Joan Baez - Birchmere - Nov 6 2008

A very happy Joan Baez played the second of two nights in front of a very happy Birchmere crowd two days after the election. The genteel supper club atmosphere of Alexandria, Virginia's Birchmere is a good venue to see Joan Baez in her fiftieth year of performing. The voice isn't as strong, but it never really was, was it? Still, she looked great and still had a solid voice and excellent songs to sing. Stage patter was great with a very funny joke, amazingly enough. She covered more songs by Donovan than by Dylan, although Steve Earle (her most recent producer) had more songs on display.

Ms. Baez was augmented by guitarist, acoustic bassist, and a violinist/mandolin/accordian player. Actually they all switched around a bit and took a break so Joan could sing Diamonds and Rust and a couple of others with just her voice and guitar. Nothing off-the-charts unexpected going on, nor would anyone expect there to be anything other than solid rendetions of well known songs and some newer material.

An enjoyable show by a legend in a great post-election timeframe. Catch her before she's doing this 60 years.