Judy Collins is still going strong at 85. Catch her at Kauffman Center this Saturday
Judy Collins. // photo credit Shervin Lainez
Singer-songwriter Judy Collins is an absolute icon. Her debut album, Maid of Constant Sorrow, is a touchstone of the ’60s folk movement, she’s been nominated for an Oscar for the documentary Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman and won a Grammy for her recording of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides, Now,” to say nothing of inspiring Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.”
Just two years ago, Collins released her first-ever album comprised of entirely of songs written herself, entitled Spellbound, coming nearly 60 years after her debut. The musican has also written several memoirs and collections of poetry, the latest of which, Sometimes It’s Heaven: Poems of Love, Loss and Redemption, is out Tuesday, March 25, via Andrews McNeil.
Can we also mention she turns 85 this year and is celebrating with a tour? It’s beyond impressive, and we were over the moon to get on the phone with Judy Collins to talk about all of this and more ahead of her stop at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, March 15.
The Pitch: You’re celebrating your 85th birthday with a tour. That’s absolutely delightful. What made you want to celebrate your birthday with a tour such as this?
Judy Collins: Well, I am always on the road and I’ve always been on the road, but the people that arrange my business life said, “You have to go on the road, but you have to do some extra things.” I have a book coming out, too, so it all matched up with shows at Town Hall and at the Ryman in Nashville and other places that I maybe haven’t been in a couple of years, so it worked out fine.
These shows at the Ryman and Town Hall are very amazing events. What made you want to bring all of these folks together with you?
Well, they are artists that I appreciate and have known for a long time and I thought it was a good idea to kind of mix it up and have people that my audiences will not expect to see, which is a surprise. I always like to surprise people–telling stories, introducing other things that have happened to me is something that I take pleasure in.
Do you have any interesting stories of how you came to meet them?
Well, in each case, it’s usually somebody whose songs I have recorded and I got to know. In the case of Amy Speace, for instance, Amy was one of the first people that came onto my label, which is called Wildflowers, and I was the first person to put out her wonderful writing. She’s just a brilliant songwriter. Chatham County Line are a group that I made a recording with called Winter Stories and it was a big success and also led me to Norway, where I was able to do a couple of sold out shows at the Oslo Opera House. It was filmed and then that film went to The New York Film Festival, and it was given a bronze. I didn’t even know they were going to do that with it, but it was wonderful.
I’m crazy about those groups. Of course, my wonderful writing partner for an album called [Silver Skies Blue] that Ari Hest and I wrote together. He’s another artist that I have a great admiration for and he’ll be around in New York. Other people in New York that may be coming by are Graham Nash and Stephen Stills, of course. Graham and I have just done five shows together in New York, one of them at Carnegie Hall. It’s a very mixed group of people that I know and like and have recorded with and also written with and sung with.
Given that you have performed so many songs and have recorded with so many people and people have recorded your songs and because you brought up Graham Nash and Stephen Stills–what is it like to have a hit song written about you?
Well, it’s a great compliment and I love hearing it. I’ve even done a tour with Stills. It was 2016 and 2017, and we did 115 shows in a year and a half, and we were on stage for two hours together. We sang everything together except each of us had a solo and then at the end of the concert, we sang “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” That was kind of phenomenal to be able to do that.
Given that your career has lasted so long, what made you wait so long to record Spellbound, your first all-original collection?
I had about 350 poems that I wrote in 2016. When my beloved–may he rest in peace–husband died in December of this past year and it’s been horrible. It’s terrible. Anyway, he challenged me to write 365 poems, and I did it and out of that work, that focus came Spellbound, as well as my new book of poetry.
Being as how the new book came out of the same writing. process that brought about Spellbound and given many artists divide their poetry and their songwriting, how did you decide which would become songs?
It works both ways. If it comes out as a song, I record it as a song. If it comes out as a poem, I want to publish it. The first publication that I had, it was when I was in the fifth grade in Los Angeles, and it was in a publication from our little school on Sautelle Boulevard in Los Angeles called “The Wee Bruins.”
And it said, “Wake up little children, experience the glory of a new day. Wake up little children, and let the world smile,” or something like that. I mean, so anyway, I’ve been publishing poems since I was five, six or seven years old, but many of the attempts turned into songs after I got my instruction from Leonard Cohen, who said, “I don’t know why you are not writing your own songs.”
That’s when it started, and it’s never stopped. I’ve been writing songs ever since.
Given that your life is so full, did you expect that you would be doing all of this at 85?
Yeah, I did. First of all, my conductor teacher who taught me the piano was also herself a great concert maestro. She was the first woman to conduct the New York Philharmonic, among other things, and the Berlin Philharmonic and a lot of orchestras around the world. She was a workaholic and she wanted to do what she wanted to do.
And, from knowing about musicians who live into their 90s and who perform into their 90s. I’m not sure how old Horowitz was, but he was up there and I got to hear Horowitz twice in my life. Very lucky. My intention is to do it ’til it wears out because it’s the only thing I–really, the only thing I know how to do is to be an artist, whether it’s a singer, a songwriter, a pianist, or writer. I’m determined. I would go crazy if I couldn’t do these things.
Judy Collins plays the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, March 15. Details on that show here.
