Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Joan Baez (Broken Record Live)

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Joan Baez (Broken Record Live) · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Of all the groundbreaking musicians to come out of the sixties,
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: few were as engaged socially and politically as Joan Biaz.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: A lifelong proponent of nonviolent activism, Joan marched with doctor
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Martin Luther King Junior and has continued to advocate for
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: nonviolent civil disobedience ever since. With the release of her
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: debut album in nineteen sixty, Joan Bayez became the pre
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: eminent female folkye. With just her exquisite soprano and her guitar,
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: she reworked classic American folk songs and eventually wrote songs
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: that helped fuel her activism. By the time she helped
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: launch Bob Dylan's career by inviting him on stage with
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: her in the early sixties, Joan was already an international sensation.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: In twenty nineteen, after a career that spanned nearly six decades,
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Joan announced she was no longer performing live. In recent years,
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: she's turned her creative attention to visual art. Her new
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: book of drawings, titled Am I Pretty When I Fly,
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: features sketches rooted in humor, freedom, and sorrow, but in
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: classic Joan by A style of course. Her drawings defy convention,
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: they were all drawn upside down. On today's episode, you'll
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: hear a live conversation I had with Joan Baez at
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: the Chicago Humanities Festival in May. Joan spoke about the
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: emotional catharsis she finds in drawing. She also talked about
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: juggling music and activism as a young artist, and what
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: happened when she handed over access to her personal storage
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: unit to a group of documentary filmmakers. Also, despite giving
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: up live performance, she took a moment to serenade the
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: crowd all with her beautiful, beloved voice. This is broken
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Ritchman.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Here's my conversation with the great Joan Bias. Thank you
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: so much for making this wonderful book of your drawings.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: They're amazing and I can't wait to get into a
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: lot of them.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: But before we get into that, it's amazing.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: We're both from California, we both flew here to Chicago
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: to do this, and it feels very apt because in
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: a lot of ways, this.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Is kind of where you started it in show business.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Right was certainly this atmosphere of folk folk music, folk folks,
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: and that was mine was mainly in Cambridge, and people
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: associate me with the village, but I was only there
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: a couple of times. It was mainly Cambridge and the
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: folks scene there, Yeah.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Well, which is where you would have gotten into music.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: But then the Gate of Horn here in Chicago really
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: feels like Albert Grossman's club.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: Oh my god. That was a big deal for me
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: because I was eighteen or nineteen and I was scared
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: to death, and also I was afraid that if I
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: sang somewhere where they were still booze, I would go
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: to hell. I mean literally, that's where I was at
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: that point in my life. And I heard Albert grosswim
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: trying to convince my parents that I should come and
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: sing at the Gate of Horn, and I heard one
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: of them say, oh, she'll never do it, she's too scared.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: So immediately I said, Okay, I'm going yeah, and I did.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: In two or three weeks or something like that. I
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: opened for Bob Gibson at the Gate of.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Horn, legendary place, and a young Roger McGuinn was lurking around,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: and who was born and raised here, and I can't
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: imagine what that must.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Have looked like.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: That also led to you performing at the inaugural Newport
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Folk Festival, right, isn't it is the.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: First one up until then it had been jazz festival,
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: just a jazz festival. And like the little club where
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: I sang, Club forty seven in Cambridge, it had been
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: a jazz club for years. These two women ran it
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: and then they saw the writing on the wall and
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: start putting folk music in. And I was the first artist,
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: and I got paid ten dollars a night. I was
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: rich broad.
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: And then and then pretty soon it was two nights
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: a week and fifteen dollars a night. And my family says,
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: I would come home with this money and I'd throw
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: it over. We had a balcony and I'd hurl it
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: over the balcony. I thought everybody would like that so much,
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: and they all hated me for it.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: You must what was your parents?
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Your parents didn't think you would actually settle into this
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: lifestyle or to this career as a but what was
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: the impression of you actually sort of starting to become actual,
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: like a working musician.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: I have to give my father credit. He didn't like
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: the whole folk music idea for me, say ass, you know,
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: talk about your family. They want to make sure you're
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: on a straight and arrow and going to make money
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: or get married or whatever's appropriate. But after he was
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: the one who took me into Harvard Square. I took
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: the way he had three daughters and his wife into
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: Harvard Square because he'd seen this phenomenon of folk clubs.
