San Francisco - The first thing Joan Baez does is kick off her shoes. The legendary folk singer whose music career was cemented in the peace and counterculture movement of the 1960s and '70s has come to a jazz cafe in Palo Alto, California, to talk about her new CD, her upcoming European concert tour and the presumptive Democratic nominee for the US presidency, Barack Obama.
Baez is heading to Europe for 26 European performances starting June 29 and finishing October 13, with appearances in Britain, Germany, Switzerland, France, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, Ireland and Holland.
In Germany alone, starting July 2 in Bochum, she will visit six other cities: Dresden, Stuttgart, Trier, Magdeburg, Berlin and Hamburg. She'll also play at the Montreux Jazz Festival.
The mellow singer, whose famous long raven tresses are now short and grey, said in an interview that her German fans have always understood her songs. They also are younger and "smarter," she added, whispering with a hand over her mouth as if she were saying something her American fans were not permitted to hear.
The folk singer's first performance at Club 47 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, lies 50 years in the past. At the 1969 Woodstock Festival, she was a headliner with the protest song We Shall Overcome.
However, Baez counts a rainy concert tour through Germany among the highlights of her career, where the audience just put up umbrellas.
"It didn't make any difference it was raining. It was fantastic. We had a whole summer where every outside concert was in the rain," she said.
This time around Baez will play songs from her new album, The Day After Tomorrow, due out in September, in addition to her well-known classics. It will be her fist studio album since Dark Chords On A Big Guitar released in 2003.
The title has nothing to do with German-born director Roland Emmerich's 2004 movie about a climatologist who tries to figure out a way to save the world from melting ice and floods. Day After Tomorrow is the album's title song written by Tom Waits about a soldier's fears and the daily struggle to survive.
"Clearly it was written now - I suppose about Iraq or Afghanistan - but when a song is really good it's about all the wars. It's good and it's powerful and it is universal," she said.
Baez has always sung for the downtrodden, for love and against war. She marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr in the '60s. In 1979 she founded a human rights organization, and during the first Palestinian uprising she performed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 1989 she supported the velvet revolution in Prague.
For decades she has carried the flag for the peace movement, including in strife-ridden places such as Chile, Argentina, Cambodia, Vietnam and Sarajevo.
This year for the first time ever Baez has publicly supported a US presidential candidate - Democrat Barack Obama. She said that means something because she's "never gotten very excited about anybody" much less supported a candidate.
"I think it says something that I never bothered before," she said. "I certainly never supported or endorsed anybody, so it is a completely fresh feeling."
During the primary elections, she said she felt Hillary Clinton came "from an old school," while Obama represented a breath of fresh air and a wakeup call to the nation. She was delighted that her 38- year-old son, who was equally indifferent to politics in the past, collected money for the Obama campaign.
Baez hasn't composed songs for a long time because it's "very difficult," and at age 67 "I don't do very many things now that are difficult," she said.
The folk icon who won a Grammy in 2007 for her life's work prefers to interpret songs "that have a deeper meaning" written by other musicians and composers. For her new CD she chose songs by Elvis Costello, Patty Griffin and Steve Earle.
She laughed about the increasing challenges of advanced age, retelling how her vocal coach informed her that "after a while gravity takes over everything" even your vocal cords.
"It is a disgusting image, but it's true," she said, rolling her eyes.
At the beginning of her career singing "was effortless," then there was a period of disillusion when she realized she had to study "like everybody else in the world."
These days Baez lives near Palo Alto with her 95-year-old mother. She grins when the obligatory question about Bob Dylan, her former brother-in-arms and lover, arises. As always, she remains silent about him even when asked about I'm Not There, the recent biographical movie about Dylan.
But Baez is gracious to people in the cafe who start asking for autographs. She said it was touching and not the least bit disturbing. She said people do actually thank her.
"I give what I give and they give back," she said.
Concert website: http://www.joanbaez.com/tourschedule.html
