Judy Collins

Bob Dylan in the early sixties. Since then, she's become one of the most beloved interpreters are popular song elevating early compositions by Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell into air de finding classics. A brilliant songwriter in her own right, she's used her one of a kind voice to champion social causes and the endurance of the human spirit. Now she's using her voice in a different way as a podcast host. This summer, she's launched a new bi weekly

interview series entitled Since You've Asked. The show finds her deep in conversation with an array of fascinating friends, including Clive Davis, actor Jeff Daniels, Christiane Amanpoor, and many others She's like in their chats to virtual dinner dates, which allowed her to keep social in the age of COVID. The podcast is far from her only pandemic project. Earlier this year, she restaged her legendary nineteen sixty four concert at New York's Town Hall, the show that helped launch

her career. This time around, she played nearly the same selection of songs, with her voice as strong as ever, but one major difference was that the theater was empty the audience tuned in the live stream. A live album of the performance will be released on August. It'll follow her latest musical offering, White Bird, and anthology of her favorite recordings, bolstered with a few revamped reimaginings of some of her classics, and she's also hard at work on

a new album of original material as well. Suffice to say, she's probably significantly busier than you are, and as such, I'm extra grateful for her time. I'm so thrilled to welcome miss Judy Collins. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you. I have so many things I want to talk to you about, but I wanted to start with your amazing new podcast since you've asked. It's such a wonderful project to do in the midst of lockdown

I think you've it. It's almost like a dinner date or a dinner party, and that really comes across How did this start for you? Well, first of all, I I love the zoom potential and I've I use it all the time, you know, in in New York, my husband I live here, and of course the lockdown started and our we have normally we have a social life. We have dinner with friends a few times a month,

so we just continued that without the dinner. We had podcasts with friends, and that went on, has been going on and still going on because now there are some people who have kind of been out of the city, so we do the podcast with them, or if they've decided to venture out, we'll go to dinner with them. So that that very much has been My social life is very important to me. I believe in the healing

and uh intellectually stimulating contents of discussions with friends. I think it's it's part of the stuff of life, and you if you if you were denied it, you can wither on the vine. So that was that was going on, and I think my manager and I were talking one day and she said, why don't you do that with some people? That you can have a longer conversation with. So we decided to start doing the podcast, which I

just love it. I think it's it's a privilege to be able to to peer into somebody's life in a more for instance. And I won't break this open entirely, but I did do a show a podcast with my old friend Clive Davis, and one of the nice things is that I'm not a client. I'm a friend. I've known him for almost sixty years now, and so there's a way to talk to somebody that's different than if

you're a client. And on the other hand, then my own the head of my label, Jack Holsman, whom I've known for sixty years too, and he's a very close friend, and I am as guy was it's client, and I I have Electorate records, you know, started my life and and so and so I know a lot about him and he about me. So it's a different kind of thing in both cases, but both satisfying, interesting, educational, and

a lot of fun. I was going to ask you about the Jack Holtsman interviews when I'm really excited to hear just because, as you said, you did go back up such a long way, and he had such a big role in your life and your career. Yeah, incredible role, incredible role. Tell me more about some of your guests so far on the ones that are out now we've heard Jeff Daniels and Julia Cameron. Who else do we have in there? I think Arlo Guthrie, I think is

one of them. Arlow is coming along and Arlo and I of course I met Arlo when I first I did my first New York show. It was nineteen sixty one, and I was, you know, in the old days, the

old days. When I started in nineteen fifty nine. My first job was in Boulder, Colorado, at a place called Michael's Pub, and it was a it was a pizza and parlor and kind of a class you know, upper upper echelon pizza parlor from from Tulagi's and uh the Sink, which were two of the real place where he just got down and dirty drunk, and Michael's Pub was a step up. And he had music. He had barbershop quartets

and accordion players. And then I had been asked by my husband why I would didn't get a job doing something I knew how to do, because I was doing a very bad job at filing papers at the University of Colorado, and so my father got me an interview, an audition at Michael's pub. This was so out of the blue. Nobody knew that you could make a living sing folks songs. I mean, there was no there was no entrance that my father was a big star in