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: And they were filled with smoke and Harvard students playing
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: chess and reading and you know, being very academic and
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: philosophical and cool. And I saw a young man playing
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: I think it was guitar or some string instrument under
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: his yellow light, and he was singing Pleasure No More.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: And it was over for me. I mean, that's all
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: I was interested in ever after. That was being there,
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: got myself a guitar, copied everybody, stole everything they ever did.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: And my mother was my greatest fan. I mean, if
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: I'd stayed in the crib and just played with beads
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: the rest of my life, she was to have the
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: best bead player you ever. But my dad realized that
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: this was something real and he appreciated it.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: I was surprised going through the book because it seems
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: to me, you've lived a relatively I should not even
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: relatively like a very charmed life. And I was surprised
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: to see the amount of under the heading of innocence,
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: and early in the book, the amount of sort of
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: angst that comes from the your drawing of children.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: You know, I was a Mexican down near the border
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: in southern California, which is where you know an image
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: like middle school who had come from, and so I
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: wasn't an outsider and I was those and our family
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: moved all the time, so it was a new school.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: I was the outsider. There's a picture in there of
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: a little girl at the door of teacher saying, who
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: wants to sit next to Waneda? Well, nobody's going to
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: want to sit next to one Eita. It was a
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: terrible way to say it. And so I mean, I
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: appear to myself in these drawings a lot. I didn't
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: know that ahead of time, because I don't know what's
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: going to come out on that page when I started drawing.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: But I see me in a lot of it, and
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: there was we were marginal our family I was. My
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: father was born in Mexico, and I look Mexican didn't
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: so they didn't have as much trouble. But that's where
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: that feeling marginal came from.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: It appears you're.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: The way you think about children, maybe more largely, if
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: not just your own childhood, is that there's this interaction
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: with adults, that is, there's a tense interaction if anything.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know what to say about that. Kids
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: trying to communicate with anybody, uncertainly with their parents and
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: that division. And you know when a good parent keeps
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: trying to find a way to their kid, often by listening.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: But we're it's all such bad listeners, you know, that's
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: really what the kid wants. And the little kid there
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: is basically saying, Mom, you know who I exist. I'm
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: here and mom's busy hanging out the launrday and she's
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: not paying any attention and all, No, that is not
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: my mom.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: Where do these I know you don't know exactly where
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: these come from, but maybe we can start with all
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: of the drawings in the book come from drawing upside down.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: How did that start?
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking that it started we were talking about me
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: finding refuge for myself from whatever was bothering me, and
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: whatever happened in the process of a combination of that
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: and really not being bored with school. I mean I
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: was afraid of but I was also just board stiff,
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: and so I started writing with my left hand. Well,
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: that was interesting, And then I started drawing backwards. That
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: was interesting. I wrote the entire Greek alphabet backwards, and
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: you know now memorized it backwords. If that gives you
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: any idea of how important that math close was to me,
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: that's how important it was to me. And then I
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: just look at it as a sort of a graduation
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: when I moved into drawing, Drawing upside down and putting
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: the labels and the processes is not difficult. It's just confusing.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: If I'm sitting here and I'm drawing, you're seeing it
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: right side up. I'm seeing it upside down. Often I
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: don't know what it's going to be at all. Just
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: start making these lines around the page, and then it
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: begins to develop. And sometimes I think, oh, I get it.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: That's the guy and that's the dog. And then we'll
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: develop from there, and then I'll turn it back, I
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: look at it and see if there's something to fill
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: in with, and or a phrase will come to my mind.
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: That's the magic of it that I might have even
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: started with one idea, but when I turn it around, saying, oh,
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: that's not what it's saying to me, It's saying something different.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: And then I turn it back and I write it
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: upside down right.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: When you add the phrase to the drawings.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: At that point, are you are you analyzing where this
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: might have come from within you? Or is it really
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: then also just looking at it almost as if anyone
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: could have drawn it and seeing.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: What that's nice? Yeah, you know, I just don't analyze
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: period any of this stuff. I'm sure I analyze some things,
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: but it would kind of, my opinion, probably ruin it
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: a little if I knew exactly, you know, the dynamics
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: of Stephen Colbert said, Oh, do you stand on your
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: head to do these drawings? I said, sort of, picture
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: me dangling off a jungle gym during the drawing stufside down.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Do you find yourself revising any of the writings that
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: you put above it, any.
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: Of the Oh good question. Once it's written down, I
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: can't because it's an ink. Sometimes I look at it
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: and I think, oh, it should have said you know,
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: but it's written, so I can't change it.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Sure, we could find a way for you to do
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: that and preserve the integrity of the drawing, but that
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: would be less fun. I guess when do you find
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: yourself drawing upside down versus right side up? Is there
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: a reason that you drop side down?
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Like, is it when you feel stuck or no?
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: No, it's just fun. But I draw right side up
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: as well, you know, mostly those sketch little things. And
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: then I drew when I was in junior high in
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: high school, and I drew my boyfriends, and I drew
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: James Dean, and I charged five dollars for the drawings.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: But if you go back way far, and this is
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: in the introduction to the book, but I would draw
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: Bambi and Thumper from my little porcelain guys, you know.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: And then I I charged three pennies for each one.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: And that little place where you put your pencil inside
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: the wooden desk and I would have pennies in it.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: That's amazing in terms of the creativity that goes into
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: your drawings or the way you approach it, the sort
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: of non analyzing, the wanting to sort of do it
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: upside down to ensure that it's coming from like a
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: real sort of subconscious place. Was that also the case
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: with your music.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: In the way that it came naturally and untrained. Then
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: it's very much the same. I mean, following that guy
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: I saw in the coffee shop. It was just my life,
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: you know. I mean I would fall asleep playing the
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: guitar and the guitars on my chest, and I would
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: wake up and I'd go on playing. You know, I
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: didn't even didn't even move. It was just it was
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: all I did. I was immersed. Then I get in
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: the project, and I was pretty much immersed in this
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: project while we were working on it. You know, I
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: didn't really think about much else. I just wanted to
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: put these drawings in the right place and categorize them
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: and put them in a book.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: The drawings that are in the book, when did these happen?
