After more than six decades on the road, Judy Collins is preparing to say goodbye to life as a full-time touring musician.
The 87-year-old folk legend is currently on her Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: The Farewell Tour, which will stretch into 2027 and mark the end of Collins’ years as a full-time road musician.
But don’t call it a retirement from music.
Collins, who is still performing roughly 120 shows a year, plans to continue recording, writing and performing even after her farewell tour comes to an end. She’s also working on music for a Broadway show and writing a new book titled “Singing Through the Storm.”
“Touring has been the great thread of my life,” Collins told the San Francisco Chronicle. “City to city, song to song, face to face.”
“The audiences have carried me for decades, and I’ve never stopped being moved by what can happen in a room when we truly listen to one another,” she continued.
Collins will bring her farewell tour to Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, Calif., on Oct. 18, returning to a venue where she performed earlier this year.
It’s another stop in a career that stretches back more than 60 years.
Collins released her debut album A Maid of Constant Sorrow in 1961 and became one of the defining voices of the 1960s folk revival. She became particularly renowned for her interpretations of other songwriters’ work, including Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides, Now,” Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” and Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns.”
Her recording of “Both Sides, Now” became one of her signature songs and earned Collins a Grammy Award for Best Folk Performance.
And she has hardly been coasting on her early catalog. Collins has released 55 albums over the course of her career, and her 2022 album Spellbound marked a significant first: It was the first album in her decades-long career written entirely by Collins herself.
The farewell tour will also feature some familiar faces along the way. Selected dates include appearances by Mary Chapin Carpenter, Rosanne Cash, Amanda Shires, Richard Thompson, Bruce Cockburn, The High Kings, Elles Bailey and Livingston Taylor.
Collins is also documenting this chapter of her career. Portions of the tour are being filmed for an upcoming documentary about her life, music and legacy.
So while Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: The Farewell Tour represents a genuine ending for Collins, don’t expect the singer to simply disappear once the final tour date is over. After more than six decades of recording and performing, Collins summed up her approach to whatever comes next in four words:
“The work never ends.”
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