the radio business. But he sang Rogerson Hart and had a great radio show, and that was a whole other era of music, and so folk music was ridiculous, forget it. But I went down and I had an audition. I played and sang a concert for an hour, and he hired me. And so that was the start. And in those days it was very much word of mouth. One person he would call the place, and I'm sure he called. He called the Gilded Garter in in Central City and said, you know, she sold some tickets and why don't you

try it? So I went up. That was my second date, you know. And then I went to the Exodus in Denver and in between and then and then in about two years time, after working all these clubs word of mouth, I got to New York and I was actually the headliner. I couldn't believe it. I'd only been doing it a couple of years, but I got there and I found out that my opener was a thirteen year old named Arlo Guthrie. So that's where when we met, and he

was he was always so darling and charming. I knew his mother very well because my manager quite quickly became Harold Levinsall, who managed the Weavers, and Pete Seeger and Alan Arkin and Theodore Bacal. He managed it seemed to me almost everybody who made records, who made music that was folk music, and Harry Belafani always wanted Harold to manage him, but he had told me that he consistently said no. I don't know why he said no. That

would have been a lot of fun. So I have known Arlow all these years, and we've done all kinds that We went to Japan together in nineteen sixty six with Mimi and Bruce Langhorne, and we had a great time there, and I sang at Arlow's wedding to Jackie, his wonderful, wonderful wife. I loved Jackie. She was a treasure, and unfortunately she died a couple of years ago, and Arlow has been just a mainstay in my life. We've done shows together, we've traveled together, we have in common

so many friends. So this past two years ago we started working on let's do a big tour together, and so we all it took a while, but finally we got We must have had fifty seventy five shows, places like Ravinia and and Tanglewood and you know the big places of course, um Humphreys out in the West and a lot of places. And they were all set up, and then the course at pandemic hit and he called me in September. We had all these dates were they

were not none of them were canceled. They were just moved into the next and then the next and then the next month. And he said, I have to tell you this because I don't want to tell anybody yet until I've told you that I'm retiring. I can't do this anymore because I've had a couple of heart attacks and I just don't have this damon, and I can't sing very well and so on. And I said, well, you have to think about your health. So he said, yes,

I do. And I said, I'm concerned about your health, but I think the best thing for you to do is to not go out anymore and do this touring that we do, which is you have no idea how hard it is. Nobody doesn't do it, has any idea how hard it is. But I said, meantime, why don't we do talk together. I hadn't even come up with the podcast idea yet, but I said, we should do

one of these talks. I did a talk for Carnegie Hall, did a series of interviewing other people, and I interviewed my my friend Jimmy Webb, and Alan Cumming and Sean Colvin and Steve Earle, and we all all four of us talked together on a zoom show for Carnegie Hall. We did it probably in I said, I would say June or July last summer. You can get it on their podcast if you go onto Carnegie Hall and you

look it up. And the Carnie Hall President, a wonderful man, introduced me, and it was he said, he was introducing me, and he said, and Judy Collins has done fifty shows over the years at Carnegie Hall. I hadn't known what the number was. I knew it was an awful lot because most of those early years I sang every year at Christmas, which Arlo did. Arlo sang at Thanksgiving and I sang at Christmas, and it was pretty much the New York routine. You know, people would go to both

of our shows, so we had a good time. Anyway, we had a just fabulous time with our podcast. So that'll be coming down in the series very soon. I can't wait to hear him with these people that you have had these these deep relationships with for many, many years, the Arlow's, that Jack Holtsman's, the Clive Davis is. Did you find when you were doing these podcasts that you learned stuff about them that you never knew? Oh? Yes,

I won't spill the means again, but I asked. I asked Clive in the middle of the podcast, and it's reveal you you do, you find out things. I mean, I found out how he got to to this this business. It wasn't through a musical uh connection. It was legal. You know. He went to law school and begin was with a firm and they wanted him to go to Monterey and represent some clients down there. I don't even know who it was. And he was mesmerized and transformed

by listening to Jannis Choplin and Santana. That's how he got into it. I didn't know that. And I said to him during the show, I said, who was the one who got away? And he said, you know, that's a great question. I've I've never been asked that question. People asked me who I dropped and who walked away from me, but they don't know. I never asked me who got away. And you know, it was a big surprise. You want to know who it was. It was Harry Chapin.

