[“We Got a Listen” bouncy and funky theme music plays]

ALISA ROSENTHAL: Hey all, what’s going on. Welcome to the season one finale of Chicago Humanities Tapes - the audio arm of Chicago Humanities live Spring and Fall Festivals. I’m Alisa Rosenthal, here to uncover the answers to humanity’s biggest questions by bringing our current live programs to the airwaves, and searching through our incredible archive dating back to 1991 for relevant perspectives. We’ve had an incredible season, with much more good stuff to come after the summer break. Head to chicagohumanities.org for more info, and make sure to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to be the first to know. What better way to celebrate the festival than with one of my favorite programs from 2023 - the iconic singer/songwriter Joan Baez at Chicago’s historic Old Town School of Folk Music - where fun fact, I was a teacher for many years and a proud union member. Those local to Chicago know that the theater she spoke in is one of the absolute best rooms in the city - you can feel the history in its walls (and literally see it too, with murals from the WPA above the stage, from when the building was a library in the 1920’s). One of the greatest singers of all time and an integral member of the folk revival movement of the ‘60s and beyond, Joan Baez speaks of her activism, love of art, Mexican heritage, and some truly wonderful stories of the musicians she’s encountered across her incredible career. Hearing her speak is a warm blanket for tough times - and stick around to the end, and you might just be rewarded with something special from her. Chatting with Justin Richmond of the music podcast Broken Record, please enjoy Joan Baez at the Old Town School of Folk Music in spring 2023.

[Audience applause]

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Oh, my goodness. I gotta tell you, we were like we were talking backstage. We've we've spoken over Zoom a couple of times, but to meet in person, I've got to be honest, to be on stage with you. It's something. Being on stage with Joan Baez, it's something I haven't thought would happen.

JOAN BAEZ: I do it all the time. [Laughter]

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Oh, man. Thank you. Thank you so much for making this wonderful book of your drawings. They're they're Amazing. And I can't wait to get into a lot of them before we get into that. It's amazing we're both from California. We both flew here to Chicago to do this. And it feels very apt because in a lot of ways this is kind of where you started in show business, right?

JOAN BAEZ: Is that the spirit of folk music? Folk, folks, that was mine was mainly in Cambridge. People associate you with the Village, but I was only there a couple of times. It was mainly Cambridge and the folks in there.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Yeah. Well, which is where you would have gotten into music. But then the Gate of Horn here in Chicago really was by Albert Grossman's club.

JOAN BAEZ: Oh, my God. That was a big deal for me if I was 18 or 19 and I was scared to death. And also I was afraid that if I sang somewhere where they were selling booze, I would go to hell. I mean, that's that's where I was at that point in my life. And I heard Albert Grossman trying to convince my parents that I should come and sing at the Gate of Horn. And I heard one of them say, Oh, she'll never do it. She's too scared. So immediately I said, okay. And I did two or three weeks or something like that. I opened for Bob Gibson at the Gate of Horn.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Legendary place and the young Roger McGuinn was lurking around who was born and raised here. I can't can't imagine what that must have looked like. That also led to you performing at the inaugural Newport Folk Festival, right?

JOAN BAEZ: This is the first one. Up until it would have been Jazz Festival, just the jazz festival. And like the little club, where I sang Club 47 in Cambridge. It had been a jazz club for years. These two women ran it and then they saw the writing on the wall and they put start putting folk music in. And I was the first artist and I got paid $10 a night. I was a rich broad, you know, and then pretty soon it was two nights a week and the $15 a night and my family says I would come home with this money and I throw it up, we had a balcony. I'd hurl it over the balcony. I thought everybody would like that so much. And they all hated me for it. [Laughter]

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Your parents didn't think you would actually settle into this lifestyle or to this career, but what was their impression of you actually sort of starting to become a actual, like a working musician?

