Joni Mitchell - Bread and Roses Festival, Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA, 9-3-1978

I have some other albums from Joni Mitchell that I plan on posting as I continue to move through her music career in a roughly chronological manner. But this is a short concert that I didn't even know existed, and I just discovered it a few days ago. I like it so much that I've moved it to the front of the line on what to post.

I love all of Mitchell's music from the start of her career through about the mid-1970s. Then she went in much more of a jazz direction, and I'm not much of a jazz fan. She had some missteps in the 1980s, but came back strongly in the 1990s. 

The reason I really like this concert is because she performed most of them in the solo acoustic format. (For two songs, she was assisted by Herbie Hancock on piano.) Her songwriting has always been top notch, so this is a rare opportunity to hear some of her late 1970s jazz songs done in the acoustic style from earlier in her career.

Her performance was part of the Bread and Roses Festival, a three-day music festivals with lots of big names. She actually gave performances on two different days, if not all three days. But only one was played live on the radio, giving us an excellent sounding recording. It's known she did a few other songs in her other performances during the festival, such as "Coyote," "Shadows and Light," and "Just like This Train." Hopefully, those will become publicly available someday. As it is, the concert is fairly short, only about 35 minutes long.

By the way, for the last song, she's joined by some of the other musicians playing at the festival as a singalong encore.

01 talk (Joni Mitchell)
02 Furry Sings the Blues (Joni Mitchell)
03 talk (Joni Mitchell)
04 The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines (Joni Mitchell)
05 talk (Joni Mitchell & Herbie Hancock)
06 A Chair in the Sky (Joni Mitchell & Herbie Hancock)
07 Goodbye Pork Pie Hat (Joni Mitchell & Herbie Hancock)
08 talk (Joni Mitchell)
09 The Wolf that Lives in Lindsey (Joni Mitchell)
10 The Circle Game (Joni Mitchell with the Persuasions, Tim Hardin, Tom Paxton & Odetta)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15256337/JoniMchl_1978_BreadandRsesFestivlGreekTheatreBerkeleyCA__9-3-1978_atse.zip.html

I'm happy to say that the cover art photo comes from the 1978 Bread and Roses Festival. Since she gave two of three performances, I'm not sure if it's from the exact day or not.

For the logo at the bottom, I found that from a concert poster of the 1978 festival. I cropped out just the part I wanted, and added some text at the bottom.