A Conversation with Judy Collins – HuffPost 3.31.14

Mike Ragogna: So this love affair with all things Ireland has been in your life for a very long time. When did you first become aware of Ireland beauty and history?

Judy Collins: I grew up with all of these songs, that was so extraordinary. My dad, who was such a great singer and a wonderful, wonderful performer had always sung the Irish songs. I grew up with them because they were in his repertoire. Not only he, but my godfather sang them, too. They sang “Danny Boy” and “If You Ever Go Across The Sea To Ireland” and “I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen,” and all those amazing songs, so they were there in my life. As a matter of fact, I was quite sure that they must be Rodgers & Hart because all of the other songs that he sang, except for ones that he wrote, were Great American Songbook songs. So they were there, and the first folk song that I knew was a folk song was played on the radio and sung by Jo Stafford which is kind of a weird history because I knew her as this great singer of the Great American Songbook, and there she was on the radio on the record made by herself and her husband Paul Weston singing the songs of Scotland and Ireland. So that lured me.

MR: Can you remember which Irish songs you learned first?

JC: Oh sure, “Danny Boy” naturally. I knew “Danny Boy” before I could walk, probably.

MR: Where does the passion and the connection you have to this come from?

JC: I think there’s a certain spirit of the Irish music, and of course you get to know all of the poets, I recorded William Butler Yeats’ “Song Of The Wandering Angus” on my second album. I think maybe that song was written by Burl Ives, the melody– I once asked Will Hope, from whom I heard it, “Did you write that?” He said, “No, no, I didn’t.” I think that Burl Ives probably wrote it, but during a time when people were afraid to take any kind of copyright rights on their versions of things that were considered either traditional or from other resources.

MR: Right. Do you look at how how Irish music has been passed down and evolved through the generations?

JC: I think that the Irish tradition has flooded into my own music, all kinds: the kinds I write, the kinds I listen to, I think it’s very much a part of pop music because I think the tradition of Irish song really entered into the mainstream of Irish music a long time ago. There are a lot of roots there that we don’t even know about which are hangovers from “Danny Boy” and “The Rose Of Tralee” and Molly Malone. I think they’re there whether we can see them or not.

MR: You have a few guests on this album, such as Mary Black, and you have Emily Ellis.

JC: Isn’t that wonderful? That’s on a song I wrote called “Grandaddy,” which is about one of my Irish grandfathers. She’s a lovely young woman, and Mary Black is a very famous singer of Irish songs, she’s known all over the world actually. She’s famous, she’s wonderful, she’s a gifted artist. I was lucky to get her on the show.

MR: There are a couple of songs you’re known for that are on this project, material like “Chelsea Morning” and “Amazing Grace.” But “Bird On A Wire”…it seems the Leonard Cohen songbook slips very nicely into this genre, as well as Harry Chapin’s “Cats In The Cradle.”

JC: I know! I think again that there is this tradition that seeped into Canadian songwriters, Leonard, of course, being the Canadian whose songs I’ve recorded the most of, but I do think the connections are very strong. With “Chelsea Morning,” Joni is another Canadian who had, I think, tremendous Irish influence in her writing and it’s different; it has a kind of freedom in the writing that is a little different. With Leonard, of course, it’s what charmed me into being able to write my own songs. There’s a new song of mine on this project called “New Moon Over The Hudson,” and that’s really about the Irish diaspora, but it also goes into my actual story. You know my father’s father’s fathers came from Ireland shores, and they fought in Lexington and also the Civil War on the Union side, by the way, and died for the country. That I was not really sure of until recently; I have a geneologist who helps me locate these pieces of history in my own background. I’m very happy with that song, I think it reflects something that I’ve always been getting at, which is that family bond of poetry and music and lineage that has always been there.

MR: It does seem to be entrenched in American culture more than it acknowledges.

JC: Yes, absolutely.

MR: Do you keep an eye on Ireland both culturally and politically?

JC: Well, to some extent. Of course, we know about Ireland’s troubles lately and about her troubles in the past and about her political problems and her history, I know all about her history. My father was so vehemently Irish that he didn’t want to hear the name England spoken in the house. He was rampantly anti-England, although he was half English himself. Go figure. But he was mad as hell and with good reason. Of course, now everyone is getting over that antipathy and getting along. I did have the experience of going to Quinnipiac University up in Connecticut. The University has the only museum of the art from the Irish Hunger in the world. It’s very powerful stuff, really deeply upsetting and disturbing, but also very beautiful.

MR: Have you ever been tempted to record a concept album around Ireland specifically?

JC: No, I haven’t, but maybe I will, who knows.

MR: I was just wondering if it’s tempting.

JC: Yeah, I think now we have to celebrate the music and the verse and the beauty of the Irish spirit over all and try to get beyond the antipathy and the rage of those years. It was brutal.

MR: There are other songs like “She Moved Through The Fair,” which depicts a different kind of Ireland.

