Joni Mitchell, rarely seen in public over the last decade, played what amounted to a whole set Sunday at the Newport Folk Festival. Her appearance wasn’t announced in advance — the performance was billed as “Brandi Carlile and Friends,” and Carlile was at Mitchell’s side throughout, along with a clutch of admiring younger musicians that included Marcus Mumford, Wynona Judd and Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes.
Mitchell suffered a brain aneurysm in 2015 that left her with what the medical community calls “deficits.” She still has difficulty walking, and had to relearn how to play guitar. It’s not as if she could just go to a teacher. Mitchell had always used idiosyncratic tunings because childhood polio had weakened her left hand, making some chords in standard tuning impossible for her to play. So, to relearn, she had to watch old videos of herself playing.
The work paid off. Though she confined herself to singing during most of her 13-song set Sunday, she stood and took a long electric guitar solo during “Just Like This Train.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8PfSzwA-Y4
The song was released on 1974’s “Court and Spark,” the LP that signaled Mitchell’s turn towards jazz. Here’s how it sounded when she played it live on Letterman in 1996.
