Jukebox: Judy Collins has career full of great songs to sing at Egg

Since her very musical childhood, Judy Collins has sung songs, written songs, pursued songs or welcomed them as they found her. Now, as she prepares a career retrospective show tonight at The Egg (Empire State Plaza, Albany), she faces tough choices.

“I sing and sing and sing and sing some more,” she said Monday, early in a phone conversation from her New York City home. “It’s me playing the guitar and playing the piano and singing every song I ever knew,” she added, but that expansive bravado soon gave way to a more realistic plan.

“You’ll never hear all the hits in one show,” she explained. “There’s nothing I HAVE to sing,” she said, declaring independence from fans’ expectations and explaining a system, a balancing act. “If I sing ‘Both Sides Now,’ I certainly won’t sing ‘Chelsea Morning.’ If I sing ‘Someday Soon,’ I will not sing ‘Amazing Grace,’ and if I sing ‘Amazing Grace,’ I will not sing ‘Send in the Clowns.’ So I never sing them all.”

She has developed two shows with totally different songs (like pianist George Winston, with his summer and winter shows), and she hedges her bets with a third, a hybrid of the two. “You know, I’ve got 50 years of music to choose from — so there is a lot of leeway,” she said, citing 20-plus albums or songs that have hit the charts, fans’ hearts and their expectations when she steps onstage.

Told this seems a wonderful burden, she agreed. “It is. It is a wonderful burden, a great burden to have, a great problem to have.” She reflected, “Maybe that’s a good title for one of the chapters at least.”

Chapters? “My current life involves writing a book called ‘Suite Judy Blue Eyes: Sex, Drugs, Rock ’n’ Roll and Folk Rock,’ ” she explained, having borrowed for her book — “about 50 years in the music business and 70 years on the planet” — the title of the song Stephen Stills wrote for her at the dawn of folk rock.

Early chapters? “I was brought up with great music all the time, whether it was Rachmaninoff or Debussy or Rodgers & Hart or whatever,” she said, “because my dad was a great singer and had a radio career for 30 years.” She often performed on his show as a child, learning singing and songs. “I learned all the great songs and finding new great songs has always been a challenge to me.”

Her quest seems more like a series of triumphs as she became one of the shrewdest talent scouts in pop music history, matching songs to what The New York Times called her “voice of liquid silver.” Her authoritative covers of songs by Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Richard Farina and others helped introduce these writers to audiences worldwide.

She is proud of Dan Fogelberg’s hit cover of her song “Since You’ve Asked,” and she said, “I’m usually trying to write my own songs, and then I hear something that draws me in and I’ll go find it” — or they find her. She explained: “I do think the songs that I’m supposed to sing do come to me, and that’s a kind of mysterious process.”

Communicating them to an audience, however, is anything but mysterious: “I sing and sing and sing and sing some more.”

Judy Collins sings songs from her decades-deep career at 8 tonight at The Egg. Tickets are $29.50. Phone 473-1845 or visit www.theegg.org.

Yes — sort of

Yes, it’s kinda Yes playing on Sunday at the Times Union Center (51 S. Pearl St., Albany). Bassist Chris Squire, guitarist Steve Howe and drummer Alan White from previous versions of this constantly mutating British progressive rock band will perform.

However, keyboardist Rick Wakeman left the reunited-for-this-tour band (his fifth departure: a record?) before the tour, replaced by his keyboardist son Oliver. With original singer Jon Anderson sidelined by respiratory ailments, the band recruited Benoit David from a Yes tribute band they saw on YouTube, emulating Journey and Boston but annoying Anderson, who protested by blog.

All this drama will be replaced on Sunday by the drama of the music itself, which is considerable. Show time for “An Evening with Howe, Squire & White of Yes” is 7 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $95, $58.50, $38.50 and $19. Phone 1-800-30-EVENT or visit www.timesunioncenter-albany.com.

Dangerous music

Cellist François le Roux launches Proctors’ Dangerous Music series tonight, performing as the Ha!man at 7 p.m. on the Mainstage. Expect multifaceted music, dancing and singing. In short, expect the unexpected. Tickets are $16. Phone 346-6204 or visit www.proctors.org.

Also tonight, reedman/composer Don Byron leads his jazz quartet — pianist Edward Simon, bassist Kenny Davis and drummer Billy Hart — at the Main Theatre of the UAlbany Performing Arts Center. The quartet began as the Ivey-Divey Trio, built on the blueprint of Lester Young’s 1946 trio, and Byron continues to echo Young’s style with this quartet — one of a handful of purposeful bands he leads. Show time is 8 p.m. Tickets are $25, $20 for seniors and UAlbany faculty and staff and $10 for students. Phone 442-3997 or visit www.albany.edu/pac.

And, also tonight, Club d’Elf — leader/bassist Mike Rivard, drummer Dean Johnston, DJ Mister Rourke, keyboardist Paul Schultheis and guest guitarist Reeves Gabrels (from David Bowie’s band) — get dangerous, and Moroccan, at Red Square (388 Broadway, Albany). Club d’Elf is an ever-changing repertory company specializing in Moroccan trance music and dance/electronica — dense, intriguing, propulsive stuff. Show time is 10 p.m. Tickets are $10. Phone 465-0444.

Saturday stars

Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers jam at The Egg on Saturday; Pat McGee opens at 7:30 p.m. USA Today declared the SK6ers’ album “Glassjaw Boxer” one of its top five albums last year. McGee plays solo. Tickets are $20, $15 for students.

Also on Saturday, Laura Love and Orville Johnson play at the Eighth Step at Proctors 440 Theatre (440 State St., Schenectady). Love sings and plays bass, branching out from an early interest in Seattle grunge to explore world-beat and blues. Johnson sings and plays dobro and slide guitar, earning comparisons to Bill Frisell. Local band Red Hen open at 7:30 p.m. — singer, guitarist and bassist Alan Carr; fiddler, banjoist and singer Jane Rothfield; singer and guitarist Linda Schrade, and banjoist and singer David Kiphuth. Tickets are $25. Phone 434-1703 or 346-6204 or visit www.eighthstep.org or www.proctors.org.