Joan Baez, French touch at Mystic

It all started two years ago, when international folk music icon Joan Baez and her son, percussionist Gabriel Harris, were in Montpelier, France, for a concert tour.

The crowd was clamoring to hear a new French favorite, singer, songwriter and guitarist Marianne Aya Omac, who went out among her fans to give her own impromptu performance before the scheduled Baez show.

“My contract said no opening act,” Baez said, “but Marianne was brilliant, enormously gifted, so I told my promoter ‘Go get her out of the crowd up and bring her up onstage.’”

That started a collaboration that led to Baez recording a duet with Omac on the French singer’s newest CD, and a live Omac concert guest-starring Baez in Mill Valley last September.

Next week, Baez, a longtime Marin County resident, will make her first appearance at Petaluma’s Mystic Theatre, a guest star at Omac’s concert there.

Asked to name her favorite creative partners from a long career, Baez, 72, just chuckled dryly and said, “Boy, you know we’re talkin’ 50 years. But I would say that Marianne would be right up there.”

That’s high praise from a woman who has worked with Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Judy Collins, Donovan and the Grateful Dead, among many others. Baez has recorded more than 30 albums, won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and gave a legendary performance at the Woodstock festival.

As mentors go, Baez is a prize, which Omac seems to fully appreciate.

“Marianne was pretty much of a wild woman that first night in France,” Baez recalled. “She got up onstage and told me that I was her idol. She was barefoot, and she said she would always go barefoot, because I always did.”

Writing by email from her current concert tour in Canada, Omac underscored her admiration for Baez.

“For me this tour is about sharing, sharing with Gabe, sharing with Joan and sharing with a new public, with people who don’t know me,” Omac said. “Playing with Joan Baez is a blessing. She is the reason why I began to play guitar and sing. When I was a teenager, discovered her voice …”

Since both Baez and Omac are fluent in Spanish, they chose that language for their duets.

“Marianne sang at two of my concerts in Paris and it was enormously well-received,” Baez said. “She has a gypsy quality. She has spirit and soul. She really puts on a show. She can carry the whole thing by herself.”

But Omac, who sings in English as well as French and Spanish, needs help establishing herself in America, Baez said.

“She’s known in France, but she hasn’t got any recognition in this country,” Baez said. “She has a lot of the traits I had, which was I didn’t want to do anything commcercial. She sang in the streets.”

At 39, Omac is not a fledging performer, but is still building her own reputation, said Gabriel Harris, son of Baez and her ex-husband, activist David Harris.

“I’ve seen my mom work with a number of different people,” Harris said. “It feels like there’s a real deep connection this time. They’re kindred spirits.”

As for Baez’s own projects, she doesn’t have a new album coming out at the moment, but she’ll resume touring with a trip to England later this month.
Perhaps the best evidence of the respect Baez has for Omac is her willingness to come out during her time off from the road and help Omac with the show at the Mystic.

“I don’t go out of my way to find gigs to play when I’m at home,” Baez said. “Let’s put it that way.”

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. See his ARTS blog at arts.blogs.pressdemocrat.com.