Joan Baez - Dark Chords on a Big Guitar (2003)

Though she was earliest known as a folk traditionalist, Joan Baez has long been recognized for her good taste in contemporary songcraft. Four decades after introducing the young Bob Dylan to a wider listenership, she here finds kindred spirits in a range of artists from Greg Brown ("Sleeper," "Rexrith's Daughter") to Gillian Welch and David Rawlings ("Caleb Meyer," "Elvis Presley Blues") to Natalie Merchant (whose "Motherland" could have been written made to order for Baez) to young Josh Ritter ("Wings"). Her empathic version of the standout "In My Time of Need" by Ryan Adams shows that whatever she's lost in the upper register of her soprano, she's gained in the interpretive depth of her lower register. She also covers the comparatively quirky "Rosemary Moore" by Adams' former Whiskeytown bandmate, Caitlin Cary. Though the closing "Christmas in Washington" finds her pristine vocal smoothing the emotional rough edges from Steve Earle's original, most of the rest finds her not only selecting inspired material, but doing justice to it. --Don McLeese