Fifty years after first taking her voice and guitar out to her audience Joan Baez must wonder if the times have been a-changin� after all.

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Fifty years after first taking her voice and guitar out to her audience Joan Baez must wonder if the times have been a-changin' after all. "Woke up this morning and none of the news was good," she sang in reaching again for Jerusalem, and be it politicians' doublespeak or governments fighting wars with God on their side, she'll probably find little to like the morning after, either.

The omens for this celebratory tour weren't great. Day After Tomorrow, the album that marks Baez's fiftieth anniversary, has somehow contrived to be rather less than the sum of significant parts such as Baez's still distinguished voice, musicians including Tim O'Brien and Darrell Scott and songs by, among others, hot talents Eliza Gilkyson and Diana Jones.

However, the musicians Baez hired just last week, a front-ranking American roots music trio of guitarist John Doyle, bassist Todd Phillips and Dirk Powell on mandolin, fiddle, banjo and accordion, brought a definite snap to the new songs and proved empathetic to Baez's backwards glances, be they towards Sam Cooke or Bob Dylan, complete with Joan's ever-accurate impersonation of the latter.

Powell et al were just the ticket, especially when Baez visited Carter Family country, introducing Gospel Ship with a tasty anecdote about Johnny Cash. She can laugh at herself, too, as she makes a haddock of Diamonds & Rust's guitar accompaniment in her solo spot and recalls "miserabling out" her audience in the early days with teary ballads. There was no chance of that happening here. Glasgow loves Joan, and keeps telling her so, although they gave up a bit dutifully when the lights went back on.