Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Inside the
Speaker 1: Studio on iHeart Radio. My name is Jordan Runtog, But
Speaker 1: enough about me, it's hard to know where to start
Speaker 1: with my guest today. She began her sixty year career
Speaker 1: as a folk singer, honing her craft and the Greenwich
Speaker 1: village clubs that fostered the likes of Arlo Guthrie and
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan in the early sixties. Since then, she's become
Speaker 1: one of the most beloved interpreters are popular song elevating
Speaker 1: early compositions by Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell into air
Speaker 1: de finding classics. A brilliant songwriter in her own right,
Speaker 1: she's used her one of a kind voice to champion
Speaker 1: social causes and the endurance of the human spirit. Now
Speaker 1: she's using her voice in a different way as a
Speaker 1: podcast host. This summer, she's launched a new bi weekly
Speaker 1: interview series entitled Since You've Asked. The show finds her
Speaker 1: deep in conversation with an array of fascinating friends, including
Speaker 1: Clive Davis, actor Jeff Daniels, Christiane Amanpoor, and many others
Speaker 1: She's like in their chats to virtual dinner dates, which
Speaker 1: allowed her to keep social in the age of COVID.
Speaker 1: The podcast is far from her only pandemic project. Earlier
Speaker 1: this year, she restaged her legendary nineteen sixty four concert
Speaker 1: at New York's Town Hall, the show that helped launch
Speaker 1: her career. This time around, she played nearly the same
Speaker 1: selection of songs, with her voice as strong as ever,
Speaker 1: but one major difference was that the theater was empty
Speaker 1: the audience tuned in the live stream. A live album
Speaker 1: of the performance will be released on August. It'll follow
Speaker 1: her latest musical offering, White Bird, and anthology of her
Speaker 1: favorite recordings, bolstered with a few revamped reimaginings of some
Speaker 1: of her classics, and she's also hard at work on
Speaker 1: a new album of original material as well. Suffice to say,
Speaker 1: she's probably significantly busier than you are, and as such,
Speaker 1: I'm extra grateful for her time. I'm so thrilled to
Speaker 1: welcome miss Judy Collins. Thank you. It's a pleasure to
Speaker 1: be with you. I have so many things I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about, but I wanted to start
Speaker 1: with your amazing new podcast since you've asked. It's such
Speaker 1: a wonderful project to do in the midst of lockdown
Speaker 1: I think you've it. It's almost like a dinner date
Speaker 1: or a dinner party, and that really comes across How
Speaker 1: did this start for you? Well, first of all, I
Speaker 1: I love the zoom potential and I've I use it
Speaker 1: all the time, you know, in in New York, my
Speaker 1: husband I live here, and of course the lockdown started
Speaker 1: and our we have normally we have a social life.
Speaker 1: We have dinner with friends a few times a month,
Speaker 1: so we just continued that without the dinner. We had
Speaker 1: podcasts with friends, and that went on, has been going
Speaker 1: on and still going on because now there are some
Speaker 1: people who have kind of been out of the city,
Speaker 1: so we do the podcast with them, or if they've
Speaker 1: decided to venture out, we'll go to dinner with them.
Speaker 1: So that that very much has been My social life
Speaker 1: is very important to me. I believe in the healing
Speaker 1: and uh intellectually stimulating contents of discussions with friends. I
Speaker 1: think it's it's part of the stuff of life, and
Speaker 1: you if you if you were denied it, you can
Speaker 1: wither on the vine. So that was that was going on,
Speaker 1: and I think my manager and I were talking one
Speaker 1: day and she said, why don't you do that with
Speaker 1: some people? That you can have a longer conversation with.
