Bowery Songs

Astonishing to think that Joan Baez has been making records since 1959, but at 65 the veteran folk-singer still releases albums and tours the world with all the energy of someone half her age. Her Vicar Street show in 2004 was certainly a revelation to anyone who might have dismissed her as nothing more than an irrelevant '60s folkie. On that occasion, she was aided considerably by a fresh young band, who updated much of her largely acoustic back catalogue into a kind of latter day Americana. This career-spanning live album recorded at New York’s Bowery Ballroom in November 2004 (the night after the US Presidential Election) offers a perfect snapshot of the '60s icon in a concert setting.
Highlights include well-known Baez favourites like ‘Joe Hill’ (which she famously sang at Woodstock), Woody Guthrie’s ‘Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)’ and a selection of Dylan songs including ‘Farewell Angelina’, ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ and ‘Dink’s Song’, associated with Dylan’s mentor Dave Van Ronk, which Baez sang with Dylan on 1976’s Rolling Thunder Revue. A clear highlight is Steve Earle’s ‘Christmas in Washington (“So come back Woody Guthrie/Come back to us now...”), one of three songs here that were featured on her 2003 album Dark Chords On A Big Guitar. The others are Greg Brown’s ‘Rexroth’s Daughter’ and Natalie Merchant’s ‘Motherland’. While some might not warm to her sometimes shrill tones, her voice is as strong as ever, as is evident on a stirring rendition of ‘Carrickfergus’, not to mention Earle’s anti-war polemic ‘Jerusalem’.