He said, your guy overbid me. Jack Holdman wrote a bigger check. So that was funny. And of course you do find out things. People's people tell you, things that they would not necessarily say in public, or if it was scripted, they would not say. And they're they're at home, you know, they're probably they're not in a studio. The lights are not shining on them, so they're in their living rooms or maybe in their bedrooms, and maybe in their dining rooms. But you're intimately talking with them in

a way that is very free form. I'm sure you find that you've done so many of these and you understand that people are going in various directions and sometimes there are a surprise. It's such an incredible privilege and in such an incredible way to engage your your sense of curiosity, to learn about all sorts of different people

and all sorts of different ideas. Do you find that you learned something about yourself having done this, I learned a lot about my own curiosity, absolutely, and also that I'm I'm really I'll talk about anything. You pry open those little doors and you just never know what's going

to come out. Really, and it's a good thing because conversation is how we grow and learn, and it gives us a balanced life, and it gives us an idea of how the other side is living and own what's what's what things can be troublesome and what things are a lot of fun, And it's a conversation. Now. I grew up in this kind of family because my dad

was in the radio business. So his radio show consisted of his playing and singing the songs of the Great American Songbook and telling about his life and reading poetry and having guests. He had a lot of guests on his show. Some of them would come home to dinner. George Shearing came to dinner and said, I think you should continue practicing the piano Mozart instead of playing those folk songs. That's what he said to me. I never

forgot it. It sounds like music was just in your d n A. Was it always something that you knew this was what you'd be devoting your life to, or was there a moment when there was a lightning bolt moment. Well, I knew that I would be doing it, and I did it the whole time I was growing up. I always had music in my life, and I was playing the piano, I was singing in the choirs as a kid. My teachers were wonderful, you know. I started music lessons in uh We moved to l A in nineteen four probably,

and my parents immediately got me a piano teacher. And I used to in those days, you know, I got on a bus at five years old with my music under my arm and got on the bus and went to Santa Monica from West West l A to have my lessons. I mean, life was very safe, kids were very safe people in general, it seemed to me. Of course, now we know that it wasn't so safe for a lot of people, and there are a lot of things going on that were so horrible that when the sixties

finally rolled around. I think what was most appealing about the sixties was we finally realized how much we've been lied to and how much we are lied to, and determined that we would try to find the truth. But yes, talking and the kind of interviews my dad did, we're very much a part of our lives. And then we would all talk together about things around the table. That's

where our political education came in. I think I look back and think about all the dinner table conversations that we had as a family growing up and how much they shaped me. And I realized that, you know, you take them for granted at the time because you just want to finish your dinner and go off to whatever you're doing and go play. But it's amazing what you learned from from those Yeah, play ball. I have to say, the show is such a perfect title since you've asked

which for anyone who doesn't know. It was a track off of your album Wildflowers, and I think it's the first song you ever wrote, right, It's the first song, and that's how they get you, you know, they get you. I sat down after after Leonard Cohen asked me why I wasn't writing my own songs. I came home, I sat down at my stide mooy because I've been practicing for the various songs that were going on that album in my life. I just wrote it. It took me

forty minutes and that was done. And it hasn't ever been the same since. I mean, it never takes forty minutes anymore. It takes. The next one took about five years, but I was hooked. And so since you've asked, right now, I'm trying to write a song for my granddaughter's wedding, which is happening in a few weeks in California. And uh, you know, I thought, because a lot of people tell me they sing since you've asked at their weddings, all

of their weddings, not just the first one. And I thought, well, I can't do that. I have to write. I've written, I wrote, I've written songs for my own wedding, for my brother Denver's wedding, for my brother Dave's wedding, for an old friend who wasn't even a relative, so I have to write an original song for her. I mean, there's no question, take my hand, who is your own? We can solve the broken world together. That's the start of what I'm writing. But who knows what will happen.

