Back where she first started, Baez shows no sign of slowing
CAMBRIDGE - Joan Baez was doing what she always does at a concert, something as inane as tuning her guitar as the audience piped down. Except last night it felt particularly poignant, even nostalgic.
"Here I am doing what I did in Harvard Square every night between songs," she said as she tweaked her guitar one last time before starting the show. "The bane of my existence."
And here they were, a sold-out Sanders Theatre full of peo ple who had essentially come to church to exalt the silver-haired matriarch who became a star right around here in Cambridge so long ago. Many of them could remember watching Baez tune her guitar at Club 47.
Baez was in town to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Club 47, which is now the Passim Center in Harvard Square. That milestone also marks her own 50 years of performing, and if Baez proved anything last night, it's that the older she gets, the more timeless she becomes.
"That's an old folk song that sounds like an old folk song," she joked before opening with "Lily of the West." Except it didn't sound old at all; it sounded classic, with the sparest of accompaniment and Baez's voice drilling to the heart of the lyrics.
Baez is touring with a trio of young musicians who know exactly how to complement her live: you get out of the way and let her sing and play her acoustic guitar. With Dean Sharenow on drums, Erik Della Penna manning the lap steel and other strings, and Michael DuClos playing bass, they gave her songs, old and new, a contemporary spin.
Which brings us to Baez's legend: It may be steeped in the past, but she is not. Yes, she still sings protest songs, but they're written by people like Tom Waits and Eliza Gilkyson now. She found inspiration in Elvis Costello ("Scarlet Tide"), Leonard Cohen ("Suzanne"), and Waits's "Day After Tomorrow," a tenderhearted ballad about a soldier's doubts about war. But mostly, Baez saluted Steve Earle, the country-rock raconteur who is producing her next album, which she might even name for a new song he has written for it: "God Is God."
If Baez was nostalgic at all, she at least was never sentimental. She remembered the little things, stuff like learning the traditional Mexican murder ballad "El Preso Número Nueve" from an album her boyfriend ("my first real boyfriend") owned when she was 17.
As for Bob Dylan (since you just had to ask), his presence lingered in her choice of covers ("With God on Our Side" and "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word," the latter on which she trotted out her spot-on impersonation of Dylan's nasally whine). "I never asked him how he feels about that," she said, bemused. Chances are he wouldn't like it.
He probably wouldn't have appreciated her rendition of "Diamonds and Rust," either. It's Baez's devastating ode to their relationship, and she sang it with just a guitar and 40 years of emotional baggage. It cut like a knife, undermined just a bit by her insistence to alter the song's last line for a good laugh: "And if you're offering me diamonds and rust," slight pause, "Well, I'll take the Grammy."
It was the evening's lone song that Baez wrote, and such modesty - let's be honest, the woman has never been known for that - underestimated Baez's superb songwriting ("Sweet Sir Galahad," in particular).
That said, she chose others' songs wisely. A three-song encore yielded time-tested classics: Phil Ochs's "There But for Fortune," John Lennon's "Imagine," and an a cappella reading of "Amazing Grace." As she often does, Baez led the audience in a soaring sing-along of the spiritual, until the last note trailed off into a reverent hum.
"Amen. Thank you," she said. Church was over.
James Reed can be reached at jreed@globe.com.
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