The Indigo Girls and Joan Baez - A Night of Legends at Los Angeles' Greek Theater

Los Angeles, with its rock clubs like The Roxy, The Key Club, and Whisky A Go Go dominating the Sunset Strip, is not exactly known as a hotbed of folk music – not since Joni Mitchell and the Mamas and the Papas packed up their Laurel Canyon digs and moved on decades ago. But that was not the case at LA’s Greek Theater on 4^th of July Eve when the Indigo Girls and Joan Baez played a double bill.

Nestled in the woods around Griffith Park, the Greek is itself a legendary spot to see a show – a sort-of Hollywood Bowl light (in the best way). The venue is a gorgeous outdoor amphitheater with at least 2/3^rds the chaos of nearly sold-out shows at the Bowl. Meanwhile, the Indigo Girls, the duo from Georgia with the haunting harmonies, have provided the soundtrack for every car trip for folkies and lesbians since 1987, making them legends in their own right. But it was Baez, elegant and beautiful at age 73, emitting the same pristine soprano that shot her to stardom during the 4^th Street, Greenwich Village days, who reaffirmed her status as a legend.

Right at 7:30 PM, the exact time stamped on the concert tickets, Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers stepped on to the Greek stage, and in their own fashion, with no pomp and circumstance, began to play. The crowd collectively checked watches. “Nobody starts a show on time!” But the Indigo Girls, armed only with acoustic guitars and their canon of illustrative songs, began on time before it had even reached dusk at the Greek, and the crowd went wild.

The duo, with 12 albums of original music to choose from, played an array. Kicking things off early with music from the more recent Poseidon and the Bitter Bug (2009), the pair quickly reached back to 1999’s Come On Now Social with the banjo-heavy, bootstomper “Ozilline” before dipping back to the ‘90s with the now classic “Power of Two” from Swamp Ophelia, “Get Out the Map” and “Shaming of the Sun” from 1997’s Shaming of the Sun.

Fans at the near-full Greek sang along with abandon, encouraged, in fact, by the Indigo Girls who would occasionally step away from their mics to take in the sounds of the audience singing, not just a phrase or two, but full verses from hits like “Galileo,” “Three Hits,” and “Virginia Woolf” from 1992’s Rites of Passage. Occasionally Saliers exited the stage leaving Ray to perform from her 2014 solo country album Goodnight Tender, and likewise, Saliers performed solo on her classic ballads like “Leeds.”

The Indigo Girls played for nearly 90 minutes, until well after the sun had set at the Greek. Nearing the end of their set they pulled out the early beloved “Land of Canaan” from their self-titled 1989 album. They closed their set with – what else?—a rousing “Closer to Fine,” for which they invited Baez’s unreasonably talented tour assistant Grace Stumberg on stage to sing with them along with a friend they’d spotted earlier in the audience – Vonda Shepherd of Ally McBeal fame. The Indigo Girls, Stumberg, Shepherd, and several thousand people closed out the set belting “I’m trying to tell you something about my life…”

Following intermission the woman known as much for her activism as for her soaring soprano, Baez, took the stage accompanied by her percussionist Gabriel Harris, Dirk Powell on piano, banjo, mandolin (you name it), and Ginger, Baez’s mellow long-haired dog sporting a long wisp of hair covering one eye that rendered her the most emo folkie of all that night. The audience sat enrapt as Baez dug into her songbook to regale the audience with “The Lily of the West,” “House of the Rising Sun,” “There But for Sorrow,” and Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” in which Baez whipped out her crowd-pleasing impression of the man she’d dated 50 years ago. Being in the presence of the folk great elicits a certain nostalgia for times gone by, but at no time was that feeling more omnipresent than when she sang her opus “Diamonds and Rust,” already a tale of time past.

One final set included Baez and the Indigo Girls performing together. Compulsory, was a cover of Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright,” which they covered together for Baez’s 1995 album Ring Them Bells. The trio sent a hush over the crowdwith the traditional English ballad “The Water is Wide.” And the evening culminated in a rousing version of Baez’s hit “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Unabashedly, audience members joined in on the classic knowing there would hardly be a hootenanny of quite the same stature in Los Angeles for some time to come.

Find out about Indigo Girls tour dates. 

Find out about Joan Baez tour dates.