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Are these older drawings newer?
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: They went from maybe ten or twelve years ago up
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: until now. And that's how come I'd find they made
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: little bunches around the house. And I have found more
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: since the book. You know, if I was little stash
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: with a rubber band about, I think, oh goodie. You
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: know some other insanity, and it is.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Do you find Catharsis in the emotion of the drawings,
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: or do you find emotion I guess in.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: The Yeah, you know, sometimes I've cried the ones of
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: the animals, you know, and that old horse is being
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: pushed along and the guy is saying, you know, come on,
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: life is long, but you're you know, he's empathetic with
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: the horse, and the horse looks tired, and for me,
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: it brings up, you know, every awful movie that's had
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: horses hurt in it. So I get very moved by
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: this stuff. But I can't pretend that it's myself who
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: invented it. It's coming from somewhere else. So I can
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: say that this is how it made me feel or
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: you know, happy or sad or deep?
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: Or do you cry often? Would you say? Just in life?
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Are you a crier?
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: Oh? Not particularly? I probably was when I was younger.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so there is something about the quiet moments of
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: turning a piece of paper upside down.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: And doesn't everybody, no, you know, my fon other scientists,
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: very academic, you know, professorial, and he couldn't figure this out.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: He said, but I don't understand, And I said, you
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: probably shouldn't try. He said, but what are you doing?
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: And how does that work? You know, I said, Papa,
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: just you know, try it, try it. I took him
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: one time to one of those places where you paint
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: them pottery, do your own. He reluctantly came with me.
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: I said, come on, you do one of these. Oh
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: I don't know how. I said, you don't have to
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: know how. You got a nice, big bull like that,
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: got a bunch of colors, and he was going like,
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: he said, oh, I hate it. Oh it's awful. This
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: looks horrible. I said, Papa's is wonderful. But he couldn't
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: explain it. So it was he was having hard time
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: with it.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Was he sort of the odd person out in the family,
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: it feels, I mean, you and your sister clearly had
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: an artistic sensibility.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Seems like your mother.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: Guy, Yeah, I mean he has three daughters and a
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: wife who had no left nothing there, nothing, not even
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: a little p shape thing. And he my father's passionate
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: about standing waves, and he would talk about all the time.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: We didn't know what he was talking about. And a
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: bunch of family went to one of his speeches and
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: he thought, you know, support him, and he started talking
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: about standing waves and he says, can anybody here tell
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: me what a standing wave is? And my aunt got
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: up and went like this, if that explains anything.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: To this day, do we know what standing waves are?
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: Not? Really?
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: I guess I'll look that one up. I would love
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: to go to the image. I think it's Image five.
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: She's pregnant and he is not the dad who got
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: her pregnant. He's trying to say, you don't worry, honey,
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: I understand, let me tell your mom, which might mean
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: we're not going to say anything and I'll protect you
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: from that, or it means let me break that to
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: your mom. I think that's what that's about. And it's
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: just very, very emotional.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: These works are are highly emotional.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: I've been you can call them works. I love that
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: sounds so official, isn't it.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Piece you are, You're Joan Bias. Your life is in
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: your existence.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: And it wasn't this stuff though it was your work.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: I love that you know these I mean, you're you're
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: very self deprecating, and I can appreciate that about you.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: I was reading something about your documentary and in it
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: you say that the only great song you wrote not
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: in the documentary, but in this little piece about the documentary,
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: you tell the interviewer the only great song you ever
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: wrote was Diamonds and Rust, which it's a great.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Song, but that's not true.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: It's not true.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is a great song, but it's not true,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean thank you David's song.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, you know. That only means that I
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: think only one of my songs has a universality that
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: it's it just catches in a different way and it's
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: bigger than itself. No, I think I've written a lot
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: of good songs, but I do think that one's head
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: and shoulders. Suppose the one's under it? What do I know?
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: And that has to do with how you perceive people
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: interact with the song.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: I guess probably you're right.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's other songs. I mean, you've written so
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: many gorgeous songs.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: I really I almost wish you had written more gorgeous songs,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: or more songs in general that would then be gorgeous.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: You know, they picked the right guy.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Hard questions are coming, it's just bettering. Yeah, okay, but
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: your documentary. I'm just wondering about this period of your
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: life post touring. You've wrapped up that part of your life,
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: which was many decades long.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: You were barely a spark in your mother's eyes.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Neither my parents were born life. Now she's not gonna
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: like me go back to butter in you this part
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: of your life though, post touring, where has it left
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: you with? Processing both your life the things that have happened.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: And there's a documentary that you made with some friends
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: that would be coming out that sounds incredibly personal.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: It is it is, and I sort of figure out
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: I haven't got anything to lose, really seriously, and my
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: family is all gone. Anybody who could have been hurt
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: or confused or whatever. I didn't do that while they
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: were alive. And it's very personal. And the women who
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: directed it, one of them is a very close friend.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: And that's why it was possible, because I just held
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: my nose and took a deep dive and said, because
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't have control, they would have control. So I
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: had to have that faith. And the film was about
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: the last tour. That's kind of the theme of it,
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: the last tour. And then I cut them loose in
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: my storage unit. I'd never been in the storage unit.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: I thought storage units has things like old lamps, you know,
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: And this thing had a lifelong thing of tapes of stuff.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: When I was twenty two, and I would speak and
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: send it to my parents in place of a letter
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: and write letters. And here's me at twenty two saying, Oh, Mummy,
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: I'm so excited because tomorrow I get to meet doctor
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: Martin Luther King and we'll sing it this so and
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: so Baptist. So here's these kids. So we don't have
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: me explaining what it was like, we have you know,
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: voice of me. Then.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's also you've been open in the past about
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: going to therapy, but included I've not seen it, but
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: as I understand included, there's also you've recorded in the past.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: You've recorded some of your therapy sessions, and some of
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: those tapes are in there.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, those are kind of scary, But I mean I
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: didn't see this stuff till it's done. That's what they do.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: They say, oh, we'll let you see towards the end.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: So two days before it's towards the end, you're looking
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: to say, ah, and there's nothing I can do. So
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: it was really just faith.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: You didn't sift through any of that with them. Have
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: you since since it was screened for you, have you.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: Had any second thoughts?
