Joni Mitchell - The Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, Los Angeles, CA, 1-26-1995

I've posted a bunch of Joni Mitchell albums at this blog, but nearly all of them have been from the 1960s or 1970s. Although I've been trying to go chronologically through her career, more or less, I gave this a listen the other day and decided to post it. I think she had a pretty rough musical decade in the 1980s, but she bounced back very nicely in the 1990s.

In the 1990s, Mitchell put out three studio albums that were critically acclaimed and harkened back to her popular folky sound from earlier in her career. However, their sales weren't that good. I suspect one key reason for that was because she hardly ever toured and did promotion. This was one of only a handful of concerts she did to promote her excellent 1994 album "Turbulent Indigo." It sounds great because it was professionally recorded, in order to be broadcast on the radio nationwide. I suspect that she agreed to have a concert broadcast like that as kind of a substitute for touring.

The concert was performed in a solo acoustic style in front of an audience of only about 200 people, mostly music industry insiders and contest winners. The location was an unusual one: The Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, in Los Angeles. (It would later be renamed to The Autry Museum of the American West.) It was almost like a concert at home, because she was allowed to decorate the stage area with her artwork, musical instruments, and furniture (as you can see with the album cover). The Gene Autry setting also inspired her to talk at length about being a fan of another cowboy hero, Roy Rogers.

The website jonimitchell.com has some photos, videos, and articles about this concert, here:

Joni Mitchell - 1995.01.26 | Reprise Music Show Wells Fargo Theatre | Los Angeles

This album is an hour and nine minutes long.

01 Refuge of the Roads (Joni Mitchell)
02 talk (Joni Mitchell)
03 Sex Kills (Joni Mitchell)
04 Moon at the Window (Joni Mitchell)
05 talk (Joni Mitchell)
06 Night Ride Home (Joni Mitchell)
07 talk (Joni Mitchell)
08 The Crazy Cries of Love (Joni Mitchell)
09 talk (Joni Mitchell)
10 Yvette in English (Joni Mitchell)
11 Cherokee Louise (Joni Mitchell)
12 Sunny Sunday (Joni Mitchell)
13 talk (Joni Mitchell)
14 Hejira (Joni Mitchell)
15 talk (Joni Mitchell)
16 Just like This Train (Joni Mitchell)
17 talk (Joni Mitchell)
18 Face Lift (Joni Mitchell)
19 Song for Sharon (Joni Mitchell)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15638699/JoniMchl_1995_GneAutryWestrnHeritgeMseumLsAngelsCA__1-26-1995_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any color photos from this exact concert. I did find one high quality black and white one though, and I used the Palette program to colorize it. I must say I'm really impressed with the result. I did make a few tweaks in Photoshop, but the vast majority of the colorizing happened automatically.