https://www.cbs.com/shows/video/lQ_IH3lEyLL5tAg4Ht__Q_fXwzFp54_4

https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/kennedy_center_honors/

On Feb. 8th, 2025 at The Masonic in San Francisco an incredible line-up of artists will gather to honor the legendary Joan Baez and celebrate 30 years of Sweet Relief Musicians Fund!

Enjoy a night of performances by Joan Baez and friends, including: Emmylou Harris, Hozier, Rosanne Cash, Margo Price, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Morello, Joe Henry, Lucinda Williams, Taj Mahal with surprise guests, and more performers to be announced soon!

Tickets and VIP on sale now at https://bit.ly/honoringjoanbaez

At the age of eight, Bonnie Raitt asked her musically inclined parents for a guitar. Fortunately for us all, they obliged. From her humble days of teaching herself to play, Bonnie evolved into an artist that the great B.B. King once described as “the best damn slide player working today”—a description that is still absolutely true!

Bonnie grew up in Los Angeles in the 1950s. Immersed in the city’s cultural melting pot, she found herself caught up in the folk craze of the time, learning to play guitar by listening to her favorite folk albums over and over. She developed an appreciation for great music and lyrics, and loved expressing herself through guitar. Growing up with two brothers, she learned to assert herself and became, even by my standards, a pretty impressive tomboy. Her toughness was always juxtaposed with her tender and empathic soul, which found its outlet through song…

Read the full piece including photos as well as an accessibility feature to Listen to piece being read aloud here: https://www.kennedy-center.org/our-story/blog?p=bonnie-raitt-honored-by-brandi-carlile

Bonnie reflects on her life and career with Gayle King for CBS Mornings as she prepared to receive recognition for her lifetime of artistic achievement at the 47th Kennedy Center Honors, “I just want to be able to make as big of a difference in the world as I can.” https://youtu.be/TyOEsosh0lM

BY KAREN HELLER
Published December 3, 2024

Hanging out with the sublime singer who makes her guitar sound “the way bacon smells” — and reflecting on her lifetime of music and activism.

SAN FRANCISCO

In the late 1960s during her sophomore year, Bonnie Raitt took a leave from Radcliffe. Her intention was to hang with blues legends Mississippi Fred McDowell, Son House, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, who were managed by her then-boyfriend Dick Waterman, inhaling the sort of storied education that wasn’t offered at Harvard. Music was “just a hobby and a passion of mine,” says Raitt, 75, who began noodling on a $25 guitar from Sears at the age of 8 and was quickly influenced by an array of blues, folk and country artists. “I never expected it to be my life. My intention was to have a really cool side experience.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/2024/12/03/bonnie-raitt-kennedy-center-honors-tour/

Photo by Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post

“It’s been a remarkable blooming time for me,” says Raitt, whose songs like “Nick of Time” are finding a younger audience thanks to samples and live covers

By DAVID BROWNE
OCTOBER 28, 2024

One of the year’s least expected samples on a record started with an email. A few months ago, Bonnie Raitt received a note from Bon Iver auteur Justin Vernon. Raitt was already familiar with Vernon, especially after he covered her 1991 standard “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” with a bit of “Nick of Time” tacked on, a dozen years back. This time, Vernon was circling back to the latter song, but in a very different way.

As Raitt recalls, “Justin said, ‘I’m working with this artist you may or may not know,’” and that said artist, as Raitt remembers him saying, “had written a song about being cognizant of maybe running out of time, and thinking about having a baby, and is this the right time, and how that impacts her? And he said, ‘I turned her on to your music, and we really would like to use part of ‘Nick of Time.’” Raitt’s 1989 song, which launched her comeback, addressed similar heavy and personal issues.

