Sweet Relief Announces Benefit Concert Honoring Joan Baez

Sweet Relief Musicians Fund has unveiled the details for a benefit concert celebrating Joan Baez on Feb. 8 in San Francisco. Musicians helping honor the legacy of the esteemed folk singer include Emmylou Harris, Hozier, Rosanne Cash, Margo Price and Bonnie Raitt.

“So happy to be a part of celebrating my dear friend Joan Baez!” Harris said in a statement.

The event takes place at the Masonic Auditorium.

Additional performers include Tom Morello, Joe Henry, Lucinda Williams, and Taj Mahal, with surprise guests and additional artists to be announced shortly. Baez herself will also take the stage. The house band for the evening includes Joe Henry, Jason Crosby, Greg Leisz, Gabe Harris and David Piltch.

Tickets go on sale Dec. 20. The event supports the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, which provides services and financial assistance for career musicians and music industry professionals. The organization gives out grants for “medical and vital living expenses, including insurance premiums, prescriptions, medical treatment and operative procedures, housing costs, food costs, utilities, and other basic necessities.”

“We’re beyond thrilled to celebrate 30 years of Sweet Relief while honoring the great Joan Baez and her amazing career,” Aric Steinberg, Executive Director at Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, said. “Joan has supported our charity for many years, and it’s a privilege to honor her this year alongside so many incredible artists. It will be a night to remember and I’m so grateful to Joan and all of the performers who will help ensure that our music community continues to have Sweet Relief as a resource for emergency financial assistance.”

Musical Director Joe Henry added, “Joan Baez is a mountain on our landscape, and has been for the entirety of my lifetime. As much as any artist I know, she has dismantled the wall between public artistry and personal conviction —investing each with the other, to create a body of work that, in the words of Woody Guthrie, “comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable. What a singular honor, then, for all of us to gather in honor of her —and to benefit the heroic organization Sweet Relief, that provides financial assistance to musicians in health crises. Come February 8th at San Francisco’s historic Masonic Auditorium —in her name, and in these wicked times— we will raise our voices as Joan has.”

Baez was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2017. A write-up on the Rock Hall’s website declares, “Joan Baez breathed new life into folk music in the 1960s, powering rock music’s turn toward social and political consciousness. Baez’s unwavering dedication to activism shows that volume isn’t the only way to be loud—and totally rock and roll.”

Her other accolades over the years include a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2007 Grammys and the John Steinbeck Award for her civil rights activism. She was also honored by Amnesty International for her “outstanding, inspirational service in the global fight for human rights.”

Baez’s most recent album is 2018’s Down the Wind. She hasn’t toured regularly since 2019 but she’s made one-off appearances including 2024’s Newport Folk Festival in July. That month she also took the stage at the the Jane Pickens Theater & Event Center in Newport, Rhode Island, to discuss her new poetry collection, “When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance,” with poet Hanif Abdurraqib.

Her agent in North America is High Road Touring’s Frank Riley.