JOAN BAEZ: I have to give my father credit. He didn't like the whole folk music idea for me. Same as, you know, talk about your family. They want to make sure you're on the straight and narrow and gonna make money or get married or whatever is appropriate. But after he was the one who took me into Harvard Square, the way he had three daughters and his wife into Harvard Square, because he'd seen this phenomenon of folk clubs and they were filled with smoke and the Harvard students playing chess, and reading and, you know, being very academic and philosophical and cool. And I saw a young man playing, I think it was a guitar or some stringed instrument under this yellow light. And he was singing “Plaisir d'amour” and it was over for me. I mean, that's all I was interested in ever after that was being there, got myself a guitar copied everybody stole everything they ever did. And then my father, I think when I. My mother was my greatest fan. I mean, if I'd stayed in the crib and just played with beads for the rest of my life, she was to have the best bead player. But my dad realized that this was something real and he appreciated it.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Wow. It seems to me you've lived a relatively I know relatively like a very charmed life. And I was surprised to see the amount, of under the heading of Innocence early in the book, the amount of sort of angst that comes from your drawing of children.

JOAN BAEZ: You know, I was a Mexican down near the border in Southern California, which is where, you know, an image like like middle school would come from. So I was an outsider you know I was and our family moved all the time. So it was a new school. I was the outsider. There's a picture in there of a little girl at the door, a teacher saying, “Who wants to sit next to Juanita?” Well, nobody's going to want to sit next to Juanita. It was a terrible way to say it, you know. And so, I mean, I appear to myself and these drawings a lot, I didn't I didn't know that ahead of time because I don't know what's going to come out on that page when I start drawing. But I see me in a lot of it. And I was we were marginal, our family. I was my father was born in Mexico. And I look Mexican, my sisters didn't, so they didn't have as much trouble. But that's where that feeling marginal came from. Y’know Mama was pretty good. Kids trying to communicate with anybody and certainly with their parents and that division. And, you know, and a good parent, keeps trying to find a way to their kid, often by listening. But we're all such bad listeners. No, that's really what the kid wants. The little kid there is basically saying, Mom, you know, yoo hoo, I exist. I'm here, and mom's busy hanging out the laundry and she's not paying any attention at all. That is not my mom.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: I know you don't know exactly where these come from, but maybe we can start with the process of writing upside down which all of the drawings in the book come from drawing upside down? How did that start?

JOAN BAEZ: I'm thinking that it started, we were talking about me finding refuge. For myself. From whatever was bothering me, and whatever happened in the process, the culmination of that and really not, by being bored with school. I mean, I was afraid it was also just bored stiff. And so I started writing with my left hand, well that was interesting. And then I start drawing backwards. That was interesting. I wrote the entire Greek alphabet backwards, and, you know, now, memorized it backwards, because that gives you any idea of how important that math class was to me. That's how important it was to me. And then I look at it as a sort of a graduation when I moved into drawing, drawing upside down and putting the layers in the processes is not difficult. It's just confusing. If I'm sitting here and I'm drawing, you're seeing it right side up. I'm seeing it upside down, often I don't know what it's going to be at all. Just start making these lines around the page and then it begins to develop. And sometimes I think, Oh, I get it, that's the guy and that's dog. And then we'll do all up from there, and then I'll turn it back and look at it and see if there's something to fill in with. And / or a phrase will come to my mind. That's the magic of it that I, I might have even started with one idea, but when I turn it around, saying ah that's not what it's saying to me. It's saying something different. And then I turn it back and I write it upside down.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: When you add the phrase to the drawings at that point, are you are you analyzing where this might have come from within you? Or is it really then also just looking at it almost as if anyone could’ve drawn it? And seeing what it -

JOAN BAEZ: Oh that's nice. Yeah. You know, I just don't analyze period any of this stuff. I'm sure I analyze some things, but it would kind of my opinion probably ruin it a little if I knew exactly or, you know, the dynamics of. It was Stephen Colbert said, Oh, you stand on your head to do these drawings as it sort of digitally dangling off a jungle gym. Doing this, you find sort of slide down. Anyway, I got lost on that one. Where were we?

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Do you find yourself revising the, um, any of the writings that you put above it? Any of the -

JOAN BAEZ: Oh, good question. Once it's written down, I can't because it's in ink. Sometimes I think, oh, I should have said, you know, but it's written as if I can't change.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: I'm sure we can find a way for you to do that and preserve the integrity of the drawing.