JC: It’s the heart of Ireland, really, it’s the beauty of their ability to tell stories and to connect nature and music. It was so beautiful to be there in Dromore because it’s in County Clare, and it’s just a beautiful place. It’s so physically beautiful and that castle is just strikingly gorgeous. It’s funny because “The Gypsy Rover,” which I learned from the radio, I never did record it until too recently–it was at least forty years before I put it on a record of any kind. I think I put it on the Live At Wolf Trap album in 2000. I hadn’t recorded it in all the years that I had known it and that’s a funny thing because it talks about this young girl who runs off with a gypsy and when he reaches his home, it turns out he lives in a castle. So I finally got to the castle this time around.

MR: Ever since I saw that first shot of you with The Clintons, it’s seemed more and more like you’re a musical diplomat.

JC: [laughs] I think that’s true. You can say anything in music and you can say it any language and in any country without compromising either your dignity or your political integrity, I think that’s very true. It’s a fortunate mantle that either I developed or inherited or created or taken on or something, but it’s true. Music is the language of the heart and it travels very well.

MR: Are you watching younger artists and feeling this music is in good hands?

JC: Oh yes, and I have on my own label a number of artists who are honoring the tradition, people like Kenny White and Amy Speace who’s going on to other kinds of things, but she’s going to be in concert this year and so is Kenny White and Walter Parks and Ari Hest, who’s a marvelous young artist, he’s on the show of course doing a duet with me on one of his songs, “The Fireplace.” So I think yes, it’s in good hands and there are wonderful young artists writing about interesting and topical and certainly heartfelt new music about life and politics. Noel Stookey has this contest called “Songs To Life” and it focuses on politically sensitive songs and all kinds of wonderful things and I’m a judge on that, so every once in a while I’ll pull out a song like the one I sang on the last PBS special called “Veterans’ Day,” which is a duet with Kenny White. It’s about war and about veterans and about the universality of veterans and how everybody’s got a veteran in their culture, and they’re all on both the wrong side and the right side of history in a way, because they’re in conflicts which wind up being essentially human without any tag of nationality. That’s what we do, we fight and sometimes we win and sometimes we surrender and if we’re lucky we start to get to the negotiating table before we get to the battlefield which is to be deeply desired.

MR: What are your thoughts on the tensions between the US and Russia?

JC: Well, it just makes me sick. That’s how I feel about it. I think it’s pathetic and human and upsetting.

MR: Throwing a non-sequiter out there, what advice do you have for new artists?

JC: Be careful what you wish for. It’s the same advice I would give anybody in any arena of life, but I think it’s not for everybody, that’s for sure, but you have to do it of course if it’s your passion, but be prepared to miss lunch. To be a dreamer you have to be realistic and to be a dreamer whose dreams come true you have to be extremely fit, so keep your stuff together and don’t go too far out of bounds because the body that you’re singing with today might have to last your fifty years.

MR: Judy, are you still a dreamer after all of these years?

JC: Oh absolutely. Absolutely, in the biggest kind of way. I have very big dreams and I don’t miss lunch, but that’s because I really do prepare. I don’t let things take me by surprise.

MR: Well that’s perfect for my last question: What does the future hold for Judy Collins?

JC: Right now, I am deep in the throes of Stephen Sondheim songs. That’s the next big project for PBS.

MR: Judy, you also seem to be a PBS diplomat.

JC: [laughs] Oh, I love PBS. I’m bonded at the hip with PBS as we all are for all of the shows we want to watch, from Downton Abbey to The Eagles’ live reunion. They’re just the best. They do for music what we really need and they do it so well and at this point in our lives, most of the artists who survived the sixties and went on to thrive and concertize are the latchkey to the garden because they get music out for people. It’s hard to reach people now, there aren’t any music stores. I was in the Amoeba store in LA yesterday signing the new album and the new DVD and it’s huge. It’s acres and acres of DVDs and CDs and vinyl and every artist you’ve ever dreamed of seeing or hearing…and of course, they’re one of a kind. Those places don’t exist anymore, anywhere that I know of, anyway. So PBS is doing what we couldn’t for ourselves. It’s providing us with a platform and an avenue to get out to our audiences and we’re very grateful for that. I love PBS.

MR: It’s curious how they want to pull back funding from PBS periodically.

JC: Are you asking about why the government doesn’t support the arts?

MR: [laughs] There you go!

JC: [laughs] I look at the sixteen days that we didn’t have any government and I think my old friend Lingo the Drifter in Colorado used to have what he called his “Dormant Braincell Research Foundation Speech.” During those sixteen days, I thought I should go down to Washinton and give Congress that speech, because what a bunch of idiots, excuse my French. Where are their priorities and what are they thinking? I guess I don’t have to go too far to tell you where my politics lie.

MR: Beautiful. You’re very consistent after all these years.

JC: After it all, I am consistent.

Transcribed By Galen Hawthorne