“Both Sides Now – A Tribute to Joni Mitchell” at Caffe Lena on Saturday, November 4th

Sara Ayers calls Both Sides Now: Songs of Joni Mitchell Saturday at Caffe Lena “a love letter from ardent fans.”

A Mitchell fan by 12, Ayers is among area artists Michael Eck invited into the Caffe’s all-star Mitchell tribute as the durable folk, rock and jazz pioneer turns 80.

Others performing Saturday, starting at 8 p.m.: Kate McDonnell, Rosanne Ranieri, Buggy Jive, Kate McKrell, Angelina Valente and organizer Eck himself. Both Eck and Ayers are members of the Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Awards Hall of Fame, and Buggy Jive is a multiple Eddie Award winner. 

The show is sold out, but we all can still get “in” by live-streaming via the Caffe’s three-camera well-engineered set-up. https://caffelena.tv/programs/live-both-sides-now-joni-mitchell-tribute?category_id=94013

In the Caffe’s concert announcement, Eck wrote, “When Mitchell appeared at last year’s Newport Folk Festival with Brandi Carlile, it affirmed once again just how important a force she is in the music world—endlessly inventive melodically, endlessly searching lyrically, and endlessly inspiring in every way.”

Caffe Executive Director Sarah Craig agreed, writing in that announcement, “Joni has re-emerged to stir idealism and hope, which is exactly the spirit Caffè Lena wants to foster. This slate of top-tier regional talent, including some rarely seen artists, proves how much pull Joni has on both musicians and fans these days.”

As one of those talents tugged onto the Caffe stage, Ayers explained Mitchell’s pull last week. “I was struck by her crystalline voice and those weird guitar tunings,” she said. To Ayers, Mitchell’s voice resembled Joan Baez and Judy Collins; but “The guitar was utterly unique to my ears,” she said. “She’s never gotten enough credit for her innovative guitar playing.”

“I was twelve years old, and some friends had the first three albums,” said Ayers. They’d listen and gaze at the album covers, for hours. “We all wanted to BE her!”

Ayers said, “Her early recordings are fairly high pitched, but the songs are okay to sing if you can transpose them down a bit.” She said, “A lot of the later works, with their jazzy pyrotechnics, are just too difficult for me to wrap my brain around.” 

The first Mitchell song Ayers learned to sing was “The Circle Game,” she said, although “I probably learned it from the Buffy Sainte-Marie version.” She said, “I remember figuring out ‘Michael from Mountains’ by repeatedly dropping the (phonograph) needle on the track on the ‘Song to a Seagull’ album.”

While admiration inspired Ayers to learn Mitchell’s songs, it also nudged her back onstage. A reluctant performer, she did perform recently in Kaleidoscope: A Sonic Journey at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. She’s also played Caffe Lena. “I played a solo set on a split bill with Elizabeth Woodbury’s Jupiter Trio in January, 2002; and the Dust Bowl Faeries, a band in which I played keyboards, did a three-song set as part of one of the Murder Ballads fundraisers (another Eck project) on October 26, 2013.

Earlier, she played in Albany punk bands, starting with the Dailtones in 1979, then Real Danger, AKA/etc. (where I first saw her, at JB Scott’s), New Shiny Things and Bang Zoom. 

“It was a great time in the music scene here,” she said, “so many venues to play.” She started working solo in her home studio in 1984. “And then I didn’t perform live again until 1995, for a Grrr Records showcase for (her album) ‘A Little Nip.’” Altogether, Ayers has released eight solo albums, contributed to 14 compilations and 14 collaborations, from punk bands to fellow studio hermits around the world.

Ayers also got busy as a respected, in-demand website crafter and designer, and co-publisher of www.nippertown.com with husband Greg Haymes, who died in April 2019.

“The last time I performed live was with the Dust Bowl Faeries in 2014,” said Ayers. “The last time I performed solo might have been Larkfest in 2004.”

She’s picked a seriously high-profile comeback among top area troubadours who chose among Mitchell’s songs by first come, first served.  

“Once someone called dibs on a song and cleared it with Michael Eck, that song was taken,” she said. Choosing tunes “was a nice opportunity to take another spin through her catalog again and be wowed once again.”

Asked if collaborations might develop, she would only say, “That would be telling, but there ARE collaborations in the works.”

Asked to elaborate on her admiration for Mitchell, Ayers said “She never stopped evolving her composing skills, and a lot of her songs are so idiosyncratic, bordering on the eccentric. She fearlessly followed her muse. I can’t think of another popular artist that compares in that regard.

“She was innovative and unique and hardheaded, and she forged her career pretty much by herself at a time when that was pretty much unheard of,” Ayers said, 

“She was a trailblazer for women and a stellar example of following one’s own musical path and peculiarities.”

Mitchell’s “weird guitar tunings…”

…earned the admiration of jazz strings-master Pat Metheny, a member of her 1970s L.A. Express collaboration jazz band. Metheny told my friend and Knickerbocker News music reviewing colleague Steve Webb after a Tanglewood show that he was knocked out by her inventive and highly original guitar tunings and playing. 

Meanwhile, and this is confession time, I made my biggest blunder ever in choosing which of two competing shows to attend. I went to SPAC instead that night, to see KC and the Sunshine Band, an expert but creatively negligible disco outfit. 

Struggling with a cold, KC sang like an over-medicated otter, even then making me wonder “Why am I not at Tanglewood seeing Joni Mitchell and her crew of killer jazz cats?” 

Not that her evening was perfect either, at least for Metheny. After the break, stage security wouldn’t let the long-haired, boyish guitarist backstage; he looked too young.