JOAN BAEZ: But I draw right side up as well. You know, mostly little sketch little things that I drew when I was in junior high and high school and I drew my boyfriends and I drew James Dean and I charge $5 for the drawings. So if you go back way far, this is in the introduction to the book. But I would draw Bambi and Thumper from my little porcelain guys, you know, and then I would charge three pennies for each one in that little place where you put your pencil inside the wooden desk. Yeah I would have pennies in it. [Laughter]

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Is there any bearing in terms of the creativity that goes into your drawings, the wanting to sort of do it upside down, coming from like a real sort of subconscious place. Is that also the case with your music?

JOAN BAEZ: In the way that it came naturally and untrained, then it's very much the same. I mean following that guy I saw in the coffee shop. It was just my life. You know, I mean, I would fall asleep playing the guitar, the guitar is on my chest and I would wake up and go on playing it. You know, I didn't you didn't even move. It was just it was all I did. I was immersed. Then I get in the project, I was pretty much immersed in this project while we were working on it. You know, I didn't really think about much else. I have poetry from the early nineties that I wanted to put in a book finally and is shopping around for the right company and found one in the Godine Press that was dutifully doing the editing, we’re sending it back and forth, and I sent them a couple of upside down drawings. What do you think of these and they said how many of you got? About 150 so. So we went to work on that, but they were already done. You know, my father was a scientist, very academic, you know, professorial, and he couldn't figure this out. He said, But I don’t understand. And I said, you probably shouldn't try. What are you doing? And how does that work? And I go, I said Papa, just you know, try it, try it, take it one time. Do one of those places where you paint them, pottery. Do your own. He reluctantly came with I said, Come on, you do one of these. Oh, I don't know how. I said, You don't have to know how you get a nice big bowl like that. Got a bunch of colors. He was going like he said, Oh, I hate it. Oh, it's awful. This looks horrible. I said Pops it's wonderful. But he couldn't explain it. So it was that he was having a hard time with it.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Was was he sort of the odd person out in the family, it it feels I mean you and your sister clearly had an artistic sensibility. Seems like a -

JOAN BAEZ: Poor guy. Yeah. He had three daughters and a wife, he had no left brain, nothing, not even a little pea shape thing. And he I mean, Father’s were passionate about standing waves. And he would talk about all the time. We didn't know what he was talking about. And once your family went to one of his speeches and you thought you support him and you started talking about standing waves, he says, can anybody here tell me what a standing wave is? And my aunt got up, went like this. [Laughter] If that explains anything.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: To this day, do we know what standing waves are?

JOAN BAEZ: No, not really.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: You’re very self-deprecating. I can appreciate that about you. I was reading something about your documentary that you that that's been completed. And hopefully we would to watch soon. And in it, you see that the only great song you wrote, not in the documentary, but in this little piece about the documentary you tell the interviewer, the only great song ever wrote was Diamonds and Rust. It's a great song, but it's not true. I mean, it is a great song but it's not true. You know, I mean, it's David's Song. You didn't really write a song until 1969, 1970 but the two you wrote for, David's Song and - Galahad, thank you.

JOAN BAEZ: Yeah. You know what that only means that I think only one of my songs has a universality. It just catches in a different way. It's bigger than itself. No, I think I've written a lot of good songs. But I do think that one's head and shoulders above the ones under it. What do I know.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: And that has to do with how you perceive people interact with the song.

JOAN BAEZ: I guess probably you're right. Yeah.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Yeah. ‘Cause other songs I mean you’ve written so many gorgeous songs.

JOAN BAEZ: Thank you. They pick the right guy.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Hard questions are coming I’m just buttering you up ok. Your documentary, I’m just wondering about this period of your life post touring, you’ve wrapped up that part of your life, which was many decades long. Um.

JOAN BAEZ: You were barely a spark in your mother's eyes.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Neither my parents were born. [Laughter] Now she’s not gonna like me. Go back to buttering you up. This part of your life, though, post touring. Where has it left you with processing, both your life, the things that have happened. I mean, there's this book of drawings, you've alluded to there's a book of some poetry hopefully, that will be coming out at some point. And there's a documentary that you made with some friends that would be coming out that sounds incredibly personal.

