Gone from Danger

Gone from Danger
Studio album by
ReleasedSeptember 23, 1997
RecordedNashville, 1997
GenreFolk
Length48:22
LabelGuardian
ProducerWally Wilson, Kenny Greenberg
Joan Baez chronology
Live at Newport
(1996)
Gone from Danger
(1997)
Dark Chords on a Big Guitar
(2003)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic link
Uncut[1]

Gone from Danger is the twenty-third studio album (and twenty-fifth overall) by Joan Baez, released in September 1997. Rather than relying on her own songwriting, Baez instead selected work by younger folk and rock artists to perform. She included Dar Williams' "If I Wrote You", Richard Shindell's "Reunion Hill", and Betty Elders' "Crack in the Mirror" as well as two Sinéad Lohan compositions. Around the time of the album's release, Baez confessed that she no longer found herself able to write songs and felt more comfortable reverting to her original role, as an interpreter. The one track for which she receives credit, "Lily" (about a girlhood friend), was a poem written by Baez, to which Greenberg and Wilson added music.

In addition to giving the young songwriters a career boost by recording their songs, Baez took two of them—Shindell and Williams—on tour with her in 1997 to support the album. Lohan had previously supported Baez on tour in the UK in June 1996.

Initial limited editions of this album, available only at Borders bookstores in the US, included a bonus CD of two songs: Betty Elders' "Long Bed from Kenya" and a duet with Dar Williams on Paul Simon's "Dangling Conversation", both of which were recorded live at the 1997 Newport Folk Festival.

In 2009 a "Collector's Edition" of the original 10-track album was re-issued in a 2-CD set. The second disc features 11 tracks recorded live at Mountain Stage in August 1997, eight of which are from the original Gone From Danger album. The original songwriters join Joan on stage.

  1. ^ Willaimson, Nigel (November 1997). "Joan Baez: Gone from Danger". Uncut. No. 6. p. 94.