Traveling

On the Path of Joni Mitchell

By Ann Powers

 

Dey Street Books (June 11, 2024)

 

*An Observer Best New Biographies of 2024*

 

Celebrated NPR music critic Ann Powers explores the life and career of Joni Mitchell in a lyrical style as fascinating and ethereal as the songs of the artist herself.

 

“What you are about to read is not a standard account of the life and work of Joni Mitchell. Instead, it’s a tale of long journeying through a life that changed popular music: of a homesick wanderer forging ahead on routes of her own invention, and of me on her trail, heading toward the ringing of her voice.”

-From the introduction

 

Joni Mitchell, Both Sides 1&2, 1999, Oil on canvas

 

For decades, Joni Mitchell’s life and music have enraptured listeners. One of the most celebrated artists of her generation, Mitchell has inspired countless musicians—from peers like James Taylor, to inheritors like Prince and Brandi Carlile—and authors, who have dissected her music and her life in their writing. At the same time, Mitchell has always been a force beckoning us still closer, as—with the other arm—she pushes us away. Given this, music critic Ann Powers wondered if there was another way to draw insights from the life of this singular musician who never stops moving, never stops experimenting.

 

In Traveling, Powers seeks to understand Mitchell through her myriad journeys. Through extensive interviews with Mitchell's peers and deep archival research, she takes readers to rural Canada, mapping the singer’s childhood battle with polio. She charts the course of Mitchell’s musical evolution, ranging from early folk to jazz fusion to experimentation with pop synthetics. She follows the winding road of Mitchell’s collaborations with other greats, and the loves that emerged along the way, all the way through to the remarkable return of Mitchell to music-making after the 2015 aneurysm that nearly took her life.

 

 

 

Along this journey, Powers’ wide-ranging musings on the artist’s life and career reconsider the biographer’s role and the way it twines against the reality of a fan. In doing so, Traveling illustrates the shifting nature of biography, and the ultimate contradiction of celebrity: that an icon cannot truly, completely be known to a fan.

 

Kaleidoscopic in scope, and intimate in its detail, Traveling is a fresh and fascinating addition to the Joni Mitchell canon, written by a biographer in full command of her gifts who asks as much of herself as of her subject. 

 

About the Author

ANN POWERS has been a music critic for more than thirty years, working for NPR, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and other publications. In the decade she has worked with NPR, she has written extensively on music and culture and appeared regularly on the All Songs Considered podcast and on news shows including All Things Considered and Morning Edition. Her books include a memoir, Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America; Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music; and Piece by Piece with Tori Amos. Powers lives in Nashville.

https://www.amazon.com/Traveling-Path-Mitchell-Ann-Powers/dp/0062463721

 

 

Joni Mitchell(Canadian, 1943- )

 

조니 미첼은 싱어송라이터이자 화가다. 1943년 캐나다 포크 마클레오드에서 태어난 그의 본명은 Roberta Joan Anderson. 어릴 적 그림에 소질을 보였다. 18세 즈음 에디트 피아프와 마일스 데이빗의 노래를 부르며 음악 활동을 시작했다. 삭스카툰기술학교에서 추상표현주의 화가 헨리 보닐을 사사한 후 칼가리의 알버타대학교에서 미술을 전공했다. 토론토에서 공연하다가 1965년 디트로이트로 이주한 후, 포크록 싱어송라이터로 명성을 얻게된다. 1967년 뉴욕에 정착, 1969년 'Chelsea Morning' 'Tin Angel' 'Both Sides Now' 등 명곡이 담긴 앨범 '구름(Clouds)'이 크게 히트했다. 1971년 앨범 '블루(Blue)'는 2000년 뉴욕타임스의 사상 위대한 앨범 25에 선정됐으며, 2017 NPR(국립공영라디오)는 여성 앨범 #1에 올랐다. 2006년 음악계에서 은퇴를 선언했다. 평생 그래미상 10개 트로피를 수상했으며, 2002년 그래미상 평생공로상을 수상했다. http://jonimitchell.com

 

 

화가 조니 미첼 Joni Mitchell as an Artist

 

"나는 첫째로 화가이며, 두번째가 뮤지션이다...나는 항상 나 자신을 환경에 의해서 탈선한 화가로 생각해왔다." 

-조니 미첼-

 

Joni Mitchell , Turbulent Indigo Medium, Lithograph on paper, 25.5 x 21.75 in. 

 

 

Joni Mitchell, The Isle Of Wight Festival, 1970