Judy Collins answers the Zoom from what appears to be a dimension where time is a concept best ignored. She’s sharp, politically charged, and throwing around references to CIA activity in 1960s Thailand like most people talk about brunch. “The suspected murder of Thomas Merton kind of suits my conspiracy theory mind,” she offers casually, before connecting dots from Catholic cover-ups to Vietnamese bombing raids without taking a breath.
At 84, she’s still writing songs, still getting Grammy nods (2022’s Spellbound made the cut), and still dragging male-dominated institutions with all the grace of a classically trained assassin. “We’re always making our money off those weapons that we sell,” she says with a lilt. “That’s a huge piece of our national value — which is made by murder.”
That kind of candor runs through Spellbound, a record she composed entirely herself — a first, if you can believe it, after 60-plus years and nearly as many albums. “There’s always material,” she deadpans, when asked how she still finds new stories to sing. “We don’t run out of grief and excitement and exhalation and murder.”
She does, however, run into ghosts. Thomas Merton — the Trappist monk turned social radical — inspired a track on Spellbound because, well, she felt like it. “I’m not a Catholic,” she says, “but I’ve always been intrigued by Merton because he associated himself with the meditators from the East. The Dalai Lama. Thích Nhất Hạnh. And that’s where he died — in Thailand. At a big meditation event. And probably murdered.”
This isn’t your grandma’s folk music. Unless, of course, your grandma opened for Pete Seeger and stared down Mitch McConnell while singing “Amazing Grace” in the Senate.
“I said, ‘The last time I was here, I was arrested,’” Collins laughs. “McConnell didn’t think it was very funny.”
She still tours. She still writes. She still thinks Dylan’s Masters of War might be the greatest anti-war song ever written. “I’ve sung that straight on ever since I learned it in ‘62,” she says. “It was the second Dylan song I recorded. He had just started writing and I was on the scene. I was lucky.”
Lucky is one word. Determined is another. When she talks about her early days — spilling scrambled eggs on customers, being fired from waitressing gigs, marrying her “starter husband” — it’s all with a shrug and a punchline. “This career is not for sissies,” she says.
She recently returned to Town Hall to perform Wildflowers in full — her seventh album, now being rediscovered as the orchestral gem it was always meant to be. The show has legs, and Collins hints there are dozens more orchestras lined up to host it. “You were right,” she told her audience. “It’s about time.”
In between projects, she’s piecing together a new album. “I’m not sure if it’ll be fully mine,” she admits. “I’ve found three or four songs by other people that I must sing. It’s not something I can fight.”
When asked about the She Rocks honor — a celebration of women in music — she reflects on the gender politics of her career with her usual dismissiveness and defiance. “We’re not men,” she says. “That’s an easy place to start.” Then, like a seasoned heavyweight, she circles back to her favorite theme: grit. “If you’re female, you have to have that extra something. I certainly do.”
Sixty years in, Judy Collins still has something to say. And God help the man who tells her otherwise.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
