Q: At home with Joan Baez is a wonderful place to be. And for the next hour, we'll be right here in Joan's kitchen, talking with a woman who's changed the world with her music and activism.

And for contrast sake, it's a good thing we're in the light of your kitchen, Joan, because your first new studio album in six years, "Dark Chords on a Big Guitar", lives up to the title.

A: Yes it does...

Q: Thanks for inviting us into your home. I'm Jody Denberg, we're here with your garden outside. This must be your refuge from the road and a crazy world.

A: That's exactly what it is. And it's sometimes difficult to leave (laugh).

Q: I don't want to leave... I'm movin' in...

A: OK, good you just stay. We've got plenty of rooms (more laughter).

Q: The songs that you're singing on "Dark Chords on a Big Guitar", even though they're written by a lot of different people, they seem of a piece thematically. Were you specifically looking for songs that had a darkness to them or is this just the tenor of the times?

A: You know, I think that if they'd been put together differently it wouldn't necessarily be dark. It wasn't planned to be dark. But my suspicion is that we reflect the times in one way or another. So it's not an overtly political album, but it couldn't be a cheerful album in these times. I think that's what happened. The musicians -- two of the musicians are very young. And then one is an old hand. We had just three musicians and myself. And it just sort of started to develop. And, you know, we would talk in between, so what's the conversation about? It's about the world and the state its in, which is pretty dire. And then you go back in the studio and you put together another arrangement. So I'm sure it just weaves somehow... that way.

Q: On your first couple of albums, you sang most of your traditional songs. And then you began to introduce songs by emerging writers to your audience. Then you began writing your own songs. On your last few albums, you once again began introducing songs from emerging writers. Was there a turning point when you got turned on to some of the writers that you've been singing lately?

A: There was a turning point when I got turned back on to music including my own. And it was a conscious decision. It was a conscious realization that I wasn't paying enough attention to my musical career. That I'd always put politics first. And that I do think that -- not because I was political, but because the time that it took, that in a way for a number of years the music began to suffer from that, and I did not feel fresh. And when I hired Mark Spector, he began the process of freshening what I did, how I saw music, how I was with the younger writers. I stopped writing. And I stopped because I figured at my age I didn't want to do anything difficult again, unless I absolutely had to. So at that point, all this sort of came together and I heard Indigo Girls for the first time. Mark took me to their concert.

And I have a relationship with them which consists of a lot of teasing, a lot of joking. I really like them a lot. And they call me the old something or grandmother or the elder or whatever. And I call them young whippersnappers. But what happened was I began to get it about the music of a couple of generations behind me.

Q: And Mark you were speaking of is the producer of "Dark Chords on a Big Guitar", and your manager.

A: Well, he's my manager. And he didn't even want to have his name on this, because he was looking around -- we had the songs. We had the musicians. He said, "We've got to find the right producer." After he said that for about a month, I said, "Oh, for God's sake, just produce it. You know what you want to hear, you know me, you know the songs." And I trust his ear. And that really is key -- one of the main keys to how this record came out.

Joan on her musical beginnings... (1:01, mp3)

Q: Do you know about what year it was when you -- as you said, you rediscovered music?

A: Well, I hired Mark 13 years ago. And I hired him because it was literally a two o' clock in the morning wake-up. I was working on an album, a beautiful album, which -- and I suddenly thought, well, why am I making this album if nobody but my family's going to hear it. I had no machinery. I had no record company that was going to do anything for it. I had no management. I had -- really, I had let it all just slide. And so I had a decision, really. I mean, I could stop then. But I knew the voice was still there and the impulse to sing and to put it out there was still there. And so I started looking for management. So it was a decision to make some kind of turn.

And then when I started working with him, I think I came to the decision very clearly that I couldn't go running off. And, you know, doing projects, political activism. I did one major one, which is going to Sarajevo, which I couldn't resist, because I was asked by the people of Sarajevo to give a concert. And aside from that, I didn't leave much. You know, I'm connected with all sorts of organizations and all sorts of projects and activists. And that's just a given. But I really did manage to say no for a number of years.

It turned out the music -- in order to be heard and in order to get a foothold again, it took 24 hours a day. Because it's fine being a legend, but nobody really wants to deal with you, until they hear. When they heard what I could do, then it made a difference. But then any record company knew what they had to fight to get me out there. So we had a number of records that each time I gained a little... a little... what would you call it?

Q: Momentum?

A: Momentum for me, yeah. And the freshness stays and the audience gets a little bigger and certainly gets livelier. And that's just happened gradually. And then I think that "Dark Chords..." is some kind of different perspective.

Q: The songs on "Dark Chords on a Big Guitar", as we mentioned, are all written by different writers. When you choose to sing a song, how do you make it your own? Do you listen to the original a bunch of times and then form your own ideas?

A: I listen as few times as possible, so that I don't imitate. And then I drop what I heard and start -- by then, I've picked up the chords or if it's complicated, I get a friend to do that for me. I'll arrange it so that I can play the guitar and whatever minimal thing I need and start - start learning the song and putting it together from the start.

