And Then What Happened?: Life lessons from Joan Baez

NAN PARATI

Joan Baez performs in Albany, N.Y., in 2016. Greenfield Recorder columnist Nan Parati reflects on how Baez knows how to connect us, through music, through her poetry and through the power of making every one of us feel as though we are very special. COURTESY PHOTO/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

By NAN PARATI

For the Recorder

Published: 08-18-2024 10:01 AM

It was 1986, my second year writing stage signs with the performers’ names on them for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. I had my signboard spread out over the picnic table I was using for a desk, there, at the festival, when an older Cajun man ambled up with a friend of his and they stood for a while, watching me write my signs.

These days, I write more than 3,000 signs for the Jazz Fest every year. I don’t know how many I wrote back in those early days, but it was enough for the man to turn to his friend and expound, “Dis is a sign-writin’ mother-fr!” which kind of made me proud, and gave me the tagline for my business card, ever after.

At the picnic table next to the one I was working on sat Joan Baez, just hanging out, listening to the music swirling around her. Aaron Neville strolled up and sat down at Joan’s table to talk to her, and the two of them attracted plenty of attention as person after person came up to tell Joan that she was their heroine, that she was the person who had turned them on to folk music and that she was the sole reason they were a musician today. Aaron was exciting, but we saw him all the time in New Orleans. This was Joan Baez who, in those days, was as electrifying as seeing Bob Dylan, who had been her significant other back in the 1960s, would have been.

Joan reacted with honest gratitude to every single one of the wide-eyed, gushing fans who lavished her with awe-struck adulation, thanking them with such love that I recognized from my table 12 feet away that every single admirer walked away from that encounter believing they were the first person who had ever told her that, so kind and genuine was she in her responses. And I, a young’un just starting out in the world of Anything-Can-Happen-In-Life, thought to myself, “That is true grace. If Joan Baez (who I adored as much as the approachers did) can spread the kind of joy that makes everyone she meets feel as though they have made as much of a difference in her life as she has in theirs, then we can all do that.” And I set the afternoon’s experience on the shelf of “Important Life Lessons” where it spoke to me throughout my life.

I’m still a festival sign-writin’ motherfr, 38 years later, and my last two weekends were spent writing signs at the Newport Folk and Jazz festivals, where thrilling guests of all historical ages show up to draw those crowds to their highest heights. And who turned up to read her poetry? Joan Baez herself, 83 now and not singing solo as much as she used to, but no less enchanting in her presence as she sang along with Hozier, Mavis Staples and Taj Mahal on the main stages, and read her poetry to us on the more intimate ones.

No separating picnic tables this time, I’ve progressed far enough along in my own backstage career that I was able to approach Joan and ask her if she would grace me with her autograph on the stage sign I’d written with her name on it for the festival. As she wrote, we talked about life and history and how we’d gotten to that moment. We talked about our own working styles and she gave me a huge hug, looking at me and laughing that we were quite alike in our ways. And then I told her my Joan Baez life lesson of grace, the one I’d learned from her 38 years ago in New Orleans. She hugged me again, laid her head on my shoulder and said, “Thank you so much for telling me that. I needed it right now.”

I felt so heard and so seen by Joan Baez, that I then stopped and laughed and thought, “MAN she’s good!” And then I went on back to work, feeling happy and good about myself.

Yup, that’s how good she is. But she’s good because she’s genuine in her grace. But, even knowing that that kind of grace is just her particular superpower, I still felt embraced enough by her to want to tell you this story and to keep that lesson I learned from her all those years ago high on my shelf, as nothing makes you feel better than connection does. And Joan Baez knows how to connect us, through music, through her poetry and through the power of making every one of us feel as though we are someone very special in life.

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