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Yes?
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: There, yes, too late. There are a couple of things.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: I thought, Oh, oh, I wish they hadn't put that in,
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: but you know, I can see that it adds to
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: the quality of the film.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: We'll be back with more of my conversation with Joan
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Biez in just a sec. We're back with my conversation
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: with Joan Biaz. You mentioned Doctor King earlier. When did
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: you first meet Doctor King?
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: You know, I don't remember the first actual meeting. I
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: remember when I saw him, which was a life changing event.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: And I was a gathering of high school students put
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: on by the American Friends Service Committee, and they were
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: from all over the country and we were discussed politics
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: and nonviolence and that, and each year they would do
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: this and they'd have a speaker in the year I went,
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: so I was sixteen. It was doctor King and he
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: was talking about I can't even say it, I'm getting tire.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: He was talking about the bus boycott and I started
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: to cry and I couldn't stop because he was doing
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: what we've been talking about and studying. And there was
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: this guy I was twenty nine or something, twenty six.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: If I was sixteen, was twenty six, and he was
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: just doing and engaged and with people and taking the risks.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: The risk is always to me, it's the point at
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: which there will be no social change worth talking about
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: until some people are willing to take a risk. That's
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: easier said than done, you know, But that's when I
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: mean they were taking the risk, every single one of
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: those folk, you know, including doctor King.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: As you move on into your career, I mean, obviously
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: I've always wondered did your activism feel separate from your
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: music or did your music compel your activism both.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: When I was thirteen, I had an ukulele and I
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: started play and not what I remember learning, but that
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: ukulele was a lot of different songs, lot of rhythm
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: and blues because that's what I loved, and they had
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: only four chords max. And then I learned emmat till
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: and I realized that how connected I was to that.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: I mean, parents are Quakers, so that's pacifism, nonviolence activism,
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: and so I to me this, you know, the dots
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: began to connect. And then when I was fifteen, I
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: stayed in school during you're supposed to duck and cover
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: and the Russians are going to send a missile over
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: was not so out of the question. Now it was
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: going to blow up my high school. I thought, this
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: is so dumb, you know, and the kids are doing
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: and they're going to go home and the siren goes off.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: They're going to run home or they're going to have
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: bomb parties and there's swimming pools, and I thought, I'm
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: going to stay in school to to you know, just
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: resist it. And so I did. And that was purely political.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: That had no music, you know, involved with it at
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: that moment. So that age was I was really waking
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: up to activism.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: This is why doctor King phellis that you're revelation. Sorry
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: now I'm going back, but your parents are Quakers. And
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: then you're seeing doctor King, who essentially was schooled in nonviolent,
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: non violent activism from Baird Rustin, who was a Quaker.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: So of course that must have really really resonated.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it all resonated. Bayard was an extraordinary man, you know,
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: behind the scenes because he was so sensitive. They didn't
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: want his homosexuality to ruin anything in the public perception
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: of the movement. And the guy was a massive force
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: behind Doctor King and behind all of us.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Really, I don't think any of that would have happened
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: without Bayard. His philosophies underpinned almost all of that work,
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Doctor King, Ralph, Ralph Abernathy, all of them we're doing. Yeah,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: how was it toggling between the glamour you could say,
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: of music and you know, and you're in two worlds.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: You're dealing with luminaries and music, you're dealing with luminaries
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: and sort of public life, and how would you toggle
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: between those two things?
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: You know?
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: I kind of didn't. My battle was with not wanting
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: to be commercial, you know, and I thought that was, well,
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: we're going back to I'd go to hell. You know
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: if I sang in a place that had booze in it,
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: that you becoming commercial was a really really bad thing
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: for me. And I don't know where I do that line,
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: but I mean, for instance, the stage had to be
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: black with nothing on it, no flowers, no flags, And
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: I thought, well, this is really simple for people. They
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: said I was impossible because they set up these great
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: sets under TV, and I say, strike everything, you know
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: all here. You know, I missed perfectly folk whatever, and
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: really afraid to veer from that that I was doing
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: something really.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: Bad, almost like the way the gospel artists might have thought,
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: or like a Ray Charles might have thought about secular
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: music versus gospel.
