Label: Razor & Tie Sound/Style: Subtle update of classic, topical ‘60s folk music
By Steve Morley
Joan Baez pierced the American mass consciousness in 1963 with her stirring version of “We Shall Overcome.” Its performance just before Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech cemented the tune’s association with the Civil Rights Movement. Her hits have been few, but she’s an institution whose influence is reflected by virtually every artist who attempts meaningful commentary on human rights. Her recently released 50th anniversary album, Day After Tomorrow, contains the proof—most of its 10 tracks evoke the Joan Baez of decades ago, though all were written by latter-day songwriters who could be considered her musical offspring. The burnished sound of Baez’s formerly strident soprano only adds to this timely convergence of singer and songs.
Producing the collection is country music expatriate Steve Earle, who astutely composed and selected material evoking the original Scottish, Irish and English balladry that marked Baez’s early and most enduring work. “Henry Russell’s Last Words,” based on actual notes scrawled in coal by a victim of a 1927 mining disaster, captures the preciousness of life as only the dying can express it. The song focuses on the impending afterlife, a theme as literal in this lyric as it is figurative elsewhere on the disc, which taps into the heaven-bound symbolism so common to the Civil Rights repertoire. “The Lower Road” cites a litany of offenses from racism to domestic abuse but presses on along the path of suffering, presumably towards eventual glory. Producer Earle’s “Jericho Road” carries the notion an extra mile, as does the more openly inspiring “I Am a Wanderer,” a ringer for early ‘60s folksinger fare. In the song’s humanitarian lyric, the singer identifies with—and stands in representation of—the downtrodden, admitting to idealism but remaining steadfast to the cause of dignity for all persons. (“I am a prisoner pacing my cell/ three steps and back in my corner of Hell/ Lock me away and you swallow the key/ But someday I shall be free.”)
“Requiem,” a song about the mother of Jesus, draws from Catholic traditions with its reverent, Virgin-directed prayers, while Patty Griffin’s composition “Mary” provides contrast. Using imagery that is perhaps more Protestant-derived, the song marvels at the way Mary’s life touched the divine but was rooted in the mundane. (“Jesus says, ‘Mother, I couldn't stay another day longer’/ Flies right by me and leaves a kiss upon her face/ While the angels are singin' his praises in a blaze of glory/ Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place.”)
Baez stretches even further beyond typical folk song theology on “God Is God,” which seems to express a literal need for divine guidance. (“…Every day that passes I’m sure about a little bit less/ Even my money keeps tellin’ me it’s God I need to trust/ And I believe in God…but God ain’t us.”)
This rubs against the humanistic-leaning sentiments in old standbys like “We Shall Overcome,” a song Baez no longer performs, she says, because she’s no longer confident we will. This shift of mindset is subtle but discernable in the introspective strains of Day After Tomorrow, which proudly waves the human-rights banner for future generations even as it allows that the answers aren’t as clear as they once appeared to be.
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