Speaker 1: So we decided to start doing the podcast, which I
Speaker 1: just love it. I think it's it's a privilege to
Speaker 1: be able to to peer into somebody's life in a
Speaker 1: more for instance. And I won't break this open entirely,
Speaker 1: but I did do a show a podcast with my
Speaker 1: old friend Clive Davis, and one of the nice things
Speaker 1: is that I'm not a client. I'm a friend. I've
Speaker 1: known him for almost sixty years now, and so there's
Speaker 1: a way to talk to somebody that's different than if
Speaker 1: you're a client. And on the other hand, then my
Speaker 1: own the head of my label, Jack Holsman, whom I've
Speaker 1: known for sixty years too, and he's a very close friend,
Speaker 1: and I am as guy was it's client, and I
Speaker 1: I have Electorate records, you know, started my life and
Speaker 1: and so and so I know a lot about him
Speaker 1: and he about me. So it's a different kind of
Speaker 1: thing in both cases, but both satisfying, interesting, educational, and
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. I was going to ask you
Speaker 1: about the Jack Holtsman interviews when I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: hear just because, as you said, you did go back
Speaker 1: up such a long way, and he had such a
Speaker 1: big role in your life and your career. Yeah, incredible role,
Speaker 1: incredible role. Tell me more about some of your guests
Speaker 1: so far on the ones that are out now we've
Speaker 1: heard Jeff Daniels and Julia Cameron. Who else do we
Speaker 1: have in there? I think Arlo Guthrie, I think is
Speaker 1: one of them. Arlow is coming along and Arlo and
Speaker 1: I of course I met Arlo when I first I
Speaker 1: did my first New York show. It was nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: and I was, you know, in the old days, the
Speaker 1: old days. When I started in nineteen fifty nine. My
Speaker 1: first job was in Boulder, Colorado, at a place called
Speaker 1: Michael's Pub, and it was a it was a pizza
Speaker 1: and parlor and kind of a class you know, upper
Speaker 1: upper echelon pizza parlor from from Tulagi's and uh the Sink,
Speaker 1: which were two of the real place where he just
Speaker 1: got down and dirty drunk, and Michael's Pub was a
Speaker 1: step up. And he had music. He had barbershop quartets
Speaker 1: and accordion players. And then I had been asked by
Speaker 1: my husband why I would didn't get a job doing
Speaker 1: something I knew how to do, because I was doing
Speaker 1: a very bad job at filing papers at the University
Speaker 1: of Colorado, and so my father got me an interview,
Speaker 1: an audition at Michael's pub. This was so out of
Speaker 1: the blue. Nobody knew that you could make a living
Speaker 1: sing folks songs. I mean, there was no there was
Speaker 1: no entrance that my father was a big star in
Speaker 1: the radio business. But he sang Rogerson Hart and had
Speaker 1: a great radio show, and that was a whole other
Speaker 1: era of music, and so folk music was ridiculous, forget it.
Speaker 1: But I went down and I had an audition. I
Speaker 1: played and sang a concert for an hour, and he
Speaker 1: hired me. And so that was the start. And in
Speaker 1: those days it was very much word of mouth. One
Speaker 1: person he would call the place, and I'm sure he called.
Speaker 1: He called the Gilded Garter in in Central City and said,
Speaker 1: you know, she sold some tickets and why don't you
Speaker 1: try it? So I went up. That was my second date,
Speaker 1: you know. And then I went to the Exodus in
Speaker 1: Denver and in between and then and then in about
Speaker 1: two years time, after working all these clubs word of mouth,
Speaker 1: I got to New York and I was actually the headliner.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it. I'd only been doing it a
Speaker 1: couple of years, but I got there and I found
Speaker 1: out that my opener was a thirteen year old named
Speaker 1: Arlo Guthrie. So that's where when we met, and he
Speaker 1: was he was always so darling and charming. I knew
Speaker 1: his mother very well because my manager quite quickly became
Speaker 1: Harold Levinsall, who managed the Weavers, and Pete Seeger and
Speaker 1: Alan Arkin and Theodore Bacal. He managed it seemed to
Speaker 1: me almost everybody who made records, who made music that
Speaker 1: was folk music, and Harry Belafani always wanted Harold to
Speaker 1: manage him, but he had told me that he consistently
Speaker 1: said no. I don't know why he said no. That
Speaker 1: would have been a lot of fun. So I have
Speaker 1: known Arlow all these years, and we've done all kinds
Speaker 1: that We went to Japan together in nineteen sixty six
Speaker 1: with Mimi and Bruce Langhorne, and we had a great
Speaker 1: time there, and I sang at Arlow's wedding to Jackie,
Speaker 1: his wonderful, wonderful wife. I loved Jackie. She was a treasure,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately she died a couple of years ago, and
Speaker 1: Arlow has been just a mainstay in my life. We've
Speaker 1: done shows together, we've traveled together, we have in common
Speaker 1: so many friends. So this past two years ago we
Speaker 1: started working on let's do a big tour together, and
Speaker 1: so we all it took a while, but finally we
Speaker 1: got We must have had fifty seventy five shows, places
Speaker 1: like Ravinia and and Tanglewood and you know the big
Speaker 1: places of course, um Humphreys out in the West and
Speaker 1: a lot of places. And they were all set up,
Speaker 1: and then the course at pandemic hit and he called
Speaker 1: me in September. We had all these dates were they
Speaker 1: were not none of them were canceled. They were just
Speaker 1: moved into the next and then the next and then
Speaker 1: the next month. And he said, I have to tell
Speaker 1: you this because I don't want to tell anybody yet
Speaker 1: until I've told you that I'm retiring. I can't do
Speaker 1: this anymore because I've had a couple of heart attacks
Speaker 1: and I just don't have this damon, and I can't
Speaker 1: sing very well and so on. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: you have to think about your health. So he said, yes,
Speaker 1: I do. And I said, I'm concerned about your health,
Speaker 1: but I think the best thing for you to do
Speaker 1: is to not go out anymore and do this touring
Speaker 1: that we do, which is you have no idea how
Speaker 1: hard it is. Nobody doesn't do it, has any idea
Speaker 1: how hard it is. But I said, meantime, why don't
Speaker 1: we do talk together. I hadn't even come up with
Speaker 1: the podcast idea yet, but I said, we should do
Speaker 1: one of these talks. I did a talk for Carnegie Hall,
Speaker 1: did a series of interviewing other people, and I interviewed
Speaker 1: my my friend Jimmy Webb, and Alan Cumming and Sean
Speaker 1: Colvin and Steve Earle, and we all all four of
Speaker 1: us talked together on a zoom show for Carnegie Hall.
