Features
Judy Collins Gathers Wildflowers
Richie Havens, Janis Ian, and Roger McGuinn will share the stage with Collins beginning July 12 at Westbury Music Fair New York. The tour is scheduled to stop in 23 cities during the summer and fall.
Collins is marking the 40th anniversary of the release of her first album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, recorded when the classically-trained pianist and songwriter was a mere 22 years old.
She has hardly slowed down with the passage of four decades; she still regularly performs a schedule of 60-80 concerts annually, many of which recently have been benefits for various causes including landmine eradication, UNICEF, and public radio and television.
Her musical companions on the Wildflower Festival outing share Collins’ niche in contemporary, socially-conscious music.
Havens emerged from the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s, and burst on the scene with a watershed performance at the Woodstock festival in 1969. Like Collins, Havens takes a keen interest in social and political causes, and continues to tour regularly.
Janis Ian made a name for herself in the early 1970s with the controversial saga of interracial love, “Society’s Child.” She continues to create vital music and update her folk roots, most recently with a very contemporary-sounding release, God and the FBI.
Ex-Byrd Roger McGuinn has probably the closest direct link to Collins – he played on one of her early albums, Judy Collins #3, and wrote his first arrangements of “Turn, Turn, Turn” for this album long before it helped make his later band famous.