Luckily for Vernon, Raitt was already familiar with the artist in question — Charli XCX — and thought the idea was, in her word, “fantastic.” Vernon sent her a link to a nearly finished track, “I Think About It All the Time,” which uses the featherbed sonics of “Nick of Time” as a foundation for a more beat-heavy track showcasing Charli’s vocals (“I think about it all the time/That I might run out of time/But I finally met my baby/And a baby might be mine”). “It’s hard to know exactly which parts they used,” says Raitt of what is likely the first time anyone has sampled any of her records. “It mostly sounds like her, but it has a different tone to it, and I know there’s one isolated part of my voice. But they did a really artful job — I was very honored.”

LISTEN TO “I Think About It All the Time”:
https://youtu.be/K3D8_Mc3XTI

The Charli track, which wound up on her new remix record, Brat and It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat, isn’t just a one-off. You’ve probably heard of the so-called “Joni Mitchell Renaissance,” in which the legend is being discovered by a new generation. So, is the Charli track the latest of many signs that we’re heading for, well, a Raittaissance? “I’m just a working musician,” Raitt says. “But it’s been a remarkable blooming time for me.”

If the current Raitt moment had a launch date, it was probably early last year at the Grammy Awards. In the show’s pre-telecast, Raitt walked away with awards for American Roots Song and Americana Performance. She assumed her trophies would end there, especially since her self-penned “Just Like That” was up for Song of the Year alongside tunes by Taylor Swift, Lizzo, Adele, Harry Styles, and Beyoncé, among others. But to Raitt’s — and the world’s — astonishment, presenter Jill Biden announced the winner was, in fact, Raitt. Her face, live on TV, registered utter and genuine disbelief. “She didn’t even read my name,” Raitt recalls. “She read the name of the song. I just went into hyper-shock.”

What the world didn’t see, or hear, was that on the way up to the stage, Raitt cupped her hands over her mouth and said, to herself, “Can you fucking believe this?” As she admits now, “I didn’t want to be filmed on camera [saying that], but I had to say it to somebody, so I said it into my hand.”

Theories about the upset victory include the possibility that Swift, Adele, and Beyoncé all split the vote. Raitt herself doesn’t disagree; in her mind, it’s akin to Nick of Time nabbing Album of the Year in 1989 when, she says, “Henley, Tom Petty and the Traveling Wilburys canceled each other out.”

LISTEN TO “Nick of Time”:
https://youtu.be/ztkpEJOJGDI

On the way to the podium, Raitt says she looked at the nearby tables and saw the other nominees clapping for her. Afterwards, Swift approached her. “I don’t remember the exact quote, but it was something like, ‘I didn’t mind losing to you,’” Raitt says. “That was great.” (What wasn’t so wonderful was a Daily Mail headline that called Raitt an “Unknown Blues Singer.” “They corrected it within 24 hours,” she says. “But it was pretty funny to have this many Grammys and hit records and still be ‘unknown.’”)

In the time since, the Raittaissance has continued. More covers of “I Can’t Make You Love Me” (written by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin) have tumbled out. The most prominent right now is by way of Maggie Rogers, who occasionally slips it into one of her arena shows and calls it “one of my favorite Bonnie Raitt songs.” Jack Antonoff and Jack Harlow have both told Raitt they’ve heard compliments about the drum sounds on her older records and that she shouldn’t be surprised if more acts approach her for a sample.

And in December, Raitt will join the Grateful Dead, Francis Ford Coppola, and jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval as recipients of this year’s Kennedy Center Honors, one of the country’s most prestigious arts awards. Raitt has attended the Kennedy Center ceremony before, helping honor Buddy Guy and Mavis Staples, and she and her father, Broadway singer John Raitt, attended the very first ceremony, in 1978, when the likes of Fred Astaire and Richard Rodgers were honored; Raitt still remembers being in awe of seeing Astaire in person.

Raitt says she wasn’t told why she qualified for the award. (“Can you believe it?” Bob Weir wrote to her the same day, with similar disbelief), but her induction, scheduled for Dec. 8 in Washington, D.C., is the latest sign that the music she and the Dead championed is now part of American music history.

