["We need a song that transcends the moment instead of leaving us
to have to live in that feeling of despair and horror and hunger and
human suffering,” Collins said.” We have to be given something to
lift us over that and through that.”]
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JUDY COLLINS TALKS RESOLUTIONS, WAR, AND KEEPING IT ALL TOGETHER  
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Ray Roa
January 3, 2024
Creative Loafing
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_ "We need a song that transcends the moment instead of leaving us to
have to live in that feeling of despair and horror and hunger and
human suffering,” Collins said.” We have to be given something to
lift us over that and through that.” _

Judy Collins, who plays Bilheimer Capitol Theatre in Clearwater,
Florida on Jan. 18, 2024, Photo by Shervin Lainez. Design by Joe
Frontel

 

It’s been 58 years since Leonard Cohen told Judy Collins
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wasn’t writing her own songs. Just 27 years old at the time, she was
on the way to recording some of his—popularizing “Suzanne,”
“Priests,” “Dress Rehearsal Rag,” and others along the
way—but until that moment, she’d never thought to do it.

So Collins went home, sat at her Steinway, and wrote “Since You’ve
Asked” in 40 minutes. The tune appeared on the first side of her
1967 album, _Wildflowers
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sandwiched between Joni Mitchell’s “Michael from Mountains” and
Cohen’s “Sisters Of Mercy.” The album is Collins’ highest
charting collection of songs to date, but in early-2022 she finally
released her first album of all-original music, _Spellbound
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which earned the 84-year-old her seventh Grammy nomination.

In recent years, Collins has been writing nearly one song every week,
and she thinks Cohen, who died in 2016 at the age of 82, would’ve
loved her latest record.

“I would send him songs when I wrote them, and he would send me
notes and tell me how wonderful they were. So I was always
grateful,” Collins told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “His
friendship helped me out. He inspired me with that first question. He
got me going. And then after that, it was up to me, of course.”

And after a Christmas holiday where she received books, a couple
ornaments (fireman Santa Claus, microphone), a candle in a butterfly
container (“I love butterflies”) and scarves (“They cozy me up
on the road and they help me get through things”), Collins—whose
voice soundtracked the highs and lows of an entire generation—is
looking ahead. She kicks off a 20-date winter tour next week in
Orlando, and brings it to Tampa Bay later this month.

Collins even has a few resolutions for the new year.

Some of them, in her own words: _Work harder. Keep on the edge.
Forgive, forgive, forgive. Delight in the present. Keep your weight
steady. Do your exercises and your bone strengthening. Take care to
think of all your relatives and friends every day; try to pray for
them in this difficult time._

“It’s always a difficult time on this planet. I don’t know how
we get by, or what we’re supposed to do, but hang in here and try to
exist and survive,” she said.
Art, she added, can help to that end. Oftentimes art has also
chronicled her own survival.

“Mama Mama,” [[link removed]] born
in the wake of Roe v. Wade, followed Collins’ signing of an open
letter where she and 52 other American women including Nora Ephron and
Billie Jean King wrote, “We Have Had Abortions.”
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year after Roe was overturned, Collins doesn’t have an answer for
why men remain so obsessed with telling women what to do.  “Why
does it have to be so hard?,” she asked. Working through the answer,
Collins noted that maybe war, and fighting, and anger and ferocity is
part of our planet and life.

While forgiveness is doable for her, one of the hardest things for
Collins—a leading activist voice in folk music—is expressing how
vehemently she is opposed to war. She usually deploys a Pete Seeger or
Woody Guthrie song to help and regularly sings “Masters Of War,”
but the Bob Dylan track that Collins recorded for her 1964
album _Judy Collins 3_, won’t be in the setlist at The Cap this
time around.

“Since this disaster in the Middle East, I’m not singing it. I
just can’t even bear it. It’s too painful. I don’t want to take
people to that place in the moment,” she explained. Instead, she
said that “Amazing Grace” or “Imagine” by John Lennon might
help.

"We need a song that transcends the moment instead of leaving us to
have to live in that feeling of despair and horror and hunger and
human suffering. We don’t have to live that through a concert,”
Collins said.” We have to be given something to lift us over that
and through that.”

Overcoming is not a new concept for Collins. After quitting cigarettes
in the ‘70s, she developed an eating disorder. Like her father,
alcohol was her drug of choice for a long time. She’s even
chronicled those struggles in books, and has been sober since April
20, 1978. Like her dad—a blind singer, pianist, and radio show
host—Collins remained disciplined and happy through it all. To this
day, her own family calls Collins a cockeyed optimist, but in her view
there aren’t many choices outside of looking forward.

Even among all the chaos and destruction, there has to be something
beyond today that will turn out well. She offered the aftermath of a
forest fire as an example.

“The next spring, all the wildflowers come bursting out dancing
around in their colors and their shapes and their shifts,” Collins
said. “We have to look beyond the depths into what can be the
brightness of the outcome.”

So as she marches towards her 85th birthday this summer, Collins
offered thoughts on how to survive the year and life in general.

“I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, except that I
do know that it’s one day at a time,” she said. Getting through
your own battles and your own struggles with a degree of kindness,
gentleness, and understanding is the ideal.

“If you can’t see that on the planet, you have to do it in your
life,” Collins added. “To show gentleness, to show respect, to
show forgiveness, to be an even handed neighbor and friend—the
kindness to one another is essential."

_Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January
2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became
Editor-In-Chief in August 2019.  Past work can be seen at Suburban
Apologist, Tampa Bay Times, Consequence of Sound and The Daily
Beast. _

_Creative Loafing Tampa Bay is committed to keeping our print and
digital products free, and now we’re asking the community we serve
to support the local journalism you deserve and have come to expect.
This campaign has been in the works for some time, but present
circumstances have increased our urgency. Once this passes, we want to
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TO, PLEASE JOIN THE CREATIVE LOAFING TAMPA BAY PRESS CLUB
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* Judy Collins
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* Leonard Cohen
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* peace
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* abortion rights
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* hope
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* folk music
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