American folk legend Joan Baez announces farewell tour
February 27, 2018
American folk singer and activist Joan Baez announced her farewell concert tour on Facebook on Monday.
Entitled "Fare thee well…" the tour dates will take the 77-year-old musician across the United States and Canada from September through mid-November of 2018. Her final concert performance will be on November 17 in Oakland, California.
This final touring stretch will follow some 50 concert appearances in the UK and Europe. Her European leg begins this Friday in Stockholm, Sweden. She will appear in various German cities including Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich and Cologne.
Both the North American and European tours will also promote her latest studio album, "Whistle Down the Wind," which will be released on March 2.
The North American tour pre-sales began this week for the Facebook community while general ticket sales will start on Friday.
Fifty years of making music
For over five decades Baez has left her mark on the American folk music scene, ever since shooting to fame during the counterculture and protest days of the 1960s. Baez, who performed at the 1969 Woodstock Festival, writes her own songs but also covers other artists' works.
Some of her best-known hits include her cover of "The Night They Drive Old Dixie Down," about the final days of the American Civil War, and the gospel song "We Shall Overcome," which played a prominent role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
A lifelong activist
Outside of music, she has also raised her voice as an activist for social change and justice.
Most recently, in the aftermath of the Florida school shooting that left 17 dead, Baez made a plea on Facebook for a return to nonviolence, a long-standing theme in her career as an activist and musician.
"A gun is designed to kill, not to save lives, not to enhance life, not to bring goodness into the world. Intelligent, impassioned high school students are taking risks in order to save lives, enhance life, and bring goodness into the world," she wrote, referring to the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High who protested for gun restrictions after the shooting.
Read more: Can a group of Florida high school students change America's cycle of gun violence?
Baez was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2017.