Speaker 1: We did it probably in I said, I would say
Speaker 1: June or July last summer. You can get it on
Speaker 1: their podcast if you go onto Carnegie Hall and you
Speaker 1: look it up. And the Carnie Hall President, a wonderful man,
Speaker 1: introduced me, and it was he said, he was introducing me,
Speaker 1: and he said, and Judy Collins has done fifty shows
Speaker 1: over the years at Carnegie Hall. I hadn't known what
Speaker 1: the number was. I knew it was an awful lot
Speaker 1: because most of those early years I sang every year
Speaker 1: at Christmas, which Arlo did. Arlo sang at Thanksgiving and
Speaker 1: I sang at Christmas, and it was pretty much the
Speaker 1: New York routine. You know, people would go to both
Speaker 1: of our shows, so we had a good time. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we had a just fabulous time with our podcast. So
Speaker 1: that'll be coming down in the series very soon. I
Speaker 1: can't wait to hear him with these people that you
Speaker 1: have had these these deep relationships with for many, many years,
Speaker 1: the Arlow's, that Jack Holtsman's, the Clive Davis is. Did
Speaker 1: you find when you were doing these podcasts that you
Speaker 1: learned stuff about them that you never knew? Oh? Yes,
Speaker 1: I won't spill the means again, but I asked. I
Speaker 1: asked Clive in the middle of the podcast, and it's
Speaker 1: reveal you you do, you find out things. I mean,
Speaker 1: I found out how he got to to this this business.
Speaker 1: It wasn't through a musical uh connection. It was legal.
Speaker 1: You know. He went to law school and begin was
Speaker 1: with a firm and they wanted him to go to
Speaker 1: Monterey and represent some clients down there. I don't even
Speaker 1: know who it was. And he was mesmerized and transformed
Speaker 1: by listening to Jannis Choplin and Santana. That's how he
Speaker 1: got into it. I didn't know that. And I said
Speaker 1: to him during the show, I said, who was the
Speaker 1: one who got away? And he said, you know, that's
Speaker 1: a great question. I've I've never been asked that question.
Speaker 1: People asked me who I dropped and who walked away
Speaker 1: from me, but they don't know. I never asked me
Speaker 1: who got away. And you know, it was a big surprise.
Speaker 1: You want to know who it was. It was Harry Chapin.