“Back then, if someone had said that they’d be giving Kennedy Center Honors to me and the Dead — are you kidding?” she laughs. “It’s not that we’re the establishment. It’s just that the culture can hold us all in. You can be somebody as different and uncommercial as the Grateful Dead or me. It’s not like I’m stomping down the mainstream Billboard chart. But I guess I’ve reached some sort of legacy status.” A source offered to tell Raitt who would be performing her songs that night, but she says she declined, wanting it to be a surprise.

As for her Charli XCX moment, Raitt has yet to meet the woman who is putting her music in front of an entirely different group of listeners. But she’s planning on sending a thank-you note shortly. “She’s pretty smart and passionate about her music,” Raitt says, “and she has certain humility I found charming. I really admire her, as I do Billie Eilish and Olivia [Rodrigo] and Taylor. They’re handling their fame in such an incredible way for such young women. They’re very self-aware. A lot of times people run off the rails with drugs, or lose their money, or sign up with a Svengali manager who steers them wrong or takes too much of their income. But this crop of young women, and Beyoncé too, have a lot of class and a lot of independence, and they’ve learned from the mistakes of those people that went on before.”

All around her, Raitt is seeing a raft of farewell tours by members of her generation. But stopping doesn’t appear to be in her cards; she’s about to start the southern leg of her latest tour and has festivals lined up for 2025. “I don’t think Aerosmith stopped because they wanted — they had lead-singer problems, like with Huey Lewis,” she says. “So heartbreaking. But my dad toured until he was 85 and now I’m up there with BB and Willie and Mick and Keith and Tony Bennett. I’m going to keep going, even if I have to come out in a walker or electric motorbike. The only reason my dad stopped,” she says with a light chuckle, “is because most of his audience passed away.”

So maybe the younger artists who admire her will bring in fans who will, shall we say, live a little longer? “Well, luckily, there are people like Charli and Justin who are making me relevant,” Raitt says. “When I started, I was idolizing my heroes like Sippie Wallace, Muddy Waters, and Judy Collins, and now I get to be revered like they were. I’ll take it, and wear it with pride.”

Courtesy of Rolling Stone

Bonnie has contributed a new recording of “Prison Bound Blues” written by Leroy Carr to a project called Better Than Jail, an extraordinary new album benefiting Free Hearts and Equal Justice USA. Better Than Jail is available everywhere today and features covers of iconic prison songs from Steve Earle, Taj Mahal, Margo Price, The War & Treaty and many more. The album seeks to raise awareness and support for the urgent need to reduce the harm of the criminal justice system.

“I’m so proud to have joined in with so many illustrious artists in creating this very special album in support of rural prison reform. Overlooked for far too long, this issue cuts across all cultural and political divides and deserves all our focused attention to finally bring about some swift and meaningful action. Better Than Jail is one of the most inspired and heartfelt albums I’ve been blessed to be a part of and I hope it sets a fire in hearts far and wide to join in our efforts.” – Bonnie Raitt

LISTEN HERE: https://found.ee/BetterThanJail

Bonnie joined Nathaniel Rateliff and his bandmates for an in-depth conversation on Night Sweats Radio on Sirius XM The Spectrum, Channel 28. Listen to the episode on demand here: https://sxm.app.link/NightSweatsRadioBonnieRaitt

In Episode 2 of The Road To Joni, host Carmel Holt tells Bonnie that her own road to Joni began with cassettes of Blue and Bonnie’s 1974 album Streetlights. Bonnie talks about redefining what it’s like to have a vital, vibrant artistic career well into your later years and how Judy Collins’ version of “Both Sides Now” sparked her road to Joni. Bonnie shares that her version of “That Song About The Midway” holds a very special meaning for her, including performing the song in Joni’s living room at one of the Joni Jams.

EP2 of the podcast drops Friday, September 13 at https://www.sheroesradio.com/roadtojoni and the radio hour will air across our affiliate radio station network beginning Saturday, September 14.

Bonnie spoke with Stuart Miller at the LA Times about the art of crafting a setlist that will satisfy herself, her band and the audience alike.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2024-09-10/bonnie-raitt-squeeze-the-who-share-secrets-of-a-great-setlist

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