Singer, songwriter, activist, author, poet and icon Judy Collins is celebrating her 85th Birthday Celebration & Tour. Collins has a show scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 12 at The Magnolia in El Cajon.
A 7-time Grammy nominee, Collins is an award-winning folk singer-songwriter who has released 55 recordings during her rich career. She has released six albums since 2015 alone, and her 2023 album “Spellbound” is her first all original, self-penned songs. Collins is also a published author, filmmaker, keynote speaker for mental health and podcast host. Collins will release her latest book “Sometimes It’s Heaven: Poems of Love, Loss and Redemption” via Andrews McNeil on March 25. Collins has been singing since 1959, and said she began when her “starter husband” told her they had no money and that she should go out and find something that she knew how to do.
Collins said no performance is like another when she tours as she loves the element of surprise, but the audience can expect “Send in the Clowns,” and “Both Sides Now,” and including some of her songs from her new album “Spellbound.”
“And some from my early repertoire. I think that you will be amused. I like to talk about life and the humor that has affected me. The kind of jokes that I love and the stories of how I got here, how it has been, and the people I have known. Like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and her sisters. And the late Leonard Cohen and how I met him, and why our friendship was so enduring,” she said.
Collins said her performances now are much closer and more personal, as in her early years, she was quite “struck dumb” in front of the microphone when it came to talking with the audience.
“Of course I sang, but I did not really talk, and now that has involved into something I find terribly important,” she said. “To tell stories to reveal what is going on in someone’s life, and to be part of the texture of the times. I believe people want to know what was going on in the 60s, what is going on today, what I am thinking about, what I am dreaming about. They too have their dreams and their thoughts and meditations while they are there. I think it is terribly important to have some time to think while you are listening to something that is interesting and beautiful.”
Collins said her new book was inspired by her husband who passed away this past December.
“In 2016, I told him I was going to start writing poems again and would try to do one every 90 days. He said, ‘Why don’t you try 365 poems this year?’ This was on Jan. 1. And I did. I wrote a poem every day for 365 days. It turns out that many of those poems, about 15 of them turned into songs,” she said.
Collins said her publisher wanted to use the rest of the poems to create the book.
“What I think is fascinating about the book, is first, the cover of the book will startle you. It is a picture of me at 13 in a white organdy dress. Behind me is the (Antonia) Brico orchestra playing Mozart at 13. This is very unique for a book of poems. And I feel it is a wonderful picture and wonderful record of the times in the way of contradiction of what I do now, from what I did then. I was a concert pianist,” she said.
Collins said other than coming to her concert, she believes people should go see the new movie “A Complete Unknown,” about Bob Dylan.
“It is important to get a feel, and I know this because I was present when it was happening, but it is important to see what it was like, and this is a very good take on where we were in 1961 and 62 musically in the [Greenwich] Village where I was hang-ing out and collecting songs. I was one of the first to record Bob Dylan in 1961, recording ‘Masters of War’ and ‘Fare Thee Well,’ and of course ‘Tambourine Man.’ I knew him before he was even Bob Dylan. I knew him when he was Robert Zimmerman hanging out in Denver at the Exodus trying to get a place to sleep that night,” she said.
