It is 2024 now, or 2025 depending on how you look at the calendar of her grief and her joy, but Judy Collins is 87 years old. And she is still going. She has announced a “farewell tour” consisting of 50 dates running through next spring. She is not planning to stop. The label “farewell” suggests a period in time for her. A moment where she gathers everything she has done and shows people who she is now with guests by her side.
Joni Mitchell. Stephen Sondheim. Those are the songs that put her on the map. Both Sides Now is a definitive cover. Send in the Clowns is another one. But she wants to do duets with people she has not worked with recently. Or ever. The roster includes Richard Thompson. Bruce Cockburn. Mary Chapin Carpenter. Rosanne Cash. Some she has known for decades. Some she is just meeting on stage.
“I love Richard Thompson, of course,” Collins told HuffPost. She works with them often. “And also, Mary, Rosanne, Amanda [Plucker].” It is not about packing it in. It is about seeing what happens when these voices collide. She is calling it the “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes” tour. A nod to Crosby, Stills & Nash. Stephen Stills wrote it for her back when they were romantically linked. She ran the title by Stills for clearance. “You can’t copyright a title,” he told her. So she keeps the name. She still hopes Stephen shows up. Their last duet happened recently. It mattered.
Her husband Louis Nelson died at the end of 2004? No. End of 2024 he passed away. Louis was the designer of the Korean War Veterans memorial in D.C. They were friends for a long time. Stills knows Louis. He knows the family. When they performed “Helplessly Hoping” together on stage, Stills turned to the crowd and said, “She married the right man.” Collins was processing the death of her spouse while doing this. The moment stayed with her. She treasures it still.
Collins thinks she is the Betty White of folk revivalists. There are others. Bob Dylan. Paul McCartney. Willie Nelson. These artists stay on track for decades. They work into their 80s and 90s. They remain excited by the craft. Is that strange? Not to Collins.
“People who work love to work,” she says. It feels good to keep going. As long as the body holds out, she will keep performing. That is the main point. You don’t quit just because the label says “farewell.” It is just a phase.
Beyond the stage, Collins is writing. The project is a book called The Voice: Singing Through the Storm. It covers resilience. It covers music. It covers getting through hard times. She is also writing music for a Broadway play. A duets album is in the works. It will come out soon. She is always working. The work makes her happy. So the farewell tour is less a goodbye. It is a gathering. A chance to hear the voices of her youth meet the voices of now. And maybe, if Stephen Stills feels like it, he will sit at the piano one more time.
