Joan Baez retired from touring in 2019, but you can still catch the folk icon at special occasions — and in February 2025, Sweet Relief Musicians Fund will honor her with a benefit concert.
Taking place on Feb. 8 at San Francisco’s Masonic Auditorium, Baez will perform alongside Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Morello, Lucinda Williams, Hozier, Margo Price, Rosanne Cash, Taj Majal, Joe Henry, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot. Tickets go on sale Friday.
The announcement of the event arrives on the cusp of the release of James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, which chronicles Dylan’s life from 1961 to 1965 (at times veering from historical record). In our recent Rolling Stone cover story about the film, Monica Barbaro spoke about portraying Baez. “Her life is so much more significant than just the part it played in Bob’s life,” Barbaro said. “She deserves her own biopic, limited series, whatever.”
In 2024, Baez made several appearances onstage, including at the Newport Folk Festival last summer — the very festival she made her live debut at in 1959. At the annual event in July, she sang the Band’s “The Weight” alongside Hozier and Mavis Staples, as well as “America the Beautiful.” In February, she covered Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” at New York’s Tibet House benefit with Maggie Rogers.
“I’m happier with the phrase ‘retire from touring’ rather than ‘retire,’ because for most people that has sort of ‘yuck,’” she told Rolling Stone in 2019. “I can’t deal with that as a word. I think that the main thing for me will be the painting because it’s pretty well established by now that I’m heading off to do that. That’s not why I decided to stop the touring, but when I look at it, I think, ‘Oh, boy, this is what I get to do now without the interruptions.’ I’ve never taken much time to do nothing, which I think is pretty important, especially at my age, and sort of contemplating what is coming. In this culture, we spend most of our time trying to avoid it. I would like to have more of a Buddhist approach.”
