Yay – I’m playing a gig with Sally’s special Sunday afternoon gig here at The Musician. A great venue!  It is “Sally Barker sings Joni Mitchell & Sandy Denny.” I love those songs.

Did you know Sally broke her wrist earlier this year? Well I’m going to help her out by playing instruments at this gig as her wrist is still hurty and I might do some singing too.

Singer/Songwriter Sally Barker, Tom Jones’ Finalist in the Voice, presents an afternoon of songs by Sandy Denny and Joni Mitchell. Local singer Sally has thrilled audiences for aeons, reducing Tom Jones to tears with her version of Nina Simone’s ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’ in the Blind Auditions of The Voice 2014 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_FqFsu-gsQ). See Sally sing Sandy’s ‘Rising for the Moon’ with Fairport Convention here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKJhSM1g3WU & venture here for Sally’s version of Joni’s ‘Coyote’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A57A3GTQxU8

Sandy Denny, writer of ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes’, is best known as the lead singer of the British folk rock band Fairport Convention and duetted with Robert Plant on ‘The Battle of Evermore’ for Led Zeppelin’s album Led Zeppelin IV in 1971. A four album solo career followed her briefly-lived band Fotheringay (with husband Trevor Lucas). Her distinctive songwriting style and treatment of traditional folk repertoire is evident on four solo albums: ‘The North Star Grassman and the Ravens’, ‘Sandy’, ‘Like an Old Fashioned Waltz’, and ‘Rendezvous’ before her untimely death in 1978 at the age of 31. Music publications Uncut and Mojo have called Denny Britain’s finest female singer-songwriter.

Canadian Joni Mitchell is a living legend. Joni’s 4th album ‘Blue’ is regarded as a masterpiece and the epitome of the confessional singer-songwriter genre. She became a darling of the Greenwich Village coffee house folk scene in the 60s with her enigmatic songs, often written on the guitar using open tunings. Artists such as Judy Collins, Dave Van Ronk, Tom Rush, Buffy St Marie and George Hamilton IV had hits with her songs before Dave Crosby took her to Los Angeles, introduced her to his manager and produced her first album, ‘Song to a Seagull’. Joni followed this with the self-produced ‘Clouds’, ‘Ladies of the Canyon’ and ‘Blue’. Successive albums (‘For the Roses’, ‘Court and Spark’, ‘The Hissing of Summer Lawns’, ‘Hejira’ and ‘Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter’) encompassed forays into pop, country and jazz. The 1979 album ‘Mingus’ divided critics and lost Joni her mainstream audience. Although her later work did not match the commercial success of her golden creative period between 1968 and ’79, her reputation as the most influential female recording artist of the late 20th century was assured. Joni recorded seven more albums of new music, the last being ‘Shine’ in 2007. A brain aneurysm in 2015 affected Joni’s speech and mobility but due to daily rehabilitation she is recovering, albeit slowly.