I actually have that album (on vinyl, yes I'm old) Don't remember my feelings about it from back then, but yes, you have expressed well, how profound and relevant it is.

Please accept my apologies for sharing this story every time I see Joni Mitchell mentioned online.

Way back when, you could sometimes get tickets on the night of a concert by joining a long line at the box office.

A friend and I stood in the long line but our turn at the box office was just too late as the last available tickets had just been sold.

We were all asked to leave the area so the crowd slowly wandered away, but we passed this huge trailer with all kinds of sound equipment and monitors so, of course, we stopped and gathered around the open back of the trailer to see what was going on.

A short while later, we were, once again, asked to move on but before we dispersed, someone came out and said, "The artist said to let them stay."

We were all allowed to watch the entire concert on the monitors and hear it on the incredible sound equipment. Thank you, Joni Mitchell.

I'll add that to my "regrets."

When I was a performer, I used to doing renditions of many of her songs. The open guitar tunings were a revelation, I used to fart around with them for hours on end.

Thanks for the interesting story.

... musicians.

..."Both Sides Now" which wasn't, of course, her song, although for a while I think her version was more popular than Joni's. I did that one in an open tuning more generally known that Joni's tunings, which was convenient for a lot of Dylan songs as well.

I have to say I was never much involved with Leonard Cohen's music. I was a Dave Van Ronk kind of guy though, with smatterings of David Bromberg interpretations, for which I was never really good enough.

I rearranged Ellen McIlwaine's version of "Up from the Skies," and was inspired by one of her records to develop a very complex arrangement of "Ode to Billy Joe" in a minor tuning inspired, but not identical, to Joni's tuning in "Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire."

People liked that "Ode to Billy Joe" arrangement; people often asked me to play it after saying, sometimes, "You know, I never liked that song." I started saying that on stage in the introduction to it. I'd say, "People tell me all the time they never liked this song, but I'm going to play it anyhow."

I haven't picked up the guitars in more than five years. I'm kind of afraid to do it now, because it will hurt to realize what I lost to inattention. They lay around idle. I look at them sometimes and sigh.

I had other things to do.

... I discovered Judy Collins from a woman folk singer I knew, it was probably a year later before I heard Leonard Cohen sing it.

I had the chords worked out for "Company" but my voice just couldn't do it.

I tried real hard, but I just couldn't do it. I really wanted to do it because of my dumbass young guy's love sick blues at the time, but I couldn't.

I didn't need it over the long run, because life and love go on. Even though I'm an atheist, I like to say "I've lived to thank God all my prayers have not been answered."

I had a version of "Danny's All Star Joint" that I really liked to play. It was a sloppy one off thing in a dropped D major tuning. It was OK.

I did have a decent falsetto when I was young. I used it in Joni Mitchell's "Woman of Heart and Mind" for "flatter"

In the line, "Your criticize and your flatter..."

From Van Ronk I took a lot of stuff, arranged for my own style. The one I liked best was "Come Back Baby" - for which I couldn't possibly play his beautiful guitar riffs, so I did it with a slide.

Van Ronk's guitar, well, that was something from beyond the natural world, but I sure learned a lot about singing from him. I saw him live lots of times, and had all the records I could get my hands on.

I had a pretty good song shout/growl going in Come Back Baby for...

"If I could holler, like a mountain Jack
I'd climb that mountain, and call my baby back
I'd shout come back baby, let's talk it over one more time..."

I was pretty proud of the shout/growl for the words "holler" and "Mountain Jack."

I had the habit of putting a "Z" sound before "I'd." "ZI'd clime that mountain..."

A friend of mine told me he liked my version of Come Back Baby better than any he'd ever heard, but I really couldn't take that kind praise seriously.

I did have trouble with Van Ronk's version of God Bless the Child, his intonation of...

"Monday, Monday, you've got lots of friends, crowding 'round your door."

Wow. That was something, the broken tone of the word "crowding" as he sang it.

I failed to get that one down ever. A woman who wanted to sing in front of my guitar wanted me to do it, but I wouldn't do it. We ended up not being friends as a result.

Oh well...

After my mother died, I played Van Ronk's "Motherless Children" a lot.

"You know your wife or your husband will be good to you
when your mother is dead.
You know your wife or your husband will be good to you
when your mother is dead.
Ain't nobody love you like your mother do,
Motherless Children have a hard time, when your mother is dead."

What I liked about playing it was that the music was upbeat, kind of like, "I survived, though."

My wife is indeed good to me, and I no longer care about motherly love, as much as my mother gave to me, now a distant memory, other than that mother's love my wife extends to my sons.

My Aunts wanted me to do Josh White's "His Eye Is On the Sparrow" at my mother's funeral, but I refused. I was already an atheist then, and that was a big conflict with my mother, but she was always hopeful I'd "come around," because I did some of Josh White's hymns. She really didn't get it. I just liked the music. I didn't want to confront that psychologically, that big conflict between us about my atheism, when she was dead. After a while, I'd think of my mom though when I'd play White's "Lord Have Mercy" in clubs. I growled a bit in that one too.

Motherless Children was good enough, but of course, I didn't play that - or anything - at the funeral.

I think one reason I stopped playing is that so many of my songs were about being unhappy, and after falling in love with my wife and having that love reciprocated, it just didn't make sense anymore. I just didn't feel like I wanted to sing and play any more, because, well, I didn't need to do so.