Joni Mitchell plays surprise set at Newport Folk Festival
thefader.comJoni Mitchell took the stage at Rhode Island’s Newport Folk Festival on Sunday for a surprise set. It was her first full performance since 2000 and her first appearance at the festival since 1969.
The Laurel Canyon luminary turned avid experimentalist played a career-spanning, 13-song set that included two tracks each from her three seminal early-’70s albums — Ladies of the Canyon, Blue, and Court and Spark — as well as one song from 1976’s Hejira (her first significant step toward jazz), one from 1991’s Night Ride Home, and one from her most recent record, 2007’s Shine.
She also covered George Gershwin’s “Summertime,” Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers’ “Why Do Fools Fall in Love,” and The Searchers’ “Love Potion No.
9,” and played a rendition of “Both Sides Now” — a song she wrote for Judy Collins in the late ’60s and iconically re-recorded in 2000 as the title track of her 17th studio LP.
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