Joan Baez & Loudon Wainwright III folk up Door County

Joan Baez, at age 70, was gracious & luminous in a Door County Auditorium concert July 16th. Her rendition of Woody Guthries's "Deportees," which she dedicated to the immigrants of Arizona, especially moved me. I enjoyed hearing her perform, with a fine 4-piece band, Robbie Robertson's brilliant "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" for an encore. Then she made an "I'm Sleepy" sign as if to apologize for a short show (it actually lasted over two hours).

Why did Ms. Baez only have one big hit in the Sixties anyway? Some of the audience applauded the opening notes of "There But for Fortune," a Phil Ochs song that she made famous circa 1966, among other favorites. "Diamonds & Rust" got some FM-radio airplay in the late Seventies, as I recall. She didn't play that one here.

Loudon Wainwright III, dressed in short pants - due, he said, to American Airlines having lost his luggage & CDs in Chicago - was professionally entertaining at Egg Harbor on July 18th. The outdoor crowd & I sang along to his early 70s novelty hit "Dead Skunk (in the Middle of the Road)." Head tilted back, tongue lolling & mouth distorted for comic effect, he played 40 years of his weird music, including a tender song ("Five Years Old") for his now famous daughter Martha Wainwright.

But then Loudon disappointed us by backing out of the traditional Peg Egan PAC post-concert reception. Oh well, I couldn't have bought his 2009 Grammy-winning CD "High, Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project" from him anyway. Still, I would've liked to get an autograph from that sometime actor. Son Rufus Wainwright may be an even better songwriter and performer than his father.

Would The Band by another name sound as sweet?

In British music critic Peter Doggett's fine book "Are You Ready for the Country: Elvis, Dylan, Parsons and the roots of country rock" (2000), I came upon this funny story by Levon Helm, winner of the 2010 (first ever) Grammy award for best Americana album for "Electric Dirt," about choosing a name in 1967 for his most famous group, The Band (Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Class of 1994):

"We were going to call ourselves the Crackers [i.e. Southern black slang for poor white folks]. I was proud to come out of an Arkansas farm, and the other guys [all Canadians] weren't exactly rich, either. So we thought we should tell it like it is. And then we figured, no, maybe it will piss people off. Sometimes I wish we had gone with the Crackers, just to push it in their faces."

Fellow Band member Richard Manuel, who committed suicide by hanging after a post-gig conversation with Helm in Florida in 1986, said that they also wanted to call themselves The Honkies. Serious as they usually sounded, The Band certainly had a sense of humor. Guitarist Robbie Robertson, writer of perhaps the Band's greatest songs ("The Weight" & "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down") let Levon take the lead vocal on those numbers. A very good move, as it turned out.

Congratulations on the Grammy, Levon. Sure wish I could attend one of those Midnight Rambles on your rural property in upstate New York. That would be a wonderful & possibly weird evening of old-fashioned entertainment.