Mitchell turned 75 on Nov. She was in the audience. The film is scheduled for screening on one night only, Feb. Louis region. The website joni And I've been thinking about my brief encounter with Mitchell, when we met and spent a little time talking in Washington, D. There is no conceivable reason that she would or should remember it. I have never forgotten it. Let me rephrase that: I have never forgotten it, but I've recently learned that time has eroded some details of those long-dormant memories.
Mitchell was in Washington that November for six nights at the Cellar Door in Georgetown, an intimate club that sat maybe people if the fire marshal wasn't counting. Mitchell was barely three weeks past her 25th birthday. I was in Washington for my senior year at George Washington University, closing in on a degree in English literature and three weeks shy of my 21st birthday. What no one knew then was that would mark a turning point in Mitchell's long professional journey from hard-slogging, individualistic musician to cherished, respected, cultural icon, individualistic musician.
Born and reared in towns on the prairies of western Canada, Mitchell had maintained an exhausting schedule through the early and mids, traveling to and from scattered jobs at clubs and coffeehouses in Canadian provinces and nearby border areas of the U. The work allowed her to discover and polish an onstage persona, nurture and fortify the artistry of melodies, lyrics and chord progressions she wrote and sang like no one else, and develop a unique approach to guitar tuning and playing.
These factors coalesced over the course of In the spring, Mitchell recorded and released her first studio album, "Songs to a Seagull," on Reprise Records. My path could hardly have been more different. I spent the early '60s in high school in University City among supportive contemporaries and adults. I got into science and math at school and soul music at home with a set of drums I bought with my bar mitzvah money.
I arrived at G. After a miserable start, I had the great luck to bond with some fine people who shared my general state of compassionate confusion about life, my love of music and a restless curiosity. A few of the guys formed a rock band, all but required of young men of the era, but it soon broke up. We added some new players to the mix and formed a blues band that worked reasonably often at coffee houses and frat parties, but it, too, eventually broke up.