JOAN BAEZ: It is. It is. And I I sort of figure out, I haven't got anything to lose. Really, seriously. And my family is all gone. And anybody who would have been hurt or confused or whatever. I didn't do that while they were alive. And it's very personal. And the women who directed it, one of them is a very close friend. And that's why it was possible because I just held my nose and took a deep dive and said, because I wouldn't have control, they would have control. So I had to have that faith. And the film was about the last tour. That's kind of the theme of it, the last tour. And then I cut them loose in my storage unit. I'd never been in the storage unit. I had storage units have things like old lamps, no? And this thing had a lifelong thing of tapes of stuff when I was 22, and I would speak and send it to my parents and place it in the letter and write letters. And here's me at 22 saying, Oh, mommy, I'm so excited, because tomorrow I get to meet Dr. Martin Luther King and we’ll sing at the so-and-so Baptist church. So here's this kid so we don't have me explaining what it’s like. We have, you know, voice of me then. Yeah. [Applause]

JUSTIN RICHMOND: There's also you've been open in the past about going to therapy, in the past you’ve recorded some of your therapy sessions and some of those tapes are in there.

JOAN BAEZ: Yeah, that was kind of scary. But I mean I didn’t see this stuff till it's done. That's what they do, they say, Oh we'll let you see towards the end. So two days before it's towards the end, you look at it and they say, Ahhh! and there's nothing I can do. So it was really just faith.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: You didn't sift through any of that with them?

JOAN BAEZ: Uh uh. You mean filming it? I filmed some of these -

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Well as they were, as they were going through your storage and discovering the stuff you didn’t sift through it.

JOAN BAEZ: No, no, uh uh.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Have you said since since it was screened for you, have you.

JOAN BAEZ: Had any second thoughts?

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Yes.

JOAN BAEZ: There it gets too late. Well, the film starts by saying we all have three lives. It's the public, the personal and the secret. So the film covers all of that. Now. I mean, really, there's stuff I never talked about in my whole life. And the therapy, I mean, just for anybody's information, I was in therapy for literally for decades. When I was younger, is when it started. And I knew that I mean, I knew that I was getting help was helping me through these things and phobias and that. But and I knew something in there hadn't been dealt with yet. And I you know, I really knew that on into my into the years and the years. And then one day I thought, okay, it's time to deal with this. And. And we did, found the right therapist and did that dive. And so and we're very open about that in the film. I think it's useful to people, even permission to, you know, to admit to your own traumas and issues and that you go to therapy and all that stuff may sound corny, but it's people appreciate it.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: When did you first meet Dr. King?

JOAN BAEZ: You know, I don't remember the first actual meeting. I remember when when I saw him, which was a life changing event, and I was at a gathering of high school students put on by the American Friends Service Committee. And they were from all over the country. And we were discuss politics and nonviolence and that and each year they would do this and they'd have a speaker in the year I went. So I was 16. It was Dr. King. And he was talking about, I can’t even say it. I’m getting teary. He was talking about the bus boycott. And I started to cry and I couldn't stop because he was doing what we've been talking about and studying. And there was this guy was 29 or something. 26. If I was 16 he was 26. And he was just he was doing. And engaged with people and taking the risks. The risk is always to me. It's the point at which there will be no social change worth talking about until some people are willing to take a risk. [Applause] That's easier said than done, you know. But that's when I mean, they were taking the risk. Every single one of those folk, you know, including Dr. King.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Did your activism feel separate from your music or did your music compel your activism?

JOAN BAEZ: Both. When I was 13, I had a ukulele and I started to play and what I remember learning was that ukulele playing was a lot of different songs, a lot of rhythm and blues, because that's what I loved. And they had only four chords max and then I learned Emmett Till. And I realized that that how and how connected I was to that, I mean my parents were Quakers. So that's pacifism, nonviolence, um, activism. Um, and so to me, this, the dots began to connect. And then when I was 15, it was I stayed in school during when you’re supposed to duck and cover the Russians are going to send a missile over - well it’s not so out of the question now. It was going to blow up my high school. I thought, This is so dumb, you know, And the kids are. Do it and we're going to go home and the siren goes off. We're going to run home where they're going to have bomb parties and there's a swimming pool. That's all I'm going to stay in school to re, to know, just resist it. And and so I did. And that was purely political. I didn’t know music, you know, involved with it at that moment. So that age, it was I was really waking up to to activism.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: If you hadn't discovered folk music, if it wasn't for the Pete Seeger's and these types of folk. Creating almost I guess a revival, bringing back this old form of music. Do you think you would have found yourself being a musician?

