Koch Records
2003
Dark Chords On A Big Guitar
About This Album
Six years is a long time to go between albums, especially for an artist who has recorded as sporadically as Joan Baez has over the last decade-and-a-half. And while her last outing, Gone From Danger, with songs by Dar Williams, Richard Shindell, and other contemporary singer/songwriters, was a milestone for Baez, it was merely an appetizer for the depth and weight that is Dark Chords on a Big Guitar. Here Baez uses her uncanny gift for song selection to choose material from a different generation of songwriters. She's moved away from the precious New England types, and looked instead to the moodier, murkier, sketchier material by scribes who've been comfortable walking the edges for awhile: Greg Brown, Steve Earle, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Ryan Adams, Caitlin Cary, Joe Henry, Josh Ritter, and even chart-topper Natalie Merchant. Produced by Mark Spector, Baez used her road band on the album; it includes the criminally under-noticed Duke McVinnie on guitars. Brown's "Sleeper," with its quietly transcendent narrative of love's revelation, opens the record only to dovetail into the brokenness, desperation, and prayerful entreaty for love that is Adams' "In My Time of Need.
Track List (try tracks 1,2 and 5)

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