Judy Collins still sweet on music

In 1969, when she peered from her album covers with those piercing blue eyes and resembled the fair maidens she saluted in song, Judy Collins took home her first Grammy for her recording of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.”

Seven years later, she was nominated for female pop vocal performance for her sublime rendition of Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns.” Collins didn’t win, but the popularity of her version no doubt led to Sondheim collecting the Grammy for song of the year.

But there was just one catch with her sole Grammy victory. “I never got the little statue,” Collins says. Collins, 77, got another shot at one of those statuettes at this month’s 59th Grammy Awards. She was nominated for folk album for “Silver Skies Blue,” a collaboration with singersongwriter Ari Hest. They lost to Sarah Jarosz.

The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.

A: Being nominated for a Grammy was a healthy injection into my career, because then the larger music family notices you and talks about you to promoters, who then get you jobs. “Both Sides Now” was my first veritable hit, and that kind of put me on the moon. People started to return my calls. (Laughs.)

A: After we worked together on “Strangers,” Ari and I met up for lunch, and he said he thought we should try to write together. And I said, “Fantastic.” We had no thoughts about where it would lead. We just did it for the love of it.

A: Absolutely. I’m always making resolutions about my career, and on Jan. 1 of last year, I decided to start a “90 in 90” project, which meant I wrote a new song every day for 90 days. But then (it was suggested) that I do it for the whole year; that way I’d have a book of poetry/songs by the end of the year. So that’s what I did in 2016. They say that to write a good song, you have to write 100 of them.