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: No, it's very similar to that level of.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, dedication to like a higher cause.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: And that level of silliness. I mean, you know, I
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: didn't know that at the time, but I was over
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: I overdid it at every turn, you know. I remember
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: one time I decided, no more limousines for me. This
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: is not right, this is not what everybody does. They
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: have normal cars. So I stuck at that for about
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: two weeks, and then somebody picked me up this battered
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: old Volkswagen bus, and it was so uncomfortable. Oh screw it,
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: you know, bring on the limousines and the red carpet.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Don't blame you, don't blame you. Yesterday I landed found
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: out Tina Turner passed away, and I was just curious
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: if you, like, when or how or if you guys
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: had crossed paths.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: My great Tina stories when my career was tanking. She
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: was just coming back up her second round, you know,
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: as a lioness, and she yeah. And so I met
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: her in Germany and they were celebrating her in her success,
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: and somebody asked her how she felt about all this.
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: She said, I'm just so happy to be read ike,
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: I don't care about the rest. And then, you know,
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: she was really sweet with me. She realized that I
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: was in a pickle, you know, and she came over
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: and I said, what should I do? She said, girlfriend,
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: get a wig first of all, you know y'all need
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: a wig. And I said, good. Is that all I need?
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: And then we were on the same TV show together
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: and I saw her performance. She performed steel Claw. Do
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: you ever hear that song? It is as ferocious and
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: evil and she's perfect for it. And she came off
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: the stage and I said, Tina, your mother made it
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: with a scorpion. And I meant it as a compliment
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: and she took it as a compliment.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: That is the most acciate description of a Tina Turner
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: performance I have ever heard.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Was that TV show? Was it?
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: I didn't realize that there was a sequel to The
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: Tammy Show in sixty six, the Big T and T Show,
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: And you performed on that with with Iken, Tina with Tina,
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: and that it was it that show?
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, no. This is years later, and when
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: she was she and I were on tour in different
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: parts of Germany. Yeah, and I had one night at
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: the Olympia and she had two weeks booked there to rehearse. Said,
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: oh boy, I got a long way to go.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: I see why you went to refer advice. Makes a
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: lot of sense.
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: Also, yesterday Bill Lee passed, who understandably Tina Turner's is
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: incredible and just des there's everything, but Bill bill Lee
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: really integral. It seemed to to the early folks scene
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: that you guys were part of.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: This was Spike's father, the bass player. The first time,
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: first or second time, I don't remember. I went Newport
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: Odetta and her husband, Danny was at his name. They
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: drove me and he was believe was there her bass player,
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: and so I was in good hands.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's such a great bass player.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Toggle between jazz and folk kind of seamlessly beautiful.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: Back to my original point, you're hanging with You're hanging
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: with Tina Turner, you're hanging with Bayard Rustin and Doctor King.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: I shouldn't say hanging. I should say that you're working
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: with these people. And I imagined to some degree your
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: career might have probably suffered to some degree or not suffered,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: but I imagine you probably could have if you had
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: taken the advice of Abera Grossman and signed to Columbia
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: and maybe just yeah.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: They were so sure, I mean the Grossman's and the
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: people at Columbia were so sure that I would go
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: with Columbia because that had Dylan and Peter Paul and
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: Mary Janice Joplin and just collecting them like that. So
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: that was the place to go. And because of all
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: these things about going to hell and going commercial, I
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: chose Vanguard Record Company, which is basically a classical music
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: record company, and it was perfect. I was with him
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: for a long time, so he's you know, had a
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: real sense about the polk music, did a lot of
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: choosing songs with me and really got into it in
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: a way that I know Columbia would not have done,
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: or I think they would not have done.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: We should pull up image image one if you can
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: pull that up. You wrote this beautiful day, oh day
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: that Harry but Levonte daylight come and we want to
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: go home.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Harry similar I sent that to his wife.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: Did yeah he was so happy?
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Here Did you get a respond he saw it?
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, well no he didn't. It was just after
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: he died. We saw him A couple of times in
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: his mid nineties, and he was just when my son
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: was with me and another friend, and when we left
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: talking with Harry, my son burst into tears. He said,
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: I feel like I've been in the presence of a
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: fucking prophet. And I said, well, that's because you have been,
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: you know, but this is slightly divorced from that. But okay,
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: So when I'm drawing that, there's this girl and I
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: see she's got a flower pot. I thought it was
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: a flower pot hertle basket, you know, by the flower's
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: coming out, And so I turned it around and I
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: see they're palm trees sticking out, and so, okay, turn
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: it back now I know they're palm trees. I'll stick
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: something in. There's a little elf kind of dancing. Turn
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: it back over and he's kicking her and aside, and
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: so she's saying dey odo, and that's from the palm trees, right,
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: And then that's just my sidekick. Then that's what came out.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: So whimsical.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: I love it was Harry's uh calypso music was that
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: at all in your Oh my god, it was what
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: of your sphere of influences?
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, I had not even heard or I hadn't heard
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: an anybody really it was rhythm and blues, and my
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: mom brought home this album of Hairy Pelafoni. We just
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: stared at it. Nobody should look like that.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: He was gorgeous, he was so handsome.
