Judy’s songs still pack a punch
Judy Collins
Even after a career spanning six decades, Judy Collins is still chalking up firsts. The American folk music icon made the number one spot on the Billboard Bluegrass Album charts in Christmas week with the album Winter Stories. It was the first time she had scored a number one album on any Billboard chart since she released her debut, Maid Of Constant Sorrow, in 1961.
Though a highly regarded songwriter, she has made songs such as Steven Sondheim’s Send In The Clowns and Both Sides Now written by Joni Michell her own.
Winter Stories showcases her still pristine vocals on a collection of seasonal songs which she recorded with North Carolina bluegrass group Chatham County Line and Norwegian countryrock artist Jonas Fjeld and was critically acclaimed.
However, even the cool, demure Ms Collins, who will be 81 in May, was taken aback by the news of the album’s commercial success.
‘They sent me a note saying I had a career first with Billboard, a number one on a Billboard Chart. I thought someone was pulling my leg frankly,’ she laughs.
She dismisses the word comeback in relation to her unexpected success with the album.
‘The fact is, I never stopped performing at any stage. I’ve been on the road for most of my adult life since I was 19.’
She will perform three concerts in Ireland. Her first will be at the Cork Opera House on Wednesday week (January 29th). This is appropriate given her Irish grandfather is thought to have sailed from Cobh for the US in the early part of the last century. Born in Seattle, Washington in 1939, Judy feels that her talents as a musician have been passed down in the genes through the generations.
‘I learned this process from my father (Charles “Chuck” Collins). He was the breadwinner. He was a singer, star of the radio. He was known all over the states,’ she says.
‘We considered it a great privilege to have a father that everyone seemed to want to meet and hang out with. He was wonderful but he was disciplined. When I was a little girl, I began to play piano. I had to practise two hours a day throughout my teenage years.
That, I would say ruined my social life but I certainly made up for it in the sixties and I’m still making up for it!’
In the late 1960s, Judy was romantically entwined with Steven Stills, who was at the time a huge star with Crosby, Stills & Nash. Although he wrote songs for and about her and lent his exemplary guitar skills to some of her recordings, they never performed together. After 40 years, that changed with the release of Everybody Knows in 2017 which hit the top 50 of the Billboard charts and led to a subsequent tour.
Happily married to her designer husband Louis Nelson since 1996, Judy confesses she has some trepidation about working with her former lover.
‘I was scared to death. But I knew it would be an exciting and interesting thing to do,’ she says.’
As Judy looks forward to the Irish leg of her latest tour, she dismisses talk of retirement saying, ‘this is not just my career, it’s my calling.’
‘The best advice everyone ever gave me was, you have to show up’
She inherited a talent but also an unceasing capacity for work.
‘I have been asked to do the PBS show Finding Your Roots in the US’ (like Who Do You Think You Are? but much more recourse to DNA analysis).
She says: ‘I know I’m going to find that there were musicians throughout my ancestry on both sides, but also ranchers and labourers, people who knew how to work. Do you know what the best advice that everyone ever gave me was? You have to show up.’
nJudy Collins will be doing just that in Cork Opera House, January 29; Town Hall Theatre Galway, January 30; National Concert Hall Dublin, February 1