Speaker 1: He said, your guy overbid me. Jack Holdman wrote a
Speaker 1: bigger check. So that was funny. And of course you
Speaker 1: do find out things. People's people tell you, things that
Speaker 1: they would not necessarily say in public, or if it
Speaker 1: was scripted, they would not say. And they're they're at home,
Speaker 1: you know, they're probably they're not in a studio. The
Speaker 1: lights are not shining on them, so they're in their
Speaker 1: living rooms or maybe in their bedrooms, and maybe in
Speaker 1: their dining rooms. But you're intimately talking with them in
Speaker 1: a way that is very free form. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: find that you've done so many of these and you
Speaker 1: understand that people are going in various directions and sometimes
Speaker 1: there are a surprise. It's such an incredible privilege and
Speaker 1: in such an incredible way to engage your your sense
Speaker 1: of curiosity, to learn about all sorts of different people
Speaker 1: and all sorts of different ideas. Do you find that
Speaker 1: you learned something about yourself having done this, I learned
Speaker 1: a lot about my own curiosity, absolutely, and also that
Speaker 1: I'm I'm really I'll talk about anything. You pry open
Speaker 1: those little doors and you just never know what's going
Speaker 1: to come out. Really, and it's a good thing because
Speaker 1: conversation is how we grow and learn, and it gives
Speaker 1: us a balanced life, and it gives us an idea
Speaker 1: of how the other side is living and own what's
Speaker 1: what's what things can be troublesome and what things are
Speaker 1: a lot of fun, And it's a conversation. Now. I
Speaker 1: grew up in this kind of family because my dad
Speaker 1: was in the radio business. So his radio show consisted
Speaker 1: of his playing and singing the songs of the Great
Speaker 1: American Songbook and telling about his life and reading poetry
Speaker 1: and having guests. He had a lot of guests on
Speaker 1: his show. Some of them would come home to dinner.
Speaker 1: George Shearing came to dinner and said, I think you
Speaker 1: should continue practicing the piano Mozart instead of playing those
Speaker 1: folk songs. That's what he said to me. I never
Speaker 1: forgot it. It sounds like music was just in your
Speaker 1: d n A. Was it always something that you knew
Speaker 1: this was what you'd be devoting your life to, or
Speaker 1: was there a moment when there was a lightning bolt moment. Well,
Speaker 1: I knew that I would be doing it, and I
Speaker 1: did it the whole time I was growing up. I
Speaker 1: always had music in my life, and I was playing
Speaker 1: the piano, I was singing in the choirs as a kid.
Speaker 1: My teachers were wonderful, you know. I started music lessons
Speaker 1: in uh We moved to l A in nineteen four probably,
Speaker 1: and my parents immediately got me a piano teacher. And
Speaker 1: I used to in those days, you know, I got
Speaker 1: on a bus at five years old with my music
Speaker 1: under my arm and got on the bus and went
Speaker 1: to Santa Monica from West West l A to have
Speaker 1: my lessons. I mean, life was very safe, kids were
Speaker 1: very safe people in general, it seemed to me. Of course,
Speaker 1: now we know that it wasn't so safe for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, and there are a lot of things
Speaker 1: going on that were so horrible that when the sixties
Speaker 1: finally rolled around. I think what was most appealing about
Speaker 1: the sixties was we finally realized how much we've been
Speaker 1: lied to and how much we are lied to, and
Speaker 1: determined that we would try to find the truth. But yes,
Speaker 1: talking and the kind of interviews my dad did, we're
Speaker 1: very much a part of our lives. And then we
Speaker 1: would all talk together about things around the table. That's
Speaker 1: where our political education came in. I think I look
Speaker 1: back and think about all the dinner table conversations that
Speaker 1: we had as a family growing up and how much
Speaker 1: they shaped me. And I realized that, you know, you
Speaker 1: take them for granted at the time because you just
Speaker 1: want to finish your dinner and go off to whatever
Speaker 1: you're doing and go play. But it's amazing what you
Speaker 1: learned from from those Yeah, play ball. I have to say,
Speaker 1: the show is such a perfect title since you've asked
Speaker 1: which for anyone who doesn't know. It was a track
Speaker 1: off of your album Wildflowers, and I think it's the
Speaker 1: first song you ever wrote, right, It's the first song,
Speaker 1: and that's how they get you, you know, they get you.
Speaker 1: I sat down after after Leonard Cohen asked me why
Speaker 1: I wasn't writing my own songs. I came home, I
Speaker 1: sat down at my stide mooy because I've been practicing
Speaker 1: for the various songs that were going on that album
Speaker 1: in my life. I just wrote it. It took me
Speaker 1: forty minutes and that was done. And it hasn't ever
Speaker 1: been the same since. I mean, it never takes forty
Speaker 1: minutes anymore. It takes. The next one took about five years,
Speaker 1: but I was hooked. And so since you've asked, right now,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to write a song for my granddaughter's wedding,
Speaker 1: which is happening in a few weeks in California. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I thought, because a lot of people tell
Speaker 1: me they sing since you've asked at their weddings, all
Speaker 1: of their weddings, not just the first one. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I can't do that. I have to write. I've written,
Speaker 1: I wrote, I've written songs for my own wedding, for
Speaker 1: my brother Denver's wedding, for my brother Dave's wedding, for
Speaker 1: an old friend who wasn't even a relative, so I
Speaker 1: have to write an original song for her. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no question, take my hand, who is your own?
