Watch Joni Mitchell Surprise Newport Folk Festival With Her First Full Set In Over 20 Years
Category: Entertainment
Via: hallux • 2 years ago • 30 commentsBy: Jonathon Bernstein - The Rolling Stone
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Joined by Brandi Carlile, Marcus Mumford and other artists, Mitchell played guitar, told stories, and sang a dozen songs in a surprise Newport headlining performance on Sunday.
“I just realized, Joni’s the least nervous person up here,” exclaimed Brandi Carlile halfway through a history Newport Folk Festival set that paid tribute to Joni Mitchell , in her first full set-length concert appearance in two decades.
Over 13 songs, Mitchell, who last appeared at the festival 53 years ago, in 1969, held court as a star-studded crew of musicians (Carlile, Blake Mills, Lucius, Wynonna, Celisse, Taylor Goldsmith, Marcus Mumford, and many more) sat around on couches on-stage playing a mix of her favorite oldies (“Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” “Love Potion No. 9”) as well as an array of Mitchell masterpieces.
Sitting in a throne, Mitchell began the set by occasionally singing along to her own songs, accompanied by vocalists like Carlile, (“Carey”) Goldsmith (1991’s “Come In From The Cold”) and Celisse (“Help Me”). But by the end of the hour-plus performance, the 78 year-old singer who only recently sang on stage for the first time in nearly a decade had stood up, played a lengthy guitar solo (“Just Like This Train”) and sang a moving baritone lead vocal on Gershwin’s “Summertime'” as well as tear-jerking takes on “Both Sides Now” and “Circle Game.”
The premise: Recreating the recently infamous “Joni Jams,” the informal A-list gatherings of musicians at Mitchell’s Los Angeles home in recent years, where everyone from Carlile to Elton John to Herbie Hancock to Bonnie Raitt gather around Mitchell and trade songs and stories in the years following Mitchell’s aneurysm. “No one brings folk singers together like the humility of trying out a new song in front of Joni fucking Mitchell,” as Carlile, who curated and organized the entire set, explained in the introduction to the performance.
At the end of the set, Carlile pronounced the night’s eternal importance: “Joni Mitchell,” she proclaimed, “has returned.”
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Canada's real Queen Lives! Long may she reign!
Outstanding, just outstanding.
Joni Mitchell “Both Sides Now” with Brandi Carlile Live at Newport Folk Festival, July 24, 2022
Joni Mitchell “Just Like This Train” (Court and Spark) Live @ Newport Folk Festival, July 24, 2022
Just Like This Train
The album, the song, Joni Mitchell sings: "Just Like This Train"
Thanks for posting these CB!
No problem. Hey! I would like to know what is your most favorite set of Joni Mitchell songs!
The album Blue and any number of individual songs with The Sire of Sorrow standing out as a top contender.
Listening to "Blue" right now. . . . : ) It is a treat!
I saw Joni Mitchell perform at an event at Pauley Pavilion at UCLA in 1969. She performed three songs with the L.A. Philharmonic Orchestra and then several songs solo.
I also saw her perform at a small club in L.A. called The Troubadour in 1972. It was very crowded and our table was pushed right up next to the stage. That was a fun night.
I've been a Joni Mitchell fan since her first album "Song to a Seagull" came out in 1968, although I think "Blue" was probably her crowning achievement.
I was introduced to Joni Mitchell's, "Court and Sparks," through a young college student I was interested in knowing. At first, being a young black teen into dance, I simply did not understand a/ny folk-song. But, I never forgot her. And, since then, as an adult, I know all the songs on that particular album by memory. Blue is really nice - "California" reminds me of ''Sparks.'
Joni's high tones and low tones are interesting and delightful, and oh that memorable vibrato!
She created wonderful music. A lot of wonderful music.
In '69, she had to be such a young 'thing'! Fresh-faced and all! How exciting it is to know of her all these many, many, years.
You have such fond memories, coupled with the rarefied atmosphere of success in your surroundings. I, too, know what it is to be in the company of 'greatness' (on occasion). Oh, the stories and remembrances are glorious and shall last until one last day on this plane! Moreover, such recountings never grow old!
At the time of the 1969 concert, she must have been about 25. She was older than me, though.
I do have a lot of great memories.
Long ago on NV and then on NT I posted my memories of Joni, and here we go again.
My involvement with folk music goes back to the early 1960s when I was living in the city I was born and grew up in, Hamilton, Ontario. While I was working for a lawyer there, one who later became an Ontario Supreme Court Judge, I used to frequent the sole "hippie" coffee house there - The Black Swan, which was run by Harry Finley and Jiff Neff with whom I became friends. The 1964 Mariposa Folk Festival was being held at Toronto's big baseball park, because it was thrown out of Orillia Ontario, where it had been held for the past few years, at the last minute due to fears there of crowd rowdiness by a bunch of town pussies. I drove into Toronto with Harry and Jim and we stayed the night before the festival was to start at a rooming house on Madison Avenue, near the University of Toronto. Harry and Jim got a room together and the only place left for me in the house was the living room so I was going to sleep on the couch.
While I got ready to go to sleep, a young tall girl with long straight blonde hair and big teeth with a backpack and carrying a guitar case walked into the room. She had just got off the train from Saskatoon, her first time in Toronto, and had come to see the Mariposa Folk Festival. Her name was Joni Anderson. I told her I was there for the same reason, and she took out her guitar and played a few songs for me - a couple of Judy Collins songs, and then she retuned her guitar in a really weird way and played a couple of her own. Her vocal range and unique guitar playing absolutely knocked me out. I let her sleep on the couch and I slept on the floor.
