JONI MITCHELL FEATURING THE JONI JAM : AT NEWPORT

1. Introduction (Brandi Carlile)
2. Big Yellow Taxi (with Lucius)
3. A Case Of You (with Marcus Mumford & Brandi Carlile)
4. Amelia (with Taylor Goldsmith)
5. Both Sides Now
6. Just Like This Train
7. Summertime
8. Carey (with Brandi Carlile)
9. Help Me (with Celisse)
10. Come In From The Cold (with Taylor Goldsmith)
11. Shine (with Brandi Carlile)
12. The Circle Game (with Wynonna Judd)

Label : Rhino Records

Venue : Newport Folk Festival, Newport, Richmond, USA

Recording Date : July 24, 2022

Release Date : July 28, 2023

Length : 61:24

Review (AllMusic) : On July 24, 2022, songwriting legend Joni Mitchell returned to the stage for the first time since suffering a brain aneurysm in 2015. Mitchell's surprise appearance at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival was not just her first show since recovering from her aneurysm but her first full-length concert since the early 2000s as well as her first time back to the festival since she played it in 1969. These circumstances alone set the night up for an emotional, triumphant tone, but a cast of high-profile musicians and vocalists like Brandi Carlile, Wynonna Judd, Shooter Jennings, Blake Mills, and many others assisting in the "Joni Jam" added a celebratory flair to the already joyous night. Live album Joni Mitchell at Newport captures the majority of that set (omitting a few cover tunes), charging out of the gates with an ecstatic version of "Big Yellow Taxi" and conveying tenderness, curiosity, and communion for 11 selections from across Mitchell's vast discography. Full-ensemble numbers like "Carey" and a sing-along version of "The Circle Game" are balanced out by more subdued moments such as a shiveringly beautiful rendition of Hejira tune "Amelia" and Mitchell stepping out solo on guitar on the fully instrumental "Just Like This Train." The mood throughout is casual and conversational, with various guest singers taking the lead or swooping in to accompany Mitchell and their fellow Joni Jammers. With a catalog like the one Joni Mitchell has under her belt, every set list is bound to be full of hits or at least fan favorites, and the Newport concert was heavy on highlights from Blue to Court and Spark to 2007's Shine. It's a wonderful document of an unparalleled artist still radiating creativity, thoughtfulness, and power well into her late seventies. Like most everything else Mitchell has touched in her storied career, At Newport is inspiring, moving, and manages to also be a lot of fun.

Review (The Guardian) : Joni Mitchell’s surprise appearance at last year’s Newport folk festival marked the singer-songwriter’s first time at the festival in 53 years, and her first live appearance since a near-fatal 2015 aneurysm that led to fears she’d never perform again. Thankfully recorded for posterity, the tapes capture her friend Brandi Carlile’s excited introduction to whoops of amazement from the crowd, many of whom were in tears, plus an 11-song setlist including many of Mitchell’s greatest hits. She’s ably supported by a cast of musicians, including Carlile’s band and Marcus Mumford, some of whom who occasionally share the vocal load. The artwork for At Newport The artwork for At Newport Brooklyn indie foursome Lucius do the heavy lifting on Big Yellow Taxi. Carlile and Taylor Goldsmith take the lead on the likes of Carey and Amelia, but Mitchell plays the electric guitar instrumental Just Like This Train flawlessly and jokes about how 1976’s Hejira album was written on a road trip without a driving licence. She duets A Case of You with Carlile and audibly takes control as the show progresses. Her voice is slightly deeper than it was, with a rich timbre indefatigability earned through lived experience. George Gershwin’s Summertime offers a rueful backwards glance. The years melt away for The Circle Game. Both Sides Now has the poignancy of a 79-year-old singing words she wrote aged 23. It’s not sung regretfully, but warmly, in the knowledge that life’s sunshine and storms are what make us who we are.

