Joni Mitchell surprised the crowd yesterday (July 24) at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival with her first full set-length concert appearance in two decades. The folk icon, who first performed at the festival in 1969, joined Brandi Carlile and played multiple classics such as ‘A Case of You’, ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, and ‘Both Sides Now’. They were supported by a group of artists including Blake Mills, Marcus Mumford, Taylor Goldsmith, Lucius’ Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, Wynonna Judd, and more. Watch footage from the set below.
Notably, Brandi wrote an essay for Joni’s 2021 box set The Reprise Albums (1968-1971). “In my opinion, Blue is the greatest album ever made,” she wrote. “Blue didn’t make me a better songwriter. Blue made me a better woman. No matter what we are dealing with in these times, we can rejoice and know that of all the ages we could have lived through, we lived in the time of Joni Mitchell.”
Mitchell was honored at MusiCares’ Person of the Year gala in April, where she also made her first live appearance in nearly a decade. The 78-year-old singer-songwriter has rarely appeared in public since suffering a brain aneurysm in 2015. Earlier this year, she joined Neil Young in removing her catalog from Spotify over COVID misinformation concerns.
What is life? Joni Mitchell singing A Case of You with Brandi Carlile!#NewportFolkFest pic.twitter.com/61KbnaQFAj
— Aimsel Ponti (@Aimsel) July 24, 2022
Terrible video of Big Yellow Taxi anybody? pic.twitter.com/YywhySfWNO
— Jonathan Dean (@JonathanDean_) July 25, 2022
Joni Mitchell cantando en 2022, que más podemos pedir?
Newport Folk Festival 💙 pic.twitter.com/qpgZY54xZR
— Tomás del Real (@tomasdelreal) July 25, 2022
