Watch Joan Baez Perform ‘Don't Think Twice, It's All Right' With Maggie Rogers
Watch Joan Baez Perform ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’ With Maggie Rogers
Joan Baez has kept a relatively low public profile since wrapping up her Fare Thee Well tour in 2019, performing only on special occasions. One of those took place Monday night at the annual Tibet House benefit at New York’s Carnegie Hall, where she topped a bill that included Maggie Rogers, Laurie Anderson, Maya Hawke, the Philip Glass Ensemble, Tenzin Choegyal, and the Scorchio Quartet.
Her mini set kicked off with Steve Earle’s “God Is God,” which she recorded on her 2008 LP Day After Tomorrow. She then brought out Maggie Rogers for a duet on Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” She wrapped up with “There but for Fortune” by Phil Ochs, where she was joined by Laura Anderson and several members of the house band, including bassist Tony Shanahan and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty from the Patti Smith Band. The show ended with Baez leading several perfumers from the evening through the Pete Seeger protest classic “We Shall Overcome.”
The show took place just twelve days after Cat Power recreated Bob Dylan’s legendary 1966 Manchester Free Trade Hall concert on the same stage. It’s a remarkably faithful set where she plays unaccompanied for the first half of the night on acoustic tunes like “Just Like a Woman” and “Desolation Row” and plugs in with a band for electric songs like “Tell Me, Momma” and “Ballad of a Thin Man.”
Bob Dylan, meanwhile, is days away from kicking off a long U.S. tour that will keep him on the road steadily through September. It kicks off on March 1 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. On June 21, he’s joining up with Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Festival. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss are on the bill for the first half of the tour, and John Mellencamp is coming on board for the back half.
Don’t expect to see Joan Baez join them at any point. She’s one of the few artists in music history to launch a farewell tour and truly mean it, largely because of the strain touring takes on her voice. “This vocal box has been extraordinary,” she told Rolling Stone in 2019. “It’s holding out OK, and I don’t want to try and use it forever. I know some people strain to sing until they’re 100 and then drop dead on the stage, but that’s never been my vision of how I’d end the career.”
More from Rolling Stone
For more stories like this, follow us on MSN by clicking the button at the top of this page.