Speaker 1: We can solve the broken world together. That's the start
Speaker 1: of what I'm writing. But who knows what will happen.
Speaker 1: Because I don't know. I have to start. I have
Speaker 1: to work at it every day and try to write
Speaker 1: something every different every day so that I can figure
Speaker 1: out what's gonna make it to the wedding. That's just amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I hear since you've asked now and I
Speaker 1: know knowing that it was your first song, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: I'm somebody who's who's loved music my whole life, and
Speaker 1: as hard as I try, I've never been able to
Speaker 1: write a song ever. I love it with all my heart.
Speaker 1: I dabble in different instruments, but it's just it's not
Speaker 1: in me. I can't imagine starting from scratch as you
Speaker 1: do to writing something is beautiful and sophisticated and as
Speaker 1: timeless as that song. I guess my question is, what
Speaker 1: are your tips for someone like me who's sort of
Speaker 1: struggling with how to start writing music? Do it? It'll
Speaker 1: break your heart, sheer sweat, and it's a job. I
Speaker 1: have a friend who writes mysteries who says, you know,
Speaker 1: writing is like laying pipe. It's you have to go
Speaker 1: at it every day. Well, I'm just coming out in
Speaker 1: I'm just about I think this week Wednesday or Thursday,
Speaker 1: I'm going out into the studio to do some more
Speaker 1: final vocals on my most recent album, which is an
Speaker 1: album of all my own songs called Spellbound. And it's
Speaker 1: it will come out in in February. I think of
Speaker 1: two and it's it's in part it's some songs that
Speaker 1: I finished and or started and finished in the Pandemic
Speaker 1: and some that I was finishing up in and but
Speaker 1: I I have to work very very very hard at it,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure that anything is as good as Oh,
Speaker 1: I know, the Blizzard is pretty good. The Blizzard, I think,
Speaker 1: and since you've asked her, probably my best songs. The
Speaker 1: Blizzard has to be kept in good shape because a
Speaker 1: lot of my songwriting friends love it, and I have
Speaker 1: to be ready to play it at the drop of
Speaker 1: a hat. And I think actually that the next thing
Speaker 1: is to get a movie filmed with with the song
Speaker 1: as a context for the movie. So that's something I
Speaker 1: need to pay some attention to because it is a
Speaker 1: great story. It's sort of my equivalent of the Gambler.
Speaker 1: I have to say, I loved your song Dreamers is
Speaker 1: an amazing I mean, for anyone who hasn't heard it,
Speaker 1: is this absolutely exquisite acapella piece inspired by the immigration crisis.
Speaker 1: I suppose is the most simplest way to phrase it.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me a little more about about that song?
Speaker 1: It is breathtaking. I was sitting here at the kitchen,
Speaker 1: at the dining room table one day and my husband
Speaker 1: and I were watching a conversation on television with a
Speaker 1: young woman who she said, and I quoted her, my
Speaker 1: name is Maria. My daughter is a dreamer. She says
Speaker 1: that she's worried that she will have to leave, and
Speaker 1: that's the first line of the song. And I went
Speaker 1: into the studio and I wrote it down and I
Speaker 1: started playing it immediately. And I worked on it for
Speaker 1: about four years, sixteen seventeen, eighteen maybe two maybe nine, No, no,
Speaker 1: it was it was two years anyways, playing the piano
Speaker 1: and playing it and playing it. And we were in
Speaker 1: Seattle and I was working at a club called ash Alley,
Speaker 1: and my husband was out there with me, and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, you really have to mix up your set.
Speaker 1: You didn't really need some new songs. Why don't you
Speaker 1: sing that new song you're writing. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: it's not I haven't figured out how to play it
Speaker 1: at the piano. He said, don't play to the piano
Speaker 1: and just sing it, just singing Acapulco as we say.
Speaker 1: And so I did, and I sang it, and my
Speaker 1: name it is Maria. My daughter is a dreamer. She
Speaker 1: says that she is worried that she will have to leave.
Speaker 1: And when I finished the song, there was this silence
Speaker 1: that came over the audience. It was stunning. Nobody moved,
Speaker 1: nobody said a word, nobody clapped, nobody, this just this
Speaker 1: absolute and then they all went crazy, and they kept
Speaker 1: doing that every time. I saying it because I'm convinced
Speaker 1: that when people are in an environment where there's live
Speaker 1: music going on, they're going through a lot of things
Speaker 1: in their minds that have to do with kind of
Speaker 1: shifting their point of view and examining what's going on
Speaker 1: in their lives and making choices that have nothing to
Speaker 1: do very often have nothing to do with what's really happening,
Speaker 1: but it's something that's transforming because of the live music.
