Singer-songwriter Judy Collins returns to MACC on Friday
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Sill captivating audiences performing around 100 shows a year at age 87, legendary singer-songwriter Judy Collins will return to the Maui Arts & Cultural Center on Friday with a lifetime of music and stories to share.
The "Sweet Judy Blue Eyes Farewell Tour" takes its name from Stephen Stills' iconic 1969 song "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," which he composed for Collins, immortalizing their love affair.
When Stills played it for her on her 30th birthday, Collins responded, "It's a beautiful song, but it's not going to get me back."
Longtime friends, they finally recorded an album together, "Everybody Knows," that revived songs from their individual works. Along with versions of Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country" and Sandy Denny's "Who Knows Where the Time Goes," the album included Collins' new original "River of Gold," and a song Stills wrote many years ago for her titled "Judy."
Following the album's release, "we did a tour of 115 shows in a year and a half," she recalled. "They were all in the states. He wouldn't travel overseas or to Honolulu, but we had a great time."
Raised in Denver, Collins began performing in local clubs before moving to New York in the early 1960s to become a bright light in the city's mushrooming folk scene. Bob Dylan was one of her contemporaries, and by her Grammy-nominated third album in 1963, she began recording Dylan songs, including a version of "Masters of War."
It was another legendary composer, Leonard Cohen, who encouraged her to start writing her own songs, and she had a hit with Cohen's song "Suzanne." It was Collins who "discovered" him.
"I got to know him through a friend of mine," she explained. "One of his friends that he grew up with in Canada called me, and she told me that he couldn't figure out what he was doing. She said, 'Leonard wants to come to see you and play you his songs.' And I said, 'Are they obscure?' which is what he had said about them before. So he came to my apartment. He said to me, 'I can't write and I can't sing, and I don't know if this is a song.' And then he sang me 'Suzanne.' Can you imagine? I said, 'I'm recording that tomorrow,' which I did. It was suddenly all over the airwaves, and people said, 'It's wonderful.' Everybody knows it now."
Cohen inspired her to compose her own material. "He encouraged me to write my own songs, which was the real gift from him."
Collins' breakthrough came in 1967 with Joni Mitchell's song "Both Sides, Now," which earned her a Grammy. Mitchell had sung her song over the phone to Collins after a mutual friend connected them.
A version of the gospel song "Amazing Grace" brought her another hit in the early 1970s, and she enjoyed great success with her version of Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns." The song earned her a Grammy nomination, and Sondheim won song of the year.
Over the years her repertoire has expanded to range from Broadway standards and Beatles' classics to country music.
In recent years, Collins has been creatively prolific, earning praise for her 2015 album "Strangers Again," which featured duets with friends like Willie Nelson, Michael McDonald and Jackson Browne. She also was nominated for a Grammy for "Silver Skies Blue," where she collaborated with singer-songwriter Ari Hest.
Performing for over six decades, Collins can still enchant audiences with a voice that sounds as ethereal and emotive as ever.
The New York Times proclaimed Collins "the ageless wild angel of pop." If there is a secret to her longevity, she said in an earlier Maui News interview, "I have good genes and I take good care of myself. I don't drink, I don't smoke and I don't scream."
Sober for 47 years, she wrote a poem in Hawaii that she turned into the song "Spellbound," reflecting on her life when she was drinking. "Windy day in Honolulu," it opens, and continues, "Dark dreams, haunted sunlit days, While I drank down rum and hope. Now I live, and I am spellbound."
The title song of her most recent 2022 album, "Spellbound," marked her first album of all original songs. "I haven't made an album since then, but I'm doing an album of duets, which is coming out probably in 2027," she said.
Accompanied by a piano player at the Maui show, she promises a career retrospective with "some new songs, like 'Girl in Colorado,' and other songs that you'll recognize, so it should be a good show."
Collins will perform at 7:30 p.m. Friday in the Castle Theater. Tickets are $37-$77 at mauiarts.org with a limited number of premiere seats for $137.