Because I don't know. I have to start. I have to work at it every day and try to write something every different every day so that I can figure out what's gonna make it to the wedding. That's just amazing. I mean, I hear since you've asked now and I know knowing that it was your first song, I'm thinking, I'm somebody who's who's loved music my whole life, and as hard as I try, I've never been able to write a song ever. I love it with all my heart.

I dabble in different instruments, but it's just it's not in me. I can't imagine starting from scratch as you do to writing something is beautiful and sophisticated and as timeless as that song. I guess my question is, what are your tips for someone like me who's sort of struggling with how to start writing music? Do it? It'll break your heart, sheer sweat, and it's a job. I have a friend who writes mysteries who says, you know, writing is like laying pipe. It's you have to go

at it every day. Well, I'm just coming out in I'm just about I think this week Wednesday or Thursday, I'm going out into the studio to do some more final vocals on my most recent album, which is an album of all my own songs called Spellbound. And it's

it will come out in in February. I think of two and it's it's in part it's some songs that I finished and or started and finished in the Pandemic and some that I was finishing up in and but I I have to work very very very hard at it, and I'm not sure that anything is as good as Oh, I know, the Blizzard is pretty good. The Blizzard, I think,

and since you've asked her, probably my best songs. The Blizzard has to be kept in good shape because a lot of my songwriting friends love it, and I have to be ready to play it at the drop of a hat. And I think actually that the next thing is to get a movie filmed with with the song as a context for the movie. So that's something I need to pay some attention to because it is a great story. It's sort of my equivalent of the Gambler.

I have to say, I loved your song Dreamers is an amazing I mean, for anyone who hasn't heard it, is this absolutely exquisite acapella piece inspired by the immigration crisis. I suppose is the most simplest way to phrase it. Can you tell me a little more about about that song? It is breathtaking. I was sitting here at the kitchen, at the dining room table one day and my husband and I were watching a conversation on television with a young woman who she said, and I quoted her, my

name is Maria. My daughter is a dreamer. She says that she's worried that she will have to leave, and that's the first line of the song. And I went into the studio and I wrote it down and I started playing it immediately. And I worked on it for about four years, sixteen seventeen, eighteen maybe two maybe nine, No, no, it was it was two years anyways, playing the piano

and playing it and playing it. And we were in Seattle and I was working at a club called ash Alley, and my husband was out there with me, and he said, you know, you really have to mix up your set. You didn't really need some new songs. Why don't you sing that new song you're writing. And I said, well, it's not I haven't figured out how to play it at the piano. He said, don't play to the piano and just sing it, just singing Acapulco as we say. And so I did, and I sang it, and my

name it is Maria. My daughter is a dreamer. She says that she is worried that she will have to leave. And when I finished the song, there was this silence that came over the audience. It was stunning. Nobody moved, nobody said a word, nobody clapped, nobody, this just this absolute and then they all went crazy, and they kept

doing that every time. I saying it because I'm convinced that when people are in an environment where there's live music going on, they're going through a lot of things in their minds that have to do with kind of shifting their point of view and examining what's going on in their lives and making choices that have nothing to do very often have nothing to do with what's really happening, but it's something that's transforming because of the live music.

I think that's what live music does. It gets to the brain in a subtle way and does the kind of work that well, we like to think that teaching always does that, but it doesn't always do it, but music quite often does it. It's the silence. It's people sitting in an auditorium that's hushed, where they're not on their devices, and where no one is coming up and slapping them on the backs and saying you want to drink, but they're kind of hostage to the artist on stage.

I'd like to think of it that way. What is it about music that you think makes it such a potent medium for transmitting emotion and enacting change. It's probably essential to human survival, I think it was probably Well, first of all, it's essential to have a voice, because you have to be able to scream while running in the forest, chasing some prey that you're going to have for dinner, or if you get injured by some animal that you're chasing, you have to be able to scream

so that somebody comes after you. So the voice is always important, and it carries wisdom. You know, the sharks, I almost said the sharks the whales have the music of their songs to contain and transmit information. That's what I hear from Roger Payne who is the person who played me the first recordings of the of the singing

of the humpback Whales many years ago. And apparently they have information about what the best place, the best way to go to the breeding grounds is, and you know who's who's who's whose tanker is nearby that you might not want to run into on the way to Alaska or something. So I'm sure it's got all kinds of information.