Speaker 1: I think that's what live music does. It gets to
Speaker 1: the brain in a subtle way and does the kind
Speaker 1: of work that well, we like to think that teaching
Speaker 1: always does that, but it doesn't always do it, but
Speaker 1: music quite often does it. It's the silence. It's people
Speaker 1: sitting in an auditorium that's hushed, where they're not on
Speaker 1: their devices, and where no one is coming up and
Speaker 1: slapping them on the backs and saying you want to drink,
Speaker 1: but they're kind of hostage to the artist on stage.
Speaker 1: I'd like to think of it that way. What is
Speaker 1: it about music that you think makes it such a
Speaker 1: potent medium for transmitting emotion and enacting change. It's probably
Speaker 1: essential to human survival, I think it was probably Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, it's essential to have a voice, because
Speaker 1: you have to be able to scream while running in
Speaker 1: the forest, chasing some prey that you're going to have
Speaker 1: for dinner, or if you get injured by some animal
Speaker 1: that you're chasing, you have to be able to scream
Speaker 1: so that somebody comes after you. So the voice is
Speaker 1: always important, and it carries wisdom. You know, the sharks,
Speaker 1: I almost said the sharks the whales have the music
Speaker 1: of their songs to contain and transmit information. That's what
Speaker 1: I hear from Roger Payne who is the person who
Speaker 1: played me the first recordings of the of the singing
Speaker 1: of the humpback Whales many years ago. And apparently they
Speaker 1: have information about what the best place, the best way
Speaker 1: to go to the breeding grounds is, and you know
Speaker 1: who's who's who's whose tanker is nearby that you might
Speaker 1: not want to run into on the way to Alaska
Speaker 1: or something. So I'm sure it's got all kinds of information.
Speaker 1: And we carry information in our in our DNA which
Speaker 1: we can transmit with songs with words, and now we
Speaker 1: know that people who have a You may not know
Speaker 1: this about this wonderful man, but I traveled and recorded
Speaker 1: for a wonderful singer named Eric Weisberg for years and years.
Speaker 1: He's really part of my origed origins, and we did
Speaker 1: a lot of traveling. Even went to Soviet Union with
Speaker 1: me in nine six five. So I've known him for years.
Speaker 1: And he's a fantastic banjo player who's very famous, and
Speaker 1: towards the end of his life he really had alzheimer.
Speaker 1: He was not communicating, and so a bunch of his buddies,
Speaker 1: old pick and buddies, you know, went up to where
Speaker 1: he lived and began to sing and play and picked
Speaker 1: he picked up the guitar, and he played and sang
Speaker 1: with him. So it has a magical ability to trans
Speaker 1: trans What is the word transform, transcend the physical incapacity
Speaker 1: of the brain, because it'll wake the brain up with
Speaker 1: memory and music is the thing that's been said to
Speaker 1: help many many people find their way through are not
Speaker 1: necessarily back, but certainly through the or even temporarily to
Speaker 1: to wake the brain up to things that it knew before,
Speaker 1: particularly poetry and song, which tell part of our history.
Speaker 1: When you've used your your musical voice for so much
Speaker 1: good and to try to enact change for so many years,
Speaker 1: who were the people who think we called them eskimos
Speaker 1: in my family, the people who guided you to teach
Speaker 1: you and show you to to use these songs for
Speaker 1: for good and to to use your platform for to
Speaker 1: try to make a difference. Who were some people who
Speaker 1: taught you that well. I fell into that community immediately
Speaker 1: because when I was fifteen and jumped off of the
Speaker 1: classical piano route and decided I had to have a
Speaker 1: guitar because I had heard the Gypsy Rover and Barbara
Speaker 1: Allen on the radio, and I decided they were songs
Speaker 1: I had to sing. And that's when I started going
Speaker 1: to to Wells Music in Denver, and I was told
Speaker 1: by the guy ran the shop, you know, he said,
Speaker 1: this is you're You've ordered a pair of folk songs here,
Speaker 1: and this is what folk music is all around me.
Speaker 1: And then he showed me all these albums of pizza
Speaker 1: here and what he got three and since the Gooding
Speaker 1: and the Classy Brothers and Burl Lives and so on.