Review (Pitchfork) :Joni Mitchell’s unannounced set at the Newport Folk Festival late last July was pure social media manna. Just minutes after the most sophisticated singer-songwriter ever associated with “folk-rock” returned to the stage for her first full show in nearly a quarter-century, shaky videos and sunlit photos flooded sleepy Sunday timelines. There was Mitchell, 78, on a stage again, bejeweled and beaming, as if laughing at life’s absurd odds. It felt impossible not to consume every clip, the sacrament of some new miracle. After surviving childhood polio, devastating post-polio syndrome in the ’90s, and a 2015 brain aneurysm, Mitchell had learned to sing and play some guitar again through a series of loose living-room hootenannies in her Southern California home. Her younger friends dubbed them “Joni Jams.” And now, with a dozen or so of those apostles, she had brought that party to a blazing but joyous Sunday afternoon in seaside Rhode Island. Her appearance was our world’s truly rarest commodity—a complete surprise, thrilling and affirming because it so long seemed impossible. For all that day’s rapture and wonder, Mitchell’s unexpected appearance never really seemed the setting for a proper live album. (And she has made two, both staggering.) Consider how high passions were onstage, after all, with the acolytes—Brandi Carlile, Blake Mills, Lucius, Allison Russell, Marcus Mumford, and so on—there to assist in Mitchell’s resurrection as her sprawling, spirited band. On most of the songs, the kids took the lead, Mitchell supplying backup for her own songs; on occasion, she took charge, while they offered awestruck accompaniment. You can hear, appreciate, and even admire their ecstasy during At Newport, the hour-long edit of Mitchell’s day in the sun. It’s audible in the onstage squeals after she sings the second half of “A Case of You” or when Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith stammers “That’s my hero right there” like some smitten schoolboy after he leads “Amelia.” Such unrestrained fervor, though, makes for an album so frustrating that it actually complicates that memory’s innocent delight. Mitchell’s voice is gorgeous and rich throughout, a piece of high-pile cotton velvet warmed in the daylight. She renders “Both Sides Now” with the wisdom of survival, the “up and down” having still somehow delivered her here. But too often, her patient approach is swallowed by the tide of well-intentioned boosters, associates who make Mitchell feel like little more than an honorary guest at her own party. Carlile’s role in helping Mitchell return to stage cannot be overstated. During a single decade, she went from a stylistic disciple to the advocate who covered Blue in full to one of the few true believers who held out hope Mitchell might still make music. Mitchell, in turn, used the star-studded and ultimately empowering private Joni Jams that Carlile facilitated as a Jacob’s ladder, unsteadily climbing toward an updated version of her singular voice. “Just watch… Joni’s back,” Mills remembered Carlile telling him after Mitchell sang several songs during a Joni Jam in September 2021. “[Brandi] recognized that moment,” Mills later said in a Mojo interview, “and she could see the future.” But onstage in Newport, Carlile—to borrow a coveted Mitchell barb—“made some value judgments in a self-important voice,” having checked any ostensible self-awareness backstage. That much even seemed clear simply from early images of the day, where Carlile matched Mitchell, seating herself on an ostentatious Victorian throne and singing into a gilded microphone. (This happened again this June, at a second public Joni Jam.) It is the sort of undeserved equivalence that, even before hearing a note, at least made me wonder how Carlile, who can be a wonderfully boisterous singer, would work with Mitchell, not just around her. Now on tape, Carlile’s approach to the songs borders on suffocation. At best, she offers serviceable readings of standards, over-singing “Carey” and “Shine” with church-camp gusto and letting Mitchell get in a harmony edgewise. At her worst, though, she distracts from and even drowns out Mitchell, with a maddening insistence on having a say during every track. Her Mariah-lite melisma at the end of “A Case of You,” her unnecessary edict to “Kick ass, Joni Mitchell” before an astounding instrumental of “Just Like a Train,” her incessant humming and whispered phrases during the back half of an otherwise sublime “Both Sides Now”: Carlile is constantly reminding the audience that she’s here, that she’s partially responsible for this. She is such an insistent and pandering presence throughout these songs that, when Mitchell begins Gershwin’s “Summertime” like she’s slinking through some smoky jazz lounge, you half-expect the sidekick to answer “Bradley’s on the microphone with Ras M.G.” (Later, Carlile settles for “Tell ’em what time it is, Joni.”) This overzealousness pervades the entire performance. The motley troupe’s righteous energy during opener “Big Yellow Taxi” or the choral finale of “The Circle Game” never truly wanes, even during the relatively quiet tunes. Goldsmith, for instance, does an admirable job fronting “Amelia” and “Come in From the Cold,” a perspicacious 1991 single that’s thankfully been salvaged here. His tone is plain and kind, as if offering Mitchell an open invitation to meet near the middle. She accepts it haltingly on “Amelia” but then readily on “Come in From the Cold,” their voices interweaving with an uncertainty tailor-made for the song’s senses of self-discovery and doubt. It is one of At Newport’s few examples of clear vulnerability and risk. As with Celisse Henderson’s bold interpretation of “Help Me,” even that moment is soon overrun with other voices and instruments, Carlile’s army of Lucius, Mumford, and the like coming down to clutter the clearing. The results subsume the eccentricity, elegance, and innovation of Mitchell’s work, applying a kind of conventional Disney gloss that is the most elementary musical takeaway of the entire Laurel Canyon scene. At Newport is like a selfie snapped from some overwhelming vista, where the faces of the subjects accidentally crowd out the actual sight they’re there to behold. That subsequent Joni Jam this June corrected some of these issues, but here, on tape, they glare and grate. At Newport does get one thing exactly right, a sometimes-neglected aspect of Mitchell’s career: her humor or, more exactly, her laughter. Even as she has mapped the darkest recesses of our hearts, Mitchell wrote with wit so incisive it was frequently overlooked or even ignored by those who saw her as only lachrymose. But on stage, she’s always been engaged and disarming, constantly ready with a howl or a bon mot. Just listen to the way she cracks during Miles of Aisles when a fan yells “Joni, you have more class than Mick Jagger, Richard Nixon, or Gomer Pyle combined.” Without a word, she obviates every aloof image. Her laughter is the first thing you hear after the chords of “Big Yellow Taxi” are strummed, the last sound of “Summertime,” and the ellipsis she lets hang following “The Circle Game,” one of the sharpest songs about aging and the perfect exit here. That deep, assuring laugh feels like a better testament to her continued vitality than the album itself. “So fun,” she says when it’s all over. It is one of the very few bits of At Newport that gets better the more times you hear it, the more times you try to relive this surprise.

