Judy Collins is grateful for her five-decade career. She still looks forward to playing live, as she will on Saturday, Nov. 23, at the Fox Tucson Theatre.
“I’m always excited about my tour,” she said. “That’s what I do. That’s where I go to make a living. I see all kinds of things. I drive in cars and see a lot of the world.”
Her Fox Tucson Theatre show is dubbed “Judy Collins: Holiday & Hits Tour.” That’s exactly what fans will
get, too.
“We usually do some of the hit Christmas songs,” she said. “I have a version of ‘I’ll be Home for Christmas,’ ‘Good King Wenceslas,’ ‘The Cherry-Tree Carol,’ ‘Let It Snow,’ ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.’
“I do a lot of talking about my life growing up and the Christmases we had. I think it’s a real festival. I’ve always loved being around the tree. I will always have a Christmas tree with hundreds of gorgeous ornaments. I even bought a whole bunch of new ones. They’re packed up and ready to send out to my family and friends.”
She houses gifts — which she collects year-round — in a special closet in her home.
“I like the exchange of gifts,” she said. “It’s a very wholesome thing to do. I love going to hear the children’s choir sing on Christmas, on Christmas Eve.”
Besides holiday songs, Collins will perform tracks from her 55th album “Spellbound,” released on Feb. 25, 2022. The 13-song album marks the first time she has written all the songs on an album.
“It fits in very well,” she said about the songs in her catalog. “It’s the first time I’ve written all the songs on an album. It was a natural development from what I was doing with my poetry writing. I have a book of poetry coming out in March. It’s going to be here before I know it.”
Collins is a renaissance woman: an Academy Award-nominated documentary director and a Grammy Award-winning recording artist. She said she has kept her career fresh by exploring different genres, including folk, country, Broadway, pop, rock and standards.
Her first charting single was from her 1966 collection “In My Life” called “Hard Lovin’ Loser,” which hit No. 97. She became known worldwide after releasing “Both Sides Now,” a tune penned by Joni Mitchell. The song landed at No. 8 on the Billboard pop singles chart and won Collins her first Grammy for best folk performance.
Collins’ biggest success was found with Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” from her 10th studio album “Judith” (1975). The track spent 27 non-consecutive weeks on the charts. This time, she earned a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Vocal Performance. Sondheim won Song of the Year.
In 2017, her version of the song “Amazing Grace” was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or artistically significant.”
The accolades kept coming. Also in 2017, she received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Folk Album for “Silver Skies Blue” with Ari Hest. Her first No. 1 album was 2019’s “Winter Stories,” a duet album with Norwegian singer, songwriter and guitarist Jonas Fjeld featuring Chatham County Line.
Collins, 85, said it’s been easy for her to remain passionate as she “lives and breathes music. It’s in my soul. That’s what I do and it’s part of my DNA for sure.”
Judy Collins
WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 23
WHERE: Fox Tucson Theatre,
17 W. Congress Street, Tucson
COST: Tickets start at $27.50
INFO: foxtucson.com
