The Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, which provides services and financial assistance for career musicians and professionals, will pay tribute to legendary singer Joan Baez with a benefit concert at the Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco on Feb. 8. Confirmed performers include Baez, Emmylou Harris, Hozier, Rosanne Cash, Margo Price, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Morello, Joe Henry, Lucinda Williams, and Taj Mahal, with surprise guests and additional performers to be announced shortly. Tickets for the event will be on sale December 20.
Baez has endured as a musical force of nature for over six decades, with an unwavering commitment to social activism and the arts. Her classic early 1960s folk recordings attracted a generation who carried songs like “House Of the Rising Sun” and “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You” into the rock lexicon. She was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2017. Though Baez stopped touring in 2019, she has been the subject of the film, “I Am the Noise,” and has released a book of drawings, “Am I Pretty When I Fly?,” and a book of poetry, “When You See My Mother, Ask Her To Dance.”
Baez also appeared at Variety‘s 2023 Hitmakers event and presented Boygenius with the Group of the Year award, telling the stunned bandmembers, “‘I have seldom heard harmonies as true and as fucking angelic as yours.”
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Of the forthcoming benefit concert, Emmylou Harris says, “So happy to be a part of celebrating my dear friend Joan Baez!”
Aric Steinberg, Executive Director at Sweet Relief Musicians Fund adds, “We’re beyond thrilled to celebrate 30 years of Sweet Relief while honoring the great Joan Baez and her amazing career. Joan has supported our charity for many years, and it’s a privilege to honor her this year alongside so many incredible artists. It will be a night to remember and I’m so grateful to Joan and all of the performers who will help ensure that our music community continues to have Sweet Relief as a resource for emergency financial assistance.”
Joe Henry, musical director for the concert, says, “Joan Baez is a mountain on our landscape, and has been for the entirety of my lifetime. As much as any artist I know, she has dismantled the wall between public artistry and personal conviction —investing each with the other, to create a body of work that, in the words of Woody Guthrie, “comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.
“What a singular honor, then, for all us to gather in honor of her —and to benefit the heroic organization Sweet Relief, that provides financial assistance to musicians in health crisis. Come February 8th at San Francisco’s historic Masonic Auditorium —in her name, and in these wicked times— we will raise our voices as Joan has.”
The February event is part of an ongoing series of shows presented by Sweet Relief Musicians Fund. It serves as a follow-up to 2024’s Ramblin’ Jack Elliott tribute which featured performances by Nathaniel Rateliff, Jackson Browne, John Oates, Mike Beck, and more. Surprise guests included Bob Weir and Joan Baez.
Sweet Relief Musicians Fund provides services and financial assistance for career musicians and music industry professionals. Grants are earmarked for medical and vital living expenses, including insurance premiums, prescriptions, medical treatment and operative procedures, housing costs, food costs, utilities, and other basic necessities.