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: I don't mean if we played it for the first
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: two weeks. We just stared at it. Remember my father
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: being a little unnerved by that. He was like, and
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: then yeah, and then I played it and I the
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: first it was kind of I don't think it. No,
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: it got printed or not. But this first album I
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: did one half of the songs were elefantie songs that
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: I had taken. Yeah, I took him right directly off
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: that album.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Wow, how was he thought of in the in the
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: folk scene? Was he thought of in that? I mean,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: because he was taking old songs and you.
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: Know, well in the early snooty folk days, he was
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: off limits because he was, you know, banging on drums
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: and having a good time suposed to do you know,
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: And then you know, and I didn't know, of course,
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: none of us knew at that point that he was
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: going to end up being political activists and working with
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: doctor King. But what a lovely way to arrive, you know.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, after this last ad break, we'll be back with
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: the rest of my conversation with the great Joan Biaz
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: live from Chicago. And now the rest of my conversation
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: with Joan Biass speaking of the early snooty folk days
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: as a person who was barely you know, gleaning in
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: my parents eyes when you started your career. I came
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: to folk music relatively late, and I came through the
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: Kingston Trio, who I love, and I was dismayed to
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: find out.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: I had to hide them at the back of the
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: record collection. Really, yeah, because you're not something They're way
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: too commercial. You had kings loved them, Yeah, but I
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: couldn't let anybody know. I mean, am a snooty folks
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: saying no, ma'am no.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: I feel vindicated. I love that.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: I feel vindicated.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Great.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: I couldn't hide them on my iPod in the day,
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: so you know, I just took them off because I
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: didn't want.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: To be guilty guilty pleasure yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Replaced it with the latter day Dylan record or something
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: to you know. Atone for my sins?
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Can we go to the next image?
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: I think it's image. Make sure I got my images
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: right there we go. Yeah, this one that's.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: Very Sophie's choice. Looking to me, they made me choose,
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: so I'm assuming I'm thinking between her two kids or
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: three kids, they made her choose which one she was
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: going to be able to keep. That's my guess.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: New My guess was much lamer than that. She kind
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: of looked like Joni Mitchell to me, I tried to
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: warn you.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to tell.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: You she's checking which label, which record label to go on?
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: They know, well, you know, I didn't know.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: I mean, she's saying Columbia or Vanguard, no not, you know, no, So.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: I'm not I thought, Okay, well, look at Jonny Mitchell.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: Maybe was she she feel like she was being Did
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: she ever feel like she's being pitted against other women
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: in the industry?
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: Or that is so wild? I mean, Kevin idea, what
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: people go through looking at this stuff? You know, in
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: a billion years, I wouldn't have thought that that was
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: Jonny Mitchell's searching for record company someone else.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Want to give an interpretation where if we go back
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: to the genesis of this, where would you have.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Started That oval means it's a head, so you start
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: with the oval.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: I think so usually yes, then an ear or two.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: So by the time you do an oval, though, you know, oh, okay,
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: it's probably a face. So then you go to ears.
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: I go to ears, I go to some weird hair thing.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: Their eyes, a lot of the eyes are very similar,
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: except they're looking in different places, you know, and so
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: a lot of what's written on there will be determined
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: by what their eyes are doing.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Really, yeah, yeah, when did you add the tears.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: Had what the tears?
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: Probably early on to give it some character whatever it
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: was going to be. It would make it, you know,
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: would have some definition to it.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: And when did you decide that it wasn't Joni Mitchell? Yeah?
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: What points did you decide? I want to add that
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: was my other guesses. Maybe it was Odetta.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Why did Why the color? Why the color on the scarf?
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: Oh? I don't know. I just but each of them
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: has a little bit of color. I just got carried
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: away and started adding a little bit of color to
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: each of these things. If I did too much red,
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: then I'd skip over to that looks like orange and purple.
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: But you know what I'm thinking is one of my
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: mother's stepmothers was really horrible and her favorite colors were
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: orange and purple. So who knows, you know.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: That's interesting. Why was she so?
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: What was Well, she's schizophrenic, lunatic, and she was, and
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: she was very abusive to my mother and my mother's sister,
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: my mother's sister the one who did the standing waves.
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: So she pulled through.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: Okay, good, good. Would your mother talk to you about
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: those sorts of things she did?
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: We'd push her a little bit. I guess she watched
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: a lot of the abuse, and so it's maybe even harder,
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: they say, if you're just seeing this stuff that you
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: don't have something to grab on to to try and
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: change or heal. My mother discovered andy depressants when she
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: was in her seventies, and when she realized she'd been
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: depressed all like, she said, oh oh, she's saying things
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: like I didn't realize there are peppers growing on that
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: pepper tree. Oh there's just so really yeah.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: I had a similar experience, similar experience with that a depressant,
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: similar experience also with I finally got eyeglasses too. Wow,
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: I remember seeing things, you know, Wow, I remember being happy.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Wow, this is great. Thank God for any depressants and eyeglasses.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Two things that I've saved.
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: My life enough for Joni Mitchell, You've not enough of Joni?
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: You know, uh I really well, never mind.
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: You're scoring one hundred, so go ahead, okay?
