(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., March 20, 1998) -- Joan Baez has a well-deserved reputation for discovering rising young songwriters and interpreting their material in concert and on record. Among the song-poets who were championed by Baez long before they achieved success as performers in their own right were Leonard Cohen, Phil Ochs, Tim Hardin, Richard Farina, The Band's Robbie Robertson, and, of course, a young Bob Dylan.

So when a new Baez album comes out, as did last fall's "Gone From Danger" (Guardian), long-time Baez watchers quickly look to see whose songs she has recorded, in the hopes of discovering the next Leonard Cohen or Robbie Robertson, or even the next Bob Dylan.

As it turns out, on "Gone From Danger," Baez touts two up-and-coming singer-songwriters whose names are probably quite familiar to Berkshire audiences. The CD includes two songs by Northampton's Dar Williams and three by Richard Shindell, who has performed frequently in the Berkshires and who is also based in Northampton.

Thus, Baez's performance tonight in Northampton at Smith College's John M. Greene Hall at 8 -- which includes an opening set by Shindell - - is of particular significance both for the hometown ties it boasts and for its confirmation of the Pioneer Valley town's role as "the epicenter of good songwriting," as Baez described it in a recent phone interview.

The queen of the '60s folk revival says that the same thing that attracted her to songs by the likes of Dylan, Cohen, and in more recent years, Mary Chapin Carpenter and John Hiatt, is what drew her to compositions by Shindell, Williams and the other young writers on "Gone From Danger," including Ireland's Sinead Lohan and Texas's Betty Elders.

"It's either there or it isn't," said Baez. "It must have to do with songwriters who are willing to be thoughtful, introspective, counter- cultural, and write something well and understated.

"Beyond that, it has to work for my voice. And I'm not really aware of all that. I just hear a song, and it's either `bingo!' or not." Clearly, there is something intuitive that draws Baez to the work of a particular writer and that keeps her returning to that writer's work. She's been recording songs by Dylan, for example, for nearly 35 years, most recently the title track to her 1995 CD, "Ring Them Bells," the album which first introduced Baez fans to the voice and work of Dar Williams.

"I guess when you find somebody you like," she said, before changing her train of thought to focus specifically on Shindell, "There was something I felt about his theological stuff, although I couldn't put my finger on it. But sure enough, Richard was a theology student. "I don't know what all the components are, but there are three of his songs on the album, so there's something in what he writes that rings bells in me. And if it rings bells with me then it must mean that I can get in there and live with it. [Shindell's song] `Reunion Hill' just astounded me. It was as though it had been written for me. That's how I felt about it."

Baez's connection to Dar Williams goes back a few years, when Williams performed as the opening act on a world tour by Baez. "What draws me to her among other things is what I admire that I don't have the gift or stamina for, and that is really crafting music," said Baez.

"I would say for most of these writers nowadays, they get in these groups and they critique each other and really work at the songs. I don't think that went on thirty years ago with songwriters. I may be dead wrong, because I wasn't doing much [writing], and I was pretty isolated in my own work.

"I remember Dar once, she was in a frumpy mood and I asked her what it was, because she was throwing things around in her hotel room. She couldn't get a line right. I thought, `Oh God, I don't want to do that.' But then she goes and gets it right. That's partly a gift and that's partly work and determination."

Along the way, Baez has written songs of her own -- the new album includes one called "Lily." In fact, Baez revealed that one of her compositions, "Stephanie's Room," has its origins right here in the Berkshires.

"Everyone figured it was this big homosexual song, but it was about that Stephanie that ran that inn," she said, referring to Stephanie Barber of Lenox, who ran Wheatleigh, where Baez stayed during her frequent appearances at the Music Inn in the '60s. "I was having an affair with my tour manager at the time, but it came out sounding like I was singing about Stephanie."

Baez also recalls her day-long stay at another hotbed of Berkshire bohemianism, the Dreamaway Lodge in Becket, which she visited on Nov. 7, 1975, along with Dylan and members of his traveling entourage, the Rolling Thunder Revue, which included poet Allen Ginsberg, country singer Ronee Blakley, folk icon Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and Arlo Guthrie, who brought the group there to meet its owner, the eccentric musician-host Maria "Mama" Frasca.

Baez struck up a special relationship with Mama in the few hours she spent there, episodes of which were immortalized in Dylan's feature film, "Renaldo and Clara," which includes several scenes of Mama and Baez together.

"I have the purse she gave me sewn into a cape," said Baez. "My very gifted seamstress sister made it for me. She makes them out of velvet and all of your old scarves and things that you don't need anymore that you want to have forever, like a scarf the Vietnamese gave me at the end of the war. I have a purse the gypsy lady gave me as a pocket in this robe."

Call (413) 586-8686 for ticket information for tonight's show.

If you would like to purchase any of Joan Baez CDs on-line, please click on the SoundStone logo to the right.

[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on March 20, 1998. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1998. All rights reserved.]