Collins isn't just about her famous past.

Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

Judy Collins has enjoyed an unusual front-row seat to history for much of her half-century musical career. She's been a folksinger, whose name is forever entwined with songs like "Both Sides Now" and "Send in the Clowns."

She's also been known, though somewhat less widely, as an author, with books like 2003's "Sanity and Grace," which details her efforts to come to terms with her only son's suicide in 1992.

And she's had music written about her: Those are her blue eyes that were memorialized in Stephen Stills' "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes."

But Collins, who turns 67 next month, has repeatedly found herself at interesting junctures of world events.

She was among the witnesses, for example, who testified at the infamous Chicago Seven trial following violent political demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. And, more cheerfully, she sang at President Clinton's first inauguration in 1993. (The Clintons have said they named their daughter, Chelsea, after Collins' recording of Joni Mitchell's "Chelsea Morning.")

None of this has especially surprised her.

"Well, sure," she said in a telephone interview this week from her home in New York. "A lot of things happen because you're in the right place at the right time and with the right people."

Born in Seattle, Collins grew up in Los Angeles and Denver as her family followed her father's radio career. She says she inherited his good taste in music and ability to enjoy the public eye.

"I was always in public. My father was very famous, he started his radio career in Seattle and then continued that in Los Angeles and Denver. He was very much on everybody's list of favorite people in town. And he was attracted to being political and outspoken. Those were natural things that pulled me in the direction of politics."

She will appear in concert Thursday in Eugene at the Shedd.

Collins, who answers interview questions with clarity and assurance, has long managed her own career. She once turned down '60s music producer Albert Grossman when he approached her about joining a female folk trio he wanted to create, much as he had created the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary.

"I said, `No thanks.' I wanted to be a Judy Collins. I didn't want to be a trio."

These days she even has her own record label, on which she released "Portrait of an American Girl" last year.

She talks with enthusiasm about the technological changes influencing the music business.

"Maybe in my next life I am going to be a record mogul," she laughed.

Are record albums over in the age of iTunes?

"They will always be a part of the picture," Collins said. "But not the whole picture. The albums and the radio play, the two things that always drove the music business before, have splintered off as part of the 500 ways to get music out there today."

Collins plans to sing a mix of new work and old favorites when she comes to Eugene.

"I'll be doing some songs from `Portrait of an American Girl,' and some of the classics, of course. `Both Sides Now.' `Amazing Grace.' And a couple surprises. And I will certainly sing the song I have written about Hurricane Katrina."

CONCERT PREVIEW

Judy Collins

Where: Jaqua Concert Hall, Shedd Institute

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday

Tickets: $36 to $48 (434-7000)

Extra: Pre-concert dinner at the Shedd, 6 p.m., $17.50 by reservation only (434-7000)

CAPTION(S):

As a child, Judy Collins got familiar with being in the public eye by watching her father, a popular radio personality.