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Did you well?
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Because I thought that perhaps this could have been a choice, Like,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: did you ever feel in the industry in those days?
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: A lot of women in the industry that I've spoken
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: to still, I know, they feel like they're pitted against
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: one another almost, like when for a while there could
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: be like one black comedian, Like now she's like there
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: could be one like woman rapper, you know, like, did
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: it feel like there could be Did that pressure to
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: compete against women exist?
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Then? For you?
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: I didn't think I any need to compete against There
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: was no competition in my in my you know, weird
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: little brain, because I was so insecure in so many ways.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: But not about this voice, which also is a gift,
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: and I can I can claim it as a gift.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Can we hear some of that voice? No no, no, no, no,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: no no no.
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: I ain't gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around,
• 39:52
  Speaker 5: turn me around. Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around.
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: Keep on walking, keep on talking, marching up.
• 40:03
  Speaker 6: To Freedom Land, amazing.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Can't follow that. We should follow that with Q and A,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: so you guys can try to follow that. Maybe we should.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: We should We turn it over to the audience for
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: some questions. We got some people out there with the microphones.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: If you want to ask a question, and again, a question,
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: not a comment.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: I will remind you a story. Somebody gave me his
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: T shirt and said, please don't tell me your story,
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: and I loved it, and then he commenced to tell
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: me the whole story of how he bought it and
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: where he founded him.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: Our first question will be up here.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: Hi, Joan, thank you so much for joining us. This
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: is so cool. My question is what do you do
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: when you don't know what to do next? Well, one
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: of the things I do is I talk to this tree.
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: There's a mighty oak tree in a field across from
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: the house. And I don't see therapists anymore, but I
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: will go and talk to this tree and I will
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: get an answer. And I either go to the tree
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: and say, listen, can you help me understand this problem
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: so I'll feel better? And sometimes I just say I
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: want to feel better. I don't care what the problem is.
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: I don't want to I just want to feel better.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: And if it's what do I do next, that's where
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: I would go. It will be that tree. But generally
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: I don't have to ask the question.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: It's a great question. Nicense. Is SYNCD too, Yeah, well
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: we have someone up here.
• 41:50
  Speaker 5: Hello.
• 41:51
  Speaker 7: I've listened to Diamonds and Rust many times, and every
• 41:54
  Speaker 7: time I listen to it, I say, if that's not
• 41:57
  Speaker 7: Dylan you're talking about. But then in your book you
• 42:02
  Speaker 7: said no. When Dylan called you, if I remember the
• 42:06
  Speaker 7: book correctly, you denied it. And were you kidding him?
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, how could that not?
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: Don't understand how I denied it.
• 42:13
  Speaker 7: In your book when you wrote about Diamonds and Rust
• 42:16
  Speaker 7: In your book, you said that, at least if my
• 42:20
  Speaker 7: memory serves at my agent may not. You said that
• 42:23
  Speaker 7: when he called you to thank you about writing about
• 42:27
  Speaker 7: him in Diamonds and Rust, you told him, now that
• 42:32
  Speaker 7: wasn't about you.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: Okay, I got it now, I got it now. First
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: of all, he would never call and say anything about
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: the song, so rob that. But but I was joking
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: with him because at the beginning of Rolling Thunder and
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: he hadn't paid any attention, had no hol Owan or
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: whatever came directly over and said are you going to
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: do that one about the guy with the blue eyes?
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: I said, oh, you mean my husband and he was
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: not a happy camphor. That's the story, though, I have
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: to questions.
• 43:10
  Speaker 8: My first question is do you have any communications whatsoever.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: With Joni Mitchell and Mitchell?
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know.
• 43:20
  Speaker 8: And my second one is what type of activism are
• 43:23
  Speaker 8: you involved in today?
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: Okay? First of all, I never had a closeness with Joni.
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: I've worked with her a couple of times, and I
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: admire her enormously and I was really happy to see
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: here where was it Newport? When she came out? I
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: thought that was brilliant. What was the next question?
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: What do you do for activism currently?
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: What am I doing?
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: How do you act?
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: Well? First of all, I wrote the book. I mean
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking about that's probably more political than a number
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: of things that I could have done. And if something
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: comes along that I really think is appropriate for me
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: to be out there with, then I'm sure I'll be
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: out there and I can. You know, I suggest to
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: other people that they go make good trouble because it
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: makes their lives, you know, really worth something. I believe
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: what you got on Yay Okay, any other questions, Yeah,
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: I got a question up here up here.
• 44:20
  Speaker 9: Yeah, So that was an interesting story about the box
• 44:24
  Speaker 9: with the you know, tapes in it and so forth
• 44:26
  Speaker 9: that the filmmaker's got. And I think that many people
• 44:30
  Speaker 9: have boxes like that in their attics and so forth,
• 44:33
  Speaker 9: with old things, you know, and so forth. So I
• 44:37
  Speaker 9: guess I'm curious how did you decide like you decided
• 44:41
  Speaker 9: to give it to them to deal with, And then
• 44:43
  Speaker 9: you also said, if I understood right, that you're not
• 44:47
  Speaker 9: going to look at that stuff ever again. Can you
• 44:49
  Speaker 9: talk about how you made those decisions? That's quite profound.