JOAN BAEZ: I think it was folk because some people say, oh why don't you do opera I loved opera.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: You could.

JOAN BAEZ: Yeah, but I wasn't.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Your voice would be -

JOAB BAEZ: I like this guy. Yeah. It just fit like a glove. You know singing and playing and then wearing the two hats at the same time is where I really come alive. So I realized that not so far along the way. Yeah.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Your parents are Quakers. And then you're seeing Dr. King who, you know, essentially was schooled in nonviolent nonviolent activism from Bayard Rustin who was a Quaker. So of course, that must have really really resonated.

JOAN BAEZ: Yeah. It all resonated. Bayard was an extraordinary man. You know? Behind the scenes, because he was so sensitive. They didn't want his homosexuality to ruin anything in the public perception of the movement. And the guy was just a massive force behind Dr. King and behind all of us.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Really I don't think any of that would have happened. How was it toggling between the glamor, you could say, of music and - might have been glamorous and you sort of, you're in two worlds. You're dealing with luminaries and music you're dealing with luminaries in sort of public life and. How did you how would you toggle between those two thing?

JOAN BAEZ: You know, I kind of didn't. My battle was with not wanting to be commercial, you know, and I thought that was, well, we're going back to I'd go to hell, you know, if I sang in a place that had booze in it, that going, you know, becoming commercial was a really, really bad thing for me. And I don't know where I drew that line, but I mean, for instance, the stage had to be black with nothing on it. No flowers, no flags, no. And I thought, well, this is really simple for people. They said I was impossible because they’d set up these great sets on TV and I’d say strike everything, you know here. You know, I'm this perfectly folk, whatever and really afraid to veer from that, that I was doing something really bad.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Almost like going to like almost like the way a gospel artist might have thought or like a Ray Charles might have thought about, you know, secular music versus gospel.

JOAN BAEZ: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's very similar.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: That level of, dedication to a higher cause.

JOAN BAEZ: And a level of silliness. I mean, you know, I didn't know that at the time, but I was I overdid it at every turn, you know, I remember one time I decided no more limousines for me. This is not right it's not everybody does. They have normal cars. So I stuck with that for about two weeks. And then somebody picked me up this battered old Volkswagen bus. And it was so uncomfortable I thought, Oh, screw it, you know, bring on the limousines and the red carpet. [Laughter and applause]

JUSTIN RICHMOND: You know, yesterday, I landed, found out Tina Turner passed away. And I was just curious, like when or how or if you guys have crossed paths.

JOAN BAEZ: My great Tina stories. When my career was tanking, she was just coming back up for her second round, you know, as a lioness. And she. Yeah. And so I met her in Germany. And they were celebrating her and her success. Somebody asked her how she felt about all this. She said, "I'm just so happy to be rid of Ikey. I don't care about the rest." And then she was really sweet with me. She realized that I was in a pickle, you know, And she came over, I said, "What should I do?" She said, "Girlfriend, get a wig!" [Laughter] “First of all, y’all need a wig!” "Good, is that all I need?" And then we were on the same TV show together. And I saw her performance. She performed Steel Claw, you ever hear that song? It is as ferocious and evil and she's perfect for it. And she came off the stage and I said, "Tina, your mother mated with a scorpion." And I meant it as a compliment. And she took it as a compliment.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: That is the most accurate description of a Tina Turner performance that I've ever heard.

JOAN BAEZ: This was years later, when she was, she and I were on tour in different parts of Germany. And I had one night at the Olympia and she had two weeks booked there to rehearse. [Laughter] I said, “Oh, boy, I got a long way to go!”

