Joni Mitchell Tribute – Harmony Hall, 20 May 2023: Concert Review

The Joni Mitchell Tribute concert was a portrait of the Artist as a young folk singing genius progressing to Jazz Pop master. A transforming spirit throughout, whom many artists and fans regard as standing on the summit of popular music. With Jan Elliot, Caitlin Smith and Cadzow Cossar.

The culmination of the lockdown years for Jan Elliot. A folk singer who comes from Christchurch but now resides at the edges of the Waitakere ranges in Oratia. A fan of the first decade of Mitchell’s music when Elliot in her early twenties.

Caitlin Smith is a highly regarded story-singer and song-poet from Auckland, who claims Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen as spiritual parents, having been born in Canada at the same time the two artists were in a relationship there. It is a rare show when she would not cover songs by both artists.  

Cadzow Cossar is a gifted guitar virtuoso, of whom I have little information. He did play in one of the latter line-ups of Rick Bryant’s Jive Bombers. Not one that I saw, when I used to turn up to most of their gigs in Auckland, up until the late Eighties.

Chelsea Morning starts the evening. An early song performed around the coffee houses of New York City, before turning up on Mitchell’s second Album Clouds. Elliot has a nice softened vocal tone which is echoed in the lyrics the sun poured in like butterscotch/ And stuck to all my senses.

If she was slightly tentative at first, that is banished for the next one You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio (Court and Spark). Delightful folk pop with nice lyrical barbs. But if you’ve got too many doubts/ If there’s no good reception for me/ Then tune me out.

Some of this joyful tone may be in Jonathan Richman’s classic Roadrunner, a loving homage to the broadcast airwaves. He gave it an edge by basing the melody on the Velvet Underground’s Sister Ray.

Smith then follows with three from the Ladies of the Canyon album.

This is Woodstock, but not like you’ve heard it before says Caitlin. Some high vocal shots which resolve into Black American gospel phrasing. By the time we got to Woodstock and the sound is fraught Seventies soul with an activist edge. Ball of Confusion, you may say.

Rainy Night House and Smith has a deeper voice, with high tone soprano highlights.

They both sing on Big Yellow Taxi. One of those rare songs that you fall in love with immediately, and it never loses that first flush of blood rush. Like the early Beatles.

Smith sings A Case of You (Blue) and she does it with some pyrotechnics and great phrasing. A bit possessed and quite wild. I could drink a case of you/ I’d still be standing, and I’m frightened by the devil/ And I’m drawn to those ones that ain’t afraid.

Both Sides, Now is a folk classic. She could write like Dylan, and with a much better voice. Elliot sounds like a pop version of a clear-toned Sixties folk diva.

She was born Roberta Joan Anderson in Alberta, Canada. She contracted polio at age nine and went through a lengthy convalescence. There is a story that her unusual guitar tunings come from a weakened left arm, from which she learnt to adapt.

She went from Canada to America to pursue her passion to become a folk singer. Often with little money or comforts. Pregnant at age 20, and she was alone.

Mitchell has said her real song writing inspiration came from not being able to care for her daughter and giving her away for adoption. In a simple twist of fate, when they were reunited again in the latter Nineties, she stopped writing for a lengthy period.

For a real treat, check out a YouTube video from last year, 2022. Mitchell is at the Newport Folk Festival. She is sitting in a Queen’s chair on stage, surrounded by many other musicians including Brandi Carlile who sings harmony.

She had suffered a brain aneurysm in 2015, and it took a lot of rehabilitation therapy for her to recover her life again.

She sings Both Sides, Now and her voice is still remarkable and powerful. A lifelong smoker but there appears to be little damage from that.

Smith has at least six costume changes over the course of the evening. The most memorable is a psychedelic cat suit which would look even better with a pair of surrealistic pillows.

This is for Coyote (Hejira), which is taken at a fast soul jazz tempo. Said to be about Sam Shepard. Eventually she finds herself wrestling with her ego. Cossar plays some fine lines on an electric guitar.

There are nice rolling guitar riffs on Raised on Robbery (Court and Spark). A drinking song, and the musical hooks have a certain similarity to Canned Heat’s Going Up the Country.

Album title song Night Ride Home and Sunny Sunday (Turbulent Indigo) are sophisticated pop in the style of classic American song-book writers.

Chinese Café (Wild Things Run Fast) is a superb song with its interweaving of Unchained Melody (Alex North and Hyman Zaret). Great drama from the guitar and a perfect vocal from Smith.

There are twenty carefully curated songs for the evening, and they finish with Circle Game. Written as a response to Neil Young’s Sugar Mountain. Somewhere, there is a recording of her doing both songs. It could be on the Rhino Records archival box set.

A great folk song of childhood wonder, and a perfect way to close the Joni Mitchell Tribute concert, as performed by Jan Elliot, Caitlin Smith and Cadzow Cossar.

Rev Orange Peel