Judy Collins – HuffPost 3.31.14

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

Judy Collins: 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: 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.