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Also yesterday Bill Lee passed. Who understandably, Tina Turner's is incredible because there's everything but Bill Lee, really integral it seemed to to the early folk scene folk scene that you guys are part of this was Spike Lee's father.

JOAN BAEZ: He was the bass player. And the first time or second time I don't remember. I went to Newport. Odetta and her husband Danny was that his name? They drove me and he was Billy was her bass player. So I was in good hands. Yeah.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: He was such a great bass player. Toggled between jazzy and folk kind of seamlessly. Beautiful. But being able to go between back to my original point, you're hanging out with Tina Turner. You're hanging with Bayard Rustin and Dr. King. Um, actually, I shouldn't say hanging. I should say they do, you're working. Your career might have suffered to some degree, not suffered but I imagine, if you'd taken the advice of Albert Grossman and signed to Columbia.

JOAN BAEZ: Yeah, they were so sure. I mean, the Grossmans and the people at Columbia were so sure that I would go with Columbia because I that Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary and Janis Joplin and were just collecting them like that. So that was the place to go. And because of all these things about going to hell and going commercial, I chose Vanguard, record company, which is basically a classical music record company. And it was perf - I was with them for a long time. Very. You know, I had a real sense about the folk music, did a lot of choosing songs with me and really got into it in the way that I know Columbia would not have done or I think they would not have done.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: We should pull up image one, because this also gets at the sort of intersection you are at. You wrote this beautiful “Dayo, Day -”. Harry Belafonte, “daylight come, and we want to go home.” Harry -

JOAN BAEZ: I sent that to his wife.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Did you?

JOAN BAEZ: Yeah. She was so happy.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Did you get a response? He saw it?

JOAN BAEZ: Oh, yeah. Well no, he didn't. It was just after he died.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Just after he passed, yeah.

JOAN BAEZ: And we saw him a couple times, in his mid-nineties. He was just. When my son was with me and another friend. And when we left talking with Harry, my son burst into tears. He said, “I feel like I've been in the presence of a fucking prophet.” And I said, "Well that's because you have been" you know and this is slightly divorced now, but ok so I'm drawing that. There's this girl I see she's got a flower pot. I thought it was a flower pot or the basket with the flowers coming out. And so I turn it around and it's either palm trees sticking out and so ok turn it back. Now, I know they're palm trees. I'll stick something in there an elf, kind of dancing, turn it back over, and he's kicking her in the side. And so she sings "dayo dayo." And that's from the palm trees, right? And that's just my sidekick. And that's what came out.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: So whimsical. I love it. What was was Harry's calypso music, was that at all in your.

JOAN BAEZ: My God, it was.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Part of your spirit of influences?

JOAN BAEZ: Absolutely. I had not even heard Odetta - I hadn't heard anybody, really. It was rhythm and blues. And my mom brought home this album, Harry Belafonte, and we just stared at it. Nobody should look like that. He was so handsome. I don't know if we played it for the first two - we just stared at it. [Laughter] Remember my father being a little unnerved by that. And that. Yeah. And then I played it the night the first. It was kind of I don't think it, don't know if it got printed or not, but the first album I did, one half of the songs were Belafonte's songs. And I think, yeah, I took 'em right directly off that album.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Wow. How was he thought of in the folk scene? I mean, he was taking old songs and, you know.

JOAN BAEZ: Yeah in the early snooty folk days he was off limits because he was, you know, banging on drums and having a good time.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Little too rhythmic.

JOAN BAEZ: Which you weren't supposed to do, you know. And then, you know, and I didn't know. Of course, none of us knew at that point that he was going to end up being political activist and working with Dr. King. But what a lovely way to to arrive, you know?

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Yeah. You must have spent a lot of time within that capacity. I’d imagine.

JOAN BAEZ: Yeah. And he was. Oh, I don't know. All the good ones are self-deprecating, you know? Really, really, really gifted. What can I say?

JUSTIN RICHMOND: I want to take that note. Move through life like that. Speaking of the early snooty folk days. I came to folk music relatively late and I came through the Kingston Trio. Who I love. And I was dismayed to find out that was not cool. You did?

