Last night I attended a Joan Baez concert about which I have a comment and a question. First the comment. The concert was wonderful. However you may feel about the content of Joan's songs, hers is a stunning and sterling voice. I saw her at the Philadelphia Academy of Music in the 80s and the Newport Folk Festival in the 60s and have always enjoyed her singing immensely. Last night's songs did not have all the soaring high notes I heard at those earlier performances. A companion noted Joan's repeated sips of water and attributed that to smoking or a cold, which could have been responsible for not going for all the high notes. I won't speculate. Replacing the expected high note with a lower one does give the audience a different interpretation of the song and that's no bad thing. There was a very exciting version of Lily of the West. The drummer, whose name I don't know, was responsible for that. Very well done and how lucky we were to be at that concert.

Finally my question, which will reveal the depth of my ignorance of musical instruments. Prior to each song, Joan tuned her guitar. Is this nervous fussing or searching for absolute perfection with each play or something else altogether? Surely a guitar shouldn't go out of tune so quickly.

Mudcatters, can you educate me on the guitar tuning issue? Disparaging comments about my lack of guitar knowledge will be blithely ignored.

Kind Regards.