Speaker 1: And it was the folk music world that I that
Speaker 1: I became a part of, and I joined because I
Speaker 1: moved to New York and because Harold Levinthal said yes
Speaker 1: he would manage me, which was a great blessing. And
Speaker 1: I walked into his office on fifty seventh Street in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, and what he got, I mean, Pete
Speaker 1: Seeger was lying on behind the couch, sound asleep, with
Speaker 1: his banjo stretched stretched out beside it. And so I
Speaker 1: fell right into the club. And so this was what
Speaker 1: people were doing, and this is what I loved. I
Speaker 1: loved these songs. When I was sixteen or so seventeen,
Speaker 1: maybe I was at a folk music gathering on Lookout
Speaker 1: Mountain and a young simer named mart Hoffman sang me
Speaker 1: Woody got three song called Deporteese and Deportees is probably,
Speaker 1: I mean, essentially what I was writing about when I
Speaker 1: was writing Dreamers years ago, years later, but probably with
Speaker 1: that as my incentive. The thing about that was that
Speaker 1: I loved mart Hoffman. He was so sweet, so wonderful,
Speaker 1: such a great singer. And I didn't know until decades
Speaker 1: later that he had actually written the melody to deportise
Speaker 1: the Crops are All in and the Peaches a Rodney.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that until there was a big witty
Speaker 1: Guthrie festival over in Brooklyn in s and I went
Speaker 1: to it and they handed out a book. I knew
Speaker 1: so many of his songs, and I knew his life
Speaker 1: and so on, but I just didn't know that he
Speaker 1: didn't write that. What he didn't write that melody? I
Speaker 1: found out later a lot of songs he didn't write
Speaker 1: the melody too. He wrote the melody to this Land, certainly,
Speaker 1: and also to um I Woke up in a drive, Daddy,
Speaker 1: causey of that one he wrote as a but he
Speaker 1: there were long songs he didn't write too, And and
Speaker 1: his daughter Nora quite often would give lyrics to somebody
Speaker 1: and say, could you put this to music so we
Speaker 1: can get it recorded. I loved your your recent anthology
Speaker 1: White Bird, which is such a fascinating project that I
Speaker 1: think it's your first time recording the It's a Beautiful
Speaker 1: Day song Whitebird, the title track. Yes, I didn't know it.
Speaker 1: I didn't know it from Adam and my distributor Brian Perrero,
Speaker 1: who has helped me get the record label out that
Speaker 1: I that I supervised. He brought the song to me
Speaker 1: and he said, I think you should see it, and
Speaker 1: I said, I think so too. But I didn't know
Speaker 1: that the group. I didn't know the song or Beautiful Day.
Speaker 1: But I was telling somebody recently that I turned on
Speaker 1: one of these endless series I think a British mystery
Speaker 1: series the other day and I heard it was being
Speaker 1: played in the first break. It was being played of
Speaker 1: their version, Beautiful Day's version. So I'm glad I finally
Speaker 1: caught up with it. I love your versions so much,
Speaker 1: and I love how you revisited some of your songs
Speaker 1: like Turn Turn Turn, Chelsea Morning and and Randy Newman's
Speaker 1: I Think It's going to Rain the Day. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: I mean that song gets me every time what is
Speaker 1: your relationship to those songs now? Has has their meaning
Speaker 1: changed to revolved for you? Or are those constants for
Speaker 1: you that keep you kind of anchored? Well, when I
Speaker 1: sing them, they do the same thing for me that
Speaker 1: they always did, which is to make me happy and
Speaker 1: let me sing. You know, they let me sing. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are certain songs that really let you sing. They
Speaker 1: allow you to sing them. They're so well put together
Speaker 1: that you almost can't help but sing them. And some
Speaker 1: of these songs like turn Turn Turner like that, I mean,
Speaker 1: they just kind of invade your mind and they make
Speaker 1: you capable of singing them. I love the new arrangements
Speaker 1: to some of them too. It's such a cool way.
Speaker 1: I think that that it was almost like hearing them
Speaker 1: for the first time, which is really special for me.
Speaker 1: If someone's love those songs in your music for so
Speaker 1: many years. Good, I'm so glad you liked the album.
Speaker 1: I love it too. I loved doing it. Here's a question,
Speaker 1: kind of a broad question. Would you consider yourself an optimist? Oh,
Speaker 1: by God, of course I am. Absolutely. My sister says
Speaker 1: that's my one defect. Boy, I know that the last
Speaker 1: eighteen months have definitely been a challenging time for optimists.
Speaker 1: What's been been keeping you grounded? And I'm feeling good? Oh?