JOAN BAEZ: I had to hide them at the back of the record collection.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Really?

JOAN BAEZ: Yeah. Because you're not something. They're way too commercial.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: You had Kingston Trio??

JOAN BAEZ: I loved them. Yeah, but I couldn't let anybody know what my snooty folks think no ma'am.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: I feel vindicated. I love them.

JOAN BAEZ: I feel vindicated.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Great. Did you ever feel. In the industry in those days. A lot of women in the industry I've spoken to still, and I know they feel like they're pitted against one another. Almost like for a while there would be like one Black comedian. Now it's like give you one like woman rapper, you know, did that pressure to compete against women exist then?

JOAN BAEZ: I didn't think I need to compete against - there was no competition in my and my, you know, weird little brain because I was so insecure in so many ways, but not about this voice, which also is a gift. And I can claim it as a gift. [Applause]

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Can we hear some of that voice?

JOAN BAEZ: [Singing] Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around. [The audience joins in] Turn me around. Turn me around. Ain't gonna let nobody. Turn me around. Keep on walking. Keep on talking. Marching up to freedom land. [Cheering and applause]

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Amazing. Can't follow that. We should follow that with Q&A so you guys could try to follow that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 1: Hi, Joan. Thank you so much for joining us. This is so cool. My question is, what do you do when you don't know what to do next?

JOAN BAEZ: Well, one of the things I do is I talk to this tree. There's a mighty oak tree in a field across from the house, and I don't see therapists anymore. But I will go and talk to this tree and I will get an answer. And I either go to the tree and say, Listen, can you help me understand this problem so I'll feel better? And sometimes I just say, I want to feel better. I don't care what the problem is. I don't want I just wanna feel better. And if what do I do next? That's where I would go would be that tree. But generally, I don't have to ask the question.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: Good evening Miss Baez. I'm curious how you've influenced the next generation of folk singers, like Mary Chapin Carpenter, the Indigo Girls, or Dar Williams. Like people of my generation that I adore but I feel like you inspired them and I wonder how they inspired you, with their talent.

JOAN BAEZ: Wonderful question. My manager was clever enough to plan it so that I had these women, mostly women, some men, open for me, and then I would share music with them. And I always consider that being a mentor doesn't mean that much unless your mentoree is, you know, you're listening to that person and getting something back. And they I mean, we kidded around Indigo's call me the matriarch and I call them the whippersnappers, you know? [Laughter]

AUDIENCE MEMBER 3: Hello. I listened to Diamonds and Rust many times, and every time I listen to it I say, "If that's not Dylan you're talking about..." I - I - But then in your book, you say no. When Dylan called you. You denied it.

JOAN BAEZ: First of all, he would never call and say anything about that song. So. [Laughter and applause] But I was joking with him because at the beginning of Rolling Thunder and he hadn't paid any attention, had no Hello, no whatever, came directly over and said, "Hey you didn't do that one about the guy with the blue eyes?" I said, "Oh, you mean my husband?" And he was not a happy camper. That's the story though. [Applause]

AUDIENCE MEMBER 4: What type of activism are you involved in today?

JOAN BAEZ: Well, first of all, I wrote the book. I mean, I'm thinking about that's probably more political than a number of things that I could have done. And if something comes along that I really think is appropriate for me to be out there with then I'm sure I'll be out there. And I you know, I would suggest to other people that they go make good trouble because it makes their lives, you know, really worth something, I believe.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: I would like to ask you a question. I'm right here. I'm your sound engineer.

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Oh. [Laughter]

AUDIENCE MEMBER 5: I'm originally from Argentina, and I would like to ask you about if you see any differences or similarities in the activism in South America and in America.