The next morning I talked Harry and Jim into hiring her to do a gig at The Black Swan, so I arranged for her to get her first paying gig in Ontario. Joni and I became friends and, having moved to Toronto to work at my cousin's law firm, I became involved with the Mariposa Folk Festival, became a director of it, and talked the Artistic Director into putting Joni (still known as Joni Anderson) on stage at the next year's festival - and the 1965 Mariposa Folk Festival was her first appearance before a large crowd where she excelled, and it was her first big step to fame.
Joni married actor/singer Chuck Mitchell who was from Detroit, and although their marriage did not last, she kept his name. However, Joni and I remained good friends for a long time. When she was going with David Crosby and they were in Toronto she brought him over to my place in order to get my opinion about some of the new songs she had composed. He was such an asshole, couldn't wait to leave, and I'm glad for her that relationship didn't last.
The last time I saw Joni was at the 1972 Mariposa Folk Festival on the Toronto Islands. I was the president of the festival that year, my last year of involvement with it, the year that Bob Dylan unexpectedly showed up with his wife and son just to see the Festival, who shook my hand and said "I really dig your festival, man". Joni was unexpected as was Neil Young, and scheduled performers gave up part of their sets to allow both of them to play a few songs on stage. Neil asked me what I would like him to play - I told him "Helpless", my favourite of his songs, and he performed it. Joni's last words to me were "We've both come a long way since back then, eh Buzz?" Those words ring even truer now than they did then.
Tremendous story! Just 'blessed' from top to bottom. Yes! I know there are a million of them out there of those 'insider' moments of closeness, talking, discussing, and just lavishing in the presence of near greatness and sure greatness. "Blessing Buzz, I understand the sentiment.
Kennedy Center Honors: Joni Mitchell Tribute 2021
This is 'full-on' a celebration of Joni Mitchell at the 'honors.' Dedicated to Buzz OTO! She came full circle!
My favorite Joni Mitchell song(s):
Court and Spark
Court and Spark
"You can complete and I would complete you. . . the more he talked to me the more he reached me. . . . "
Help Me
Joni Mitchell - Help Me (1974)
"Didn't it feel good. . . ood. . . ood....?"
Aww man! Once I got the meaning of this album, it has 'send me' ever since!
"Help Me" is one of my favorite songs, too. Beautiful.
Are you familiar with the work on her first two albums? If not, you would really like them. I've always especially loved "Chelsea Morning" from her second album.
No, I had not been introduced to the track until now! It's 'delicious,' light-hearted, and yet you can see her later harmonies and 'haunting' chords rising up in her. Stellar listen! Thank you!
I'm very glad you enjoyed that, CB. It's a wonderful tune. I highly recommend that you listen to her first two albums, "Song to a Seagull" and "Clouds", which has "Chelsea Morning". I think you will like both albums. You can find the full albums on YouTube.
"Michael from Mountains", "Night in the City" and "Cactus Tree" are the highlights I remember from "Song to a Seagull".
Then again, her third album, "Ladies of the Canyon" was also great and had some of her best known songs.
Her masterpiece, "Blue", was her fourth album.
Thank you. I love her. As usual, in my surroundings, I tend to operate by reading books or audiobooks and its like a library but for the background television running. So, . . .I need to listen to more music while I work and do other things. These albums will be in the immediate line-up. "Song to a Seagull" - I Had A King" - up! (Kinda
This is my first time listening to "Song to a Seagull" - the album. It is wholly beautiful! Each song captures me, but in the end there can only be 'one': Here it is:
"Cactus Tree"
"The DawnTreader"
and, "the Pirates of Penance."
I will never forget these three songs. They will always be with me now. But I would be remiss if I did not include, "Song to a Seagull." The lyrics stir me mightily. Honorable mention to "Night in the City." (But I have to go with my top 3!)
So this is how classic Joni Mitchell start. Damn, those breaks in her phrasing; those long notes, and her 'haunting harmonies' drive me through the lyrics gently.
NOTE: I am now going to share something striking. As I am listening to this album from 1968, Song to a Seagull, Cactus Tree and it verses about, "She was so busy being free" and "She was somewhere being free" - The Reidout is on my television. A banner is there:
Kansas No State Constitutional Right to Abortion and Legislative Power to Regulate Abortion Amendment (August 2022)
or words to that effect.
Why can't girls and women simply be 'free'?
It is hard to divest the male psyche from 25,000 years of Patriarchy.
I'm very glad you enjoyed the album. To think that it came out 54 years ago! (Kind of makes me feel old.)
When you get to her "Ladies of the Canyon" album I think you will especially like "Morning Morgantown". It's a beautiful song.
Next up: CLOUDS - Tin Angel. Beginning. . . now.
Respectfully. It's not that hard to be a good person to other good people. It just takes commitment and effort. It takes even less to be non-aggressive against girls and women.
How great.
It is funny that within the last several years I first 'encountered' the Joni Mitchell song, "Both Sides Now" on a television dance show: So You Think You Can Dance. (I am 'questing' to find the performance.) I was so moved and choked up by the song that I posted the song to NT the very next day by way of a comment!
This is my very first time, taking the time to listen to the album. Thanks again, Gsquared!
"The Fiddle and Drum"
"Both Sides Now"
"Chelsea Morning"
"I Don't Know Where I Stand"
"I Think I Understand"
"Songs to Aging Children Come"
Excellent! Bravo! Stellar!
"Both Sides Now" is, of course, a song for the ages. It has been covered and recorded by many other singers and musicians.
I haven't thought about "Songs to Aging Children Come" for a long time. What a hauntingly beautiful tune. Amazing.
Sometime back, I noticed that "Both Sides Now" is a Joni Mitchell song given early performance by the great Judy Collins.
Judy Collins ~ Both sides now (1967/68)
I love that Joni slowed it down to a 'weighty' pace that deepens its flightiness and makes me think about years gone by and 'lost.'