Speaker 1: Lots of things. Um, we have had a very privileged
Speaker 1: lockdown in the sense that I had never I had
Speaker 1: not had a vacation. I had not had time off
Speaker 1: in so many years, and quite frankly, I needed it.
Speaker 1: I needed a break. And you know, I was always
Speaker 1: told for years, why don't you get you know, you've
Speaker 1: got to be able to take a few months off
Speaker 1: in the summer. I was never able to, because you know,
Speaker 1: you want to make a living, you have to show up.
Speaker 1: The dates are coming in. You can't. So there was
Speaker 1: no way to really do that for any length of time.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe you'd get I don't know. I just
Speaker 1: was not. And so when it happened for me, it
Speaker 1: was an advantage because I got the time off, and
Speaker 1: you know, I took a nap every day every day.
Speaker 1: I mean I did anyway, because I'm in my eighties.
Speaker 1: Now people do that in their eighties, they take naps,
Speaker 1: And I've taken full advantage of that privilege. But I've
Speaker 1: also continued working and the working and the being able
Speaker 1: to sit down every day and work at the piano
Speaker 1: and work on writing and trying to write poetry and songs,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's a wonderful thing to be able
Speaker 1: to do, to have to have some enlightening moments, and
Speaker 1: then of course to be able to unfortunately watch what
Speaker 1: is going in the world and be devastated by the deaths.
Speaker 1: I mean I've lost I lost a couple of friends
Speaker 1: that were very close to me, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's horrible. And of course the devastation of the
Speaker 1: discount is something that takes your breath away. Really, And
Speaker 1: I'll have to say a word for wearing masks and
Speaker 1: for getting vaccinated. It's essential, not just it's not about you.
Speaker 1: It's about everybody in your family. It's about the people
Speaker 1: you interact with, It's about your neighbors. And to think it,
Speaker 1: to think it's just about yourself, it's extremely short sighted.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you were able to get some time for yourself.
Speaker 1: I know you're doing a hundred and fifty shows a year.
Speaker 1: Is something like that. I think I read that hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty, but almost it's incredible when you write every day,
Speaker 1: is it almost like people some people do yoga every day,
Speaker 1: some people jog. It's a daily practice for you to
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and I jog. I work on the treadmill,
Speaker 1: I take walks, I work on the bicycle. I try
Speaker 1: to do my stretches. Yeah, I have to. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no way to keep up with what's going on
Speaker 1: physically unless you're exercising and eating right. I don't drink,
Speaker 1: I don't smoke, I don't scream. You know, you have
Speaker 1: to give up a lot to stay on the planet.
Speaker 1: There was an interview you gave recently. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: remember who it was with. I read it. It might
Speaker 1: have been with a r P. And you said something
Speaker 1: that I will never forget. Somebody was asking you about
Speaker 1: about retirement. You gave an amazing response. I swear remember
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life. You're saying that retirement
Speaker 1: was created in the Industrial Revolution. I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you more about that. That's so fast. It was created
Speaker 1: by management. It was created by the by the one percent,
Speaker 1: to keep the rest of us from making money as
Speaker 1: we grow older. You know, you fire people at a
Speaker 1: certain level because if they stay longer, they're gonna cost
Speaker 1: you more money. It's you know, we throw people out
Speaker 1: of anyway. I think retirement was invented. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're a rancher, you never retire. I suppose that's in
Speaker 1: my d N A, in my in my history, my
Speaker 1: farming and some degree ranching farming. But being an artist,
Speaker 1: you never retire. I mean, there's no you wouldn't. Why
Speaker 1: would you? How could you retire from doing something that
Speaker 1: had kept you alive and probably kept you from jumping
Speaker 1: off a roof. I think that being creative and having
Speaker 1: being a poet or a writer, or a painter, an
Speaker 1: artist of any kind communicator, you know, you have to
Speaker 1: keep going because it's part of your DNA, as part
Speaker 1: of who you are. It's not just the product, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's the essential discipline of doing those things on
Speaker 1: a daily basis, which makes you capable of not only
Speaker 1: staying on the planet, but also contributing. I feel like
Speaker 1: that's something that a lot of people forget these days.
Speaker 1: It becomes about the product. True enough, Thank goodness, we
Speaker 1: have wonderful people like you, Cones. It has been a
Speaker 1: true pleasure and an honor. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: your time today, and your music is your wonderful joy.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear more of your show. It's
Speaker 1: a great, great treat. Thank you, m WE hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more episodes of Inside the Studio
Speaker 1: or other fantastic shows, check out the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.