And we carry information in our in our DNA which we can transmit with songs with words, and now we know that people who have a You may not know this about this wonderful man, but I traveled and recorded for a wonderful singer named Eric Weisberg for years and years. He's really part of my origed origins, and we did a lot of traveling. Even went to Soviet Union with me in nine six five. So I've known him for years.

And he's a fantastic banjo player who's very famous, and towards the end of his life he really had alzheimer. He was not communicating, and so a bunch of his buddies, old pick and buddies, you know, went up to where he lived and began to sing and play and picked he picked up the guitar, and he played and sang

with him. So it has a magical ability to trans trans What is the word transform, transcend the physical incapacity of the brain, because it'll wake the brain up with memory and music is the thing that's been said to help many many people find their way through are not necessarily back, but certainly through the or even temporarily to to wake the brain up to things that it knew before, particularly poetry and song, which tell part of our history.

When you've used your your musical voice for so much good and to try to enact change for so many years, who were the people who think we called them eskimos in my family, the people who guided you to teach you and show you to to use these songs for for good and to to use your platform for to try to make a difference. Who were some people who

taught you that well. I fell into that community immediately because when I was fifteen and jumped off of the classical piano route and decided I had to have a guitar because I had heard the Gypsy Rover and Barbara Allen on the radio, and I decided they were songs

I had to sing. And that's when I started going to to Wells Music in Denver, and I was told by the guy ran the shop, you know, he said, this is you're You've ordered a pair of folk songs here, and this is what folk music is all around me. And then he showed me all these albums of pizza here and what he got three and since the Gooding and the Classy Brothers and Burl Lives and so on.

And it was the folk music world that I that I became a part of, and I joined because I moved to New York and because Harold Levinthal said yes he would manage me, which was a great blessing. And I walked into his office on fifty seventh Street in nineteen sixty three, and what he got, I mean, Pete Seeger was lying on behind the couch, sound asleep, with his banjo stretched stretched out beside it. And so I fell right into the club. And so this was what

people were doing, and this is what I loved. I loved these songs. When I was sixteen or so seventeen, maybe I was at a folk music gathering on Lookout Mountain and a young simer named mart Hoffman sang me Woody got three song called Deporteese and Deportees is probably, I mean, essentially what I was writing about when I was writing Dreamers years ago, years later, but probably with that as my incentive. The thing about that was that I loved mart Hoffman. He was so sweet, so wonderful,

such a great singer. And I didn't know until decades later that he had actually written the melody to deportise the Crops are All in and the Peaches a Rodney. I didn't know that until there was a big witty Guthrie festival over in Brooklyn in s and I went to it and they handed out a book. I knew so many of his songs, and I knew his life and so on, but I just didn't know that he didn't write that. What he didn't write that melody? I found out later a lot of songs he didn't write

the melody too. He wrote the melody to this Land, certainly, and also to um I Woke up in a drive, Daddy, causey of that one he wrote as a but he there were long songs he didn't write too, And and his daughter Nora quite often would give lyrics to somebody and say, could you put this to music so we can get it recorded. I loved your your recent anthology White Bird, which is such a fascinating project that I think it's your first time recording the It's a Beautiful

Day song Whitebird, the title track. Yes, I didn't know it. I didn't know it from Adam and my distributor Brian Perrero, who has helped me get the record label out that I that I supervised. He brought the song to me and he said, I think you should see it, and I said, I think so too. But I didn't know that the group. I didn't know the song or Beautiful Day.

But I was telling somebody recently that I turned on one of these endless series I think a British mystery series the other day and I heard it was being played in the first break. It was being played of their version, Beautiful Day's version. So I'm glad I finally caught up with it. I love your versions so much, and I love how you revisited some of your songs like Turn Turn Turn, Chelsea Morning and and Randy Newman's I Think It's going to Rain the Day. Oh my gosh.