Review (NPR) : When Joni Mitchell appeared at the Newport Folk Festival in 1969, she was on the precipice of a breakthrough. Several months removed from releasing her second LP, Clouds, she landed a coveted Saturday night performance slot along with Arlo Guthrie. Bootlegs reveal a luminous performance driven by mellifluous vocals and aching acoustic guitar, and highlighted by a stunning piano version of "For Free." The trade magazine Cash Box complimented Mitchell's set and astutely noted "she is on her way to becoming a star." However, a review from the Hartford Courant noted that this burgeoning popularity came at a price: "Hecklers in the back" specifically "urged Miss Mitchell to sing 'Circle Game' over and over." No doubt much to the dismay of these critics, Mitchell played the song to close out her set. When Mitchell finally returned to the Newport Folk Festival on July 24, 2022, after a 53-year absence — a performance documented on the new live album At Newport — she also ended her set with "The Circle Game." Decades later, however, the crowd responded to her presence uniformly positively — with awe, gratitude, excitement and even tears. Mitchell's presence was a complete surprise, as she had retreated from the spotlight after a 2015 aneurysm; additionally, the Newport gig was her first full-length concert since 2000. At Newport feels like a celebration of her public return — an exuberant and supportive performance resembling a well-rehearsed jam taking place at a party. Wearing a jaunty blue beret and sunglasses, her cornsilk-white hair tied into elegant pigtails, Mitchell sat on a plush, gold-trimmed chair as the performer of honor. On this night, she fronted a group of musical admirers in a sing-along of "The Circle Game," taking lead vocal on the verses — timeless meditations on the little milestones that mark the passage of time — in a low, velvety voice. At the end of the song, Mitchell laughs and laughs merrily — clearly delighted to be back onstage surrounded by friends and music. Mitchell's Sunday night set at Newport had been advertised in advance as "Brandi Carlile + Friends." This was technically true, as Carlile introduced the onstage hootenanny as a recreation of the invite-only Joni Jams — the recurring private gatherings in Mitchell's Southern California living room where guests such as Carlile, Harry Styles, Dolly Parton and Chaka Khan came together for joyful, restorative singalongs. It was common knowledge that Mitchell also sang at these get-togethers, although it was never clear whether she'd ever sing in public again. But At Newport isn't just about welcoming Mitchell back to the stage — it's also about showing Mitchell's legacy in action and how younger generations of musicians carry forth her spirit of imagination and fearless reconfiguration. At various times, she's joined by Lucius, Marcus Mumford on percussion, Wynonna Judd on backing vocals, Allison Russell on clarinet, Carlile's collaborators Tim and Phil Hanseroth, and the band SistaStrings. A gorgeous, sparse "Amelia" features prominent contributions from Blake Mills and Dawes' Taylor Goldsmith; buoyed by the crew of onstage vocalists, together the pair nail the searing guitar melodies and lyrical desolation. Guitarist Celisse Henderson, meanwhile, takes the vocal and instrumental spotlight on the standout "Help Me," transforming it into a more languid, blues-oriented number with spacious arrangements. Vocally, her interpretation exudes sharp-edged anguish and longing, stretching out the song's flirtatious lyrics ("I think I'm falling / In love with you / Are you going to let me go there by myself") with delicious tension. Carlile especially is her idol's vocal shadow, a fitting position considering her history with Mitchell's music; among other things, she's booked full-concert cover performances of 1971's Blue. On a rousing "Carey" here, Carlile takes the lead vocal, her warm, brassy tone giving her the air of a rousing storyteller, but then gets out of the way so Mitchell can have the last word: "I said, 'Oh, you're a mean old Daddy, but you're out of sight.' " The gesture gives "Carey" the feel of a piece of family lore that's passed down between generations. Artists release live albums for multiple reasons: contractual fulfillment, a desire to document a particular tour, historical myth-making, financial reasons, a gift to fans. Live albums can be a warts-and-all proposition, with all the rough edges and goofs left in. Other artists consider live albums to be aspirational, meaning they might polish up audio in the studio, adding everything from overdubs to fake applause (see: KISS' Alive!). Some live albums are taken from one show; some are a composite culled from many shows (Donny Hathaway's Live; U2's Under a Blood