Q: The first song we're going to listen to from "Dark Chords on a Big Guitar" is the first song on the album, Greg Brown's Sleeper. It may be the happiest song on here.

A: Okay everybody, get happy 'cause here it comes!

Q: It's surreal and dreamy, though don't you think?

A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SONG: SLEEPER

Q: We are literally at home with Joan Baez, listening to songs from her new CD, "Dark Chords on a Big Guitar". And that was Greg Brown's Sleeper. One of a couple of Greg Brown songs that you chose to cover here. That line of Greg's "You move through my dream like a trout moves through a pool," I always figured you had to fish to sing those songs. Do you fish?

A: No, but I've managed to put myself in other people's heads for 40 some years now. So I guess I didn't have to fish.

Q: You have to be somewhat of an actress to do that, to put yourself in other people's heads, don't you?

A: I don't know about that. Maybe. I mean, maybe. But being an actress, for real, like doing the Circus gig that I did where I was somebody else with a blond wig and French accent, that was very different to me. I felt as though I'd been me for over 40 years. And I was taking a break by being somebody else. So I don't -- it comes out me, whatever machinery it goes through. I'm not sure what the process is in changing a song that somebody's written and sung on a demo or on a record and going through this machinery and me and coming out mine. I feel that it's mine or we wouldn't use it.

Q: Just ever so briefly, you alluded to the Circus gig. And I'm not even going to try -- you were -- I will try. La Contessa ZinZanni --

A: That's correct.

Q: -- at Teatro ZinZanni.

A: ZinZanni.

Q: ZinZanni.

A: Yes.

Q: So this was like an interactive dinner?

A: Absolutely. It's so strange. 'Cause there's just no real way to describe it. But picture, if you will, an elaborate merry-go-round with the flaps down and 300 people fit in it. And then no horses and that. But that's kind of the feeling. It's got gold poles. It's got tables. There's a small stage in the center and these tables are all around it. And there are five courses to the meal. And you're served for three and a half hours. And during that entire time, there's either what we called animation, where you're interacting with people, magicians going around doing tricks. They stopped them from lighting a fire on somebody's chest, which he used to do. I can't -- it's hard for me to describe. You know, the fire-eating and the juggling. And then when people were slowing down with that course, then they have an act. I mean it's either the tissue, I mean the Cirque De Soleil where you…somebody comes down from the ceiling from not a rope but a cloth. And the magician does all sorts of insane things. And there's a fifth generation trio of French aristocrats, literally, who split off from their family and then were disowned. And they start on the road as a Circus. And they foot-juggle. They get down into these little contraptions. Their feet are in the air and they literally one of them at one point juggles his brother around in circles and up and down.

And I was the hostess. I was (adopts an Italian accent) Madam ZinZanni. Welcome to Teatro ZinZanni, Ladies and Gentlemen. I am Madam Contessa. I am Madam La Contessa ZinZanni. But you can call me Madam La Contessa ZinZanni if you like.

Q: So you haven't been stretching at all. That's a shame. You're just doing the same old thing.

A: Same old, same old.

Q: You literally finished this run this month, right? You just did --

A: Yeah, I just finished.

One thing that's been going on of late as well, is your early records are being reissued by Vanguard in these beautifully expanded editions. All 13 albums between 1960 and '72. The first handful or so had purely acoustic instrumentation. And then you expanded the palette. The original versions of some of the songs you do on "Dark Chords on a Big Guitar" were very acoustic. Then you made them densee and very textured. I guess we talked a little bit about that. It just sort of evolved that way...

A: -- the way the music came out? Yeah. When it started to evolve, there were a couple of times when it could have gone just acoustic, Christmas in Washington. And something was -- something didn't work. We pushed it all back into whatever we would call that context, we just pushed them all back in there. And at first I said "Oh I don't want any drums on Christmas in Washington, that's sacred." And then it didn't sound right. I mean, it just didn't move me. It didn't move itself. And so we kind of put it back with the dark chords.

Q: You were using -- or I was using the actress analogy a little bit to talk about interpreting songs. And the production is sort of a painting process. And you do painting. Did you feel a similarity there?

A: Never thought of that. But it was completely impromptu. "Okay, let's do this one next. Whoopee." And then I would take a walk in the snow while they tuned their instruments and got some kind of idea. And then I'd come back and I'd give them the key I needed or I'd sit around -- something sounded to me blatantly that it wasn't going to work then I'd say so. For this particular record, it was like a ride. It was like coasting on some kind of ride. I love my musicians. I love - well George Javori is just extraordinary, the drummer. And he has a youthfulness that makes things double fresh to me. I mean, I could take -- with his drumming alone -- I've done poetry, actually to his drumming. I could do early songs, I could do songs that I never thought I would do with him, just because of whatever he brings to it. So that's a part of the key on this.