little musical unit that moves effortlessly through many musical styles and an even greater span of time.
Proof that Joan is “up to date” when it comes to music, especially the more protest-minded kind, came with her performance of “The Day After Tomorrow” from Tom Waits’ album Real Gone (Anti, 2004), which is actually one of his first truly direct protest songs too. She also played a version of Elvis Costello’s “Scarlet Tide” and Steve Earle’s “Christmas In Washington”. She closed the concert with Lennon’s “Imagine” and “Amazing Grace” sung a cappella, in the obligatory “duet” with the whole hall, of course. Nobody could have expected what happened next: the crowd drowned out Joan, which made her stumble over the lyrics, and she couldn’t hide her delight. Maybe a tear even rolled down her cheek. Truly unforgettable, for us and surely for her too.
So whether the seeds of “quiet protest” fell on fertile ground is something we’ll still have to see. But the fact that this folk-rock icon and her two boys left behind a truly satisfying and special feeling is already obvious. If anyone offers you diamonds and rust, pick the diamonds. Joan has them!
Setlist
1. Farewell Angelina
2. Scarlet Tide
3. Fennario
4. With God On Our Side
5. Blue Ridge Mountains
6. Wonderful World
7. Christmas In Washington
8. Wecker
9. Suzanne
10. Love Is A Four Letter Word
11. Joe Hill
12. Dear Sir Galahad
13. The Day After Tomorrow
14. Diamonds And Rust
15. Jerusalem
16. Gracias A La Vida
—encore 1—
17. Where Have All The Flowers Gone
—encore 2—
18.Imagine
19.Amazing Grace
LINEUP:
Joan Baez – vocals, guitar
Erik Della Penna – guitar, lap steel, mandolin
Graham Maby – bass guitar, guitar