I mean that song gets me every time what is your relationship to those songs now? Has has their meaning changed to revolved for you? Or are those constants for you that keep you kind of anchored? Well, when I sing them, they do the same thing for me that they always did, which is to make me happy and let me sing. You know, they let me sing. I mean, there are certain songs that really let you sing. They allow you to sing them. They're so well put together

that you almost can't help but sing them. And some of these songs like turn Turn Turner like that, I mean, they just kind of invade your mind and they make you capable of singing them. I love the new arrangements to some of them too. It's such a cool way. I think that that it was almost like hearing them for the first time, which is really special for me. If someone's love those songs in your music for so many years. Good, I'm so glad you liked the album.

I love it too. I loved doing it. Here's a question, kind of a broad question. Would you consider yourself an optimist? Oh, by God, of course I am. Absolutely. My sister says that's my one defect. Boy, I know that the last eighteen months have definitely been a challenging time for optimists. What's been been keeping you grounded? And I'm feeling good? Oh? Lots of things. Um, we have had a very privileged lockdown in the sense that I had never I had

not had a vacation. I had not had time off in so many years, and quite frankly, I needed it. I needed a break. And you know, I was always told for years, why don't you get you know, you've got to be able to take a few months off in the summer. I was never able to, because you know, you want to make a living, you have to show up. The dates are coming in. You can't. So there was no way to really do that for any length of time. I mean maybe you'd get I don't know. I just

was not. And so when it happened for me, it was an advantage because I got the time off, and you know, I took a nap every day every day. I mean I did anyway, because I'm in my eighties. Now people do that in their eighties, they take naps,

And I've taken full advantage of that privilege. But I've also continued working and the working and the being able to sit down every day and work at the piano and work on writing and trying to write poetry and songs, and so it's it's a wonderful thing to be able to do, to have to have some enlightening moments, and then of course to be able to unfortunately watch what is going in the world and be devastated by the deaths.

I mean I've lost I lost a couple of friends that were very close to me, and uh, you know, that's that's horrible. And of course the devastation of the discount is something that takes your breath away. Really, And I'll have to say a word for wearing masks and for getting vaccinated. It's essential, not just it's not about you. It's about everybody in your family. It's about the people

you interact with, It's about your neighbors. And to think it, to think it's just about yourself, it's extremely short sighted. I'm glad you were able to get some time for yourself. I know you're doing a hundred and fifty shows a year. Is something like that. I think I read that hundred and twenty, but almost it's incredible when you write every day, is it almost like people some people do yoga every day, some people jog. It's a daily practice for you to

Oh yeah, and I jog. I work on the treadmill, I take walks, I work on the bicycle. I try to do my stretches. Yeah, I have to. I mean, there's no way to keep up with what's going on physically unless you're exercising and eating right. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't scream. You know, you have to give up a lot to stay on the planet. There was an interview you gave recently. I'm trying to remember who it was with. I read it. It might have been with a r P. And you said something

that I will never forget. Somebody was asking you about about retirement. You gave an amazing response. I swear remember for the rest of my life. You're saying that retirement was created in the Industrial Revolution. I wanted to ask you more about that. That's so fast. It was created by management. It was created by the by the one percent, to keep the rest of us from making money as we grow older. You know, you fire people at a certain level because if they stay longer, they're gonna cost

you more money. It's you know, we throw people out of anyway. I think retirement was invented. You know, if you're a rancher, you never retire. I suppose that's in my d N A, in my in my history, my farming and some degree ranching farming. But being an artist, you never retire. I mean, there's no you wouldn't. Why would you? How could you retire from doing something that had kept you alive and probably kept you from jumping

off a roof. I think that being creative and having being a poet or a writer, or a painter, an artist of any kind communicator, you know, you have to keep going because it's part of your DNA, as part of who you are. It's not just the product, it's it's it's the essential discipline of doing those things on a daily basis, which makes you capable of not only staying on the planet, but also contributing. I feel like that's something that a lot of people forget these days.

It becomes about the product. True enough, Thank goodness, we have wonderful people like you, Cones. It has been a true pleasure and an honor. Thank you so much for your time today, and your music is your wonderful joy. I can't wait to hear more of your show. It's a great, great treat. Thank you, m WE hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio, a production of

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