JOAN BAEZ: I think I don't know how to answer that question, except that I think that some places you pay a heavier toll. You know. It's okay for me to sit here and talk about taking a risk and if you're a country like Afghanistan. No. Or the Ukraine. Taking a risk is a very different thing. And so in Latin America, it's somewhere in between. No? But the bravery it takes anywhere to make that final, you know, I'm just going to do this. I just have to do this. I mean, here it might be, okay. I'm gonna go in the library to pick up a banned book, and I'm going to read it out on the street corner, I’m gonna set up a microphone and. And where gays are not supposed to get married. You organize, you know, a huge wedding of as many people as you can get. Those are forms of nonviolent civil disobedience which which are invaluable and scary. And we got to do it anyhow. [Applause]

AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: Hi, I was raised on a steady diet of Joan Baez by my mom so thank you, I wish she could be here right now. I wanted to ask you, I was thinking, as you were talking about your experiences with within the civil rights movement. I read an essay, or maybe it was an article by Joan Didion where she talked about visiting you. I wonder if it was maybe like the early seventies or late sixties, and I'm blanking on. You had created an institute.

JOAN BAEZ: Institute for the Study of Nonviolence.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 6: Yeah. Can you speak a little bit to that time and what was going on and what came of that, that experience.

JOAN BAEZ: Yeah, we were talking about the other day with some of my friends and that we're feeling that that's what we need right now is a place to start learning and start folding that in with activism. And back then it was me getting together with who was actually my mentor, Ira Sandperl, and realizing because I learned so much from him, I said, Wouldn't we learn more if we had a group of people engaged in this? And so we created the institute and. We meditated. For a lot of people, that's what they remember most. They come and say, I went to your institute, and meditation changed my life. And then we would study Gandhi, read Aldous Huxley. And it was it was exactly the right thing there, the right time. And then when that ended for different reasons. Friends of mine and myself created Humanitas, which was an organization which was trying to connect nonviolence with human rights. And they connected a lot. And at the moment, there's a place called the Resource Center for Nonviolence, which is what took over the institute and goes on goes on teaching. There's. In my mind. There's a picture of Justin Jones' book. I was so amazed. How old is he? He's written a book called The People's Plaza. It's about civil disobedience that went on for, what, six weeks or something? And that guy surprises me. He surprised me. You know, sometimes I feel as though that is the place that something could start, partly because they are so young, the Justins. Yeah the Justins.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 7: My question was, is our country doomed? And -

JOAN BAEZ: Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 7: And someone who has lived through the civil rights movement, what words of encouragement do you have for somebody like me who's really disheartened with the state of affairs in our country today?

JOAN BAEZ: Well, your question is an oxymoron. Do I have any hope? Not particularly. But the other day somebody said hope is a discipline. You know, I think that's because I don't consider myself very hopeful person. I've managed to to shift over from being a total pessimist to to somebody considering hope, but it would be a practice and they even have to practice it because this is not a hopeful world. This is not a hopeful country. This is this is heading towards and parts of it already are a fascist country. So what do we do? Actually, I made a list that we're sharing with Justin. These people say, what do I do? And I've always given this dumb stare, but now I've made a list of which I will post on my Instagram and / or Facebook page, which with suggestions I mean, from from gun violence to the Ukraine to women's rights to there’re all these things somebody could get on different levels. You can donate, you can support or. You can. At some point take a risk. You know, all are valuable. [Applause]

AUDIENCE MEMBER 8: What advice would you give to new singer songwriters?

JOAN BAEZ: I wish I had something brilliant to say except, bravo. And go make good trouble. [Applause]

JUSTIN RICHMOND: Thank you so much. [Applause]

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ALISA ROSENTHAL: That was Joan Baez with Justin Richmond at the Old Town School of Folk Music in spring 2023. I’ve packed the show notes with links to the many important musicians and political figures she mentioned – I mean it is full on annotated for y’all – as well as a link to check out her book Am I Pretty When I Fly? and some of the activism resources she mentioned, so be sure to stop by chicagohumanities.org and hover your cursor over the Explore tab at the top for more info on the podcast and all that good stuff mentioned above. Thank you so much for a wonderful first season! Chicago Humanities Tapes is produced and hosted by me, Alisa Rosenthal, with help from the great team over at Chicago Humanities who are programming these live events and just making them sound *chef’s kiss* so good. For more than 30 years, Chicago Humanities has created experiences through culture, creativity, and connection. Check out chicagohumanities.org for more information on becoming a member so you’ll be the first to know about upcoming events and other insider perks. But in the meantime, stay human.

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