Red Sky); others even have studio tracks (Duran Duran's Arena). What these live albums have in common is they all create a narrative around an artist's live performance, a tour or legacy. Some have live LPs that overshadow studio efforts (Peter Frampton's Frampton Comes Alive!), while the live shows of the Grateful Dead and Phish are like currency; they're things to trade and analyze. Albums like Sam Cooke's belated release Live At the Harlem Square Club, 1963 and Jimi Hendrix's Jimi Plays Monterey become era-defining historical touchstones. Compared to other artists, Mitchell has issued relatively few live albums, although the LPs she did release deliberately illuminate pivotal moments or bands in her career. On 1974's double album Miles of Aisles, Mitchell performed with jazz-fusion band L.A. Express; despite coming after the release of Court and Spark, she de-emphasized that LP's music. After the release of 1979's Mingus, she released another double live album, 1980's Shadows and Light, recorded with a band that included guitarist Pat Metheny and bassist Jaco Pastorius. In recent years, Mitchell has dipped back into her live archives for significant releases, highlighted by Amchitka, an October 1970 benefit concert with James Taylor and Phil Ochs that raised money for Greenpeace's nuclear weapons test protests. In the digital age, live albums function as a permanent historical archive that preserves the ephemeral. Fans thoroughly documented Mitchell's Newport appearance in 2022 with videos and photos — meaning it's easy to note how At Newport deviates from the concert: omitting two live covers (The Clovers' "Love Potion No. 9" and Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers' "Why Do Fools Fall in Love") and rearranging the concert audio into a different tracklist. This shuffling ensures Mitchell plays a prominent role earlier on the album, as the kickoff song is now a buoyant version of "Big Yellow Taxi" that charmingly ends with her belting the indelible line, "... and put up a parking lot," in triumph. Up next is the chills-inducing "A Case of You." As the crowd cheers her on in support, Mitchell sings the line "I would still be on my feet" twice — first slightly tentatively, and then again with more firm conviction. In concert, "Both Sides, Now" felt rife with significance as the penultimate song, a declaration of where Mitchell's mindset was as she began this new musical chapter. Informed by life experience, her performance is reflective and tender, her voice wrinkled and worn like a comfortable blanket. Coming as the set was almost done, the song balanced wistfulness for the past with a determination to move forward ("Well, something's lost, but something's gained in living every day") and a declaration that life still offered plenty of mystery ("I really don't know life / I really don't know life at all"). Now placed earlier in the album, at track five, its significance isn't as much of a narrative plot device as it is simply another lovely moment. Of course, that At Newport rearranges the story is very in character for Joni. The tracklists and execution of her previous live albums illuminated that she's not beholden to tradition. Perhaps her boldest moment here is her solo instrumental guitar version of "Just Like This Train." Long known for her unorthodox guitar technique, Mitchell here fluidly strums out a meditative performance emphasizing a searing tone. That Mitchell chose the Newport Folk Festival to mark a new stage in her career is poignant. Her debut appearance at the festival in 1967 — which came alongside a formidable group of her Canadian singer-songwriter peers, including Buffy Sainte-Marie, Leonard Cohen and Gordon Lightfoot — was cited at the time as one of her first high-profile public appearances. For her, the Newport Folk Festival represents the promise of a wide-open future where anything is possible. By her 1969 appearance, she had landed a record deal and released two albums, including her 1968 David Crosby-produced debut, Song to a Seagull. Decades later, she followed up her latest Newport gig with a larger-scale Joni Jam in 2023 at the Gorge that brought together even more musicians inspired by her music. That Mitchell's second act to date has been dominated by live performance is likely out of necessity. But it's yet another exciting evolution in her notoriously chameleonic career. And, appropriately, Mitchell sounded strongest vocally while performing her signature cover of George and Ira Gershwin's "Summertime." She teases out the lyrics as if she were in a dark jazz club, while Ben Lusher unleashes sprawling piano and Celisse Henderson layers on evocative, bluesy guitar riffs. The years melted away as Mitchell sang — clearing the way for whatever comes next.