• 44:53
  Speaker 9: I can't wait to see the documentary.
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you. I just meant that after this
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: film is done and I've seen it all, and the
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: stuff that i'd never seen before I didn't know anybody
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: had kept, I have no desire to revisit that and
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: try to drag much more stuff out of those boxes.
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: I think that's enough, though, what do you will?
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: You destroy them?
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: You know, I don't know what I'm gonna do with them.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: It probably is the time to have a glorious bonfire
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: with a bunch of prayers stuck you know, here and
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: there in it's right, guys, and it's sacred to do.
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: I mean, otherwise, this stuff, it's just a museum. They
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: don't want to hear. They don't want to hear that ship.
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: I promise you.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: I would like to.
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: Ask you a question. I'm right here, I'm your sound engineer. Okay,
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: I'm originally from Argentina, and I would like to ask
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: you about if you see any differences or similarities in
• 45:58
  Speaker 4: the activism in South America and in America.
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: I think I don't know how to answer that question,
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: except that I think that some places you pay a
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: heavier toll. You know, it's okay for me to sit
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: here and talk about taking a risk, and in your
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: a country like Afghanistan or the Ukraine, taking a risk
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: is a very different thing. And so in Latin America
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: it's somewhere in between. No, but the bravery it takes
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: anywhere to make that final.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: I'm just going to do this. I just have to
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: do this. I mean here, it might be okay. I'm
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: going to go in a library and pick out a
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: band book and I'm going to read it out on
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: the street corner. I'm going to set up a microphone
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: and a thing I'm going to read the book, you know,
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: something like that, and where gays are not supposed to
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: get married, you organize, you know, a huge wedding of
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: as many people as you can get. And those are
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: forms of nonviolent civilist obedience which are invaluable and scary,
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: and we got to do them anyhow, Read a couple more. Okay,
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: I have a.
• 47:10
  Speaker 8: Question I'm going to My question was, is our country doomed?
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: And yes, m h.
• 47:19
  Speaker 8: And someone who has, you know, lived through the civil
• 47:22
  Speaker 8: rights movement, what words of encouragement do you have for
• 47:27
  Speaker 8: somebody like me who's really disheartened with the you know,
• 47:31
  Speaker 8: state of affairs in our country today.
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: Well, your question is an oxymoron. Do I have any hope?
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: Not particularly? But the other day somebody said hope is
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: a discipline, you know. I think that's because I don't
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: consider myself a very hopeful person. I've managed to shift
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: over from being a total pessimist to somebody considering hope.
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: But it would be a practice, I mean, you have
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: to practice it because this is not a hopeful world.
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: This is not a hopeful country. This is this is
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: heading towards and parts of it already are a fascist country.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: So what do we do?
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: Actually, I made a list. I was sharing it with
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: justin theause people say what do I do? And I've
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: always given this dumb stare. But now I've made a
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: list of which I will post on my Instagram and
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: or Facebook page, which with suggestions. I mean, from gun
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: violence to the Ukraine, to women's rights to They're all
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: these things somebody could get on different levels. You can donate,
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: you can support, or you can at some point take
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: a risk. You know, all are valuable.
• 48:46
  Speaker 10: All right, last question, My question is about women in
• 48:53
  Speaker 10: Iran and non violence resistance. You know that they came
• 49:02
  Speaker 10: non violent on the street and they faced with the
• 49:06
  Speaker 10: bullet in their eyes cution, and it's going on for
• 49:10
  Speaker 10: the past two weeks, fifty people have been executed only
• 49:15
  Speaker 10: for being on the street. How do we have this answer?
• 49:19
  Speaker 10: How we can deal with this violence, brutal violence that
• 49:25
  Speaker 10: people around the world. Is not just Iran, but Iran.
• 49:28
  Speaker 10: I think it's on one of the top on the top.
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: All we know is it trying to deal with it
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: with violence? Is immorse that you can't crush the state.
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: I'm not telling anybody what they're supposed to do. I'm
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: just looking at historically, what has been done and why
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: we've arrived at the state where we looked at violence
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: is the only answer. I wish I had an answer
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: for you. I painted Mushia among my mischief makers, and
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: it's too overwhelming the sorrow to spend a lot of
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: time thinking about these different places, certainly including around way
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: high on the list.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: As you said, one last one, happy one, I hope.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: What advice would you give to new singer songwriters?
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: You a singer songwriter? Yeah, okay, no, I wish I
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: had something brilliant to say except bravo and go make
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: good trouble.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: I want to thank Joan Baez for the live conversation
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: we had from the Chicago Humanities Festival. Be sure to
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: check out her new book, Am I Pretty When I Fly?
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: Available mostly wherever books are sold. You can hear all
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: of our favorite songs from the great Joan Baez on
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: a playlist at Broken Record podcast dot com. You can
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: broken Record Podcast, where you.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: Can find all of our new episodes.
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell,
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: Ben Talliday, Misha Venkatt, Jordan mcmah millen, and Eric Sandler.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: Our editor is Sophie Craik. Brooken Record is a production
• 51:15
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• 51:18
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• 51:37
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• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Our theme us expect Canny Beats. I'm Justin Richard.