PEACE OF HER HEART AS PROTEST MOVEMENT RE-EMERGES, JOAN BAEZ'S VOICE RESONATES ANEW.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

After spending more than a decade working to overcome emotions and fears in her personal life that she had avoided dealing with for years, Joan Baez was ready to re-emerge as a working musician. The final touches were being put on a new album and a concert tour planned. Then an old calling came.

Baez was once the ``voice'' of a generation of protest: She stood beside Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 Civil Rights March in Washington, D.C., and led a crowd of 250,000 in singing ``We Shall Overcome''; in 1964 she sat in with Berkeley free-speech protesters; and throughout the '60s and into '70s she took part in numerous anti-Vietnam War rallies. Now the 62-year-old singer finds her phone ringing - a lot - lately.

The calls are not only from those who want to hear her clear charms as a singer - Baez performs tonight at UCLA's Royce Hall - but from those who want her to help in the opposition to a possible war with Iraq. And Baez has obliged, making herself clearly visible, out at rallies and doing interviews on radio and television.

``Her influence can not be underestimated,'' says music historian and critic Billy Altman, who has helped put together an album of mostly '60s protest music called ``This Land Is Your Land II: Songs of Freedom.'' The Vanguard release, coming out April 11, features two numbers by Baez.

``I think the fact that she was so out front throughout that whole period of the '60s and '70s - where she was associated with Bob Dylan - made her a very strong role model, especially for women, to speak out on political topics,'' adds Altman. ``Her opposition to the Vietnam War made her a lightning rod, and she really soldiered on through that period very, very bravely.''

In the '60s and '70s, Baez was often called anti-American. Cartoonist Al Capp had a figure ``Joanie Phoanie,'' but her commitment to causes has continued throughout her career. ``With Baez, activism has been a continual thread,'' notes music historian and author Harvey Kubernik. ``Even at Woodstock she sang the labor anthem 'Joe Hill.' ''

Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls once said of her, ``She's inspiring because she's always stood for more than just the songs she was singing.''

But being a role model and on the front lines of social activism for so long has not always been easy for the singer, who lost her younger sister, singer Mimi Farina, to cancer in 2001. Talking from her home in Northern California, Baez makes it clear that it was important for her to put her own life in order first before putting her energies back again into political changes.

``I do meditation now,'' she says, ``I don't say it lightly because I think it changed my life considerably. ... I spent over a decade doing the therapeutic inner works that I've put off for half a century because it was too scary. Having done it, I'm now free of the phobias and panic attacks and insomnia, etc., that had played a role in my life.''

Baez - who has a son, Gabriel, from her marriage to anti-war activist David Harris in the late '60s - knows that image is at odds with her cool public persona. ``It was much easier for me to walk out on the stage than try to live 45 minutes of my life. I was stuck with myself,'' she says with a laugh.

Still, when she talks about her new album or the current political climate, the word ``dark'' is part of the description.

``I don't think it was done purposely, but we always reflect the times no matter what,'' says Baez. ``It's very dark. It's probably the darkest album I've ever done.

In a slight sing-song voice, she recites some of the lyrics from one of the tunes on the album, Natalie Merchant's ``Motherland'':

``Where in hell can you go/ far from the places you know/ far from the sprawl of concrete/ that keeps crawling its way a thousand miles a day.''

Baez's new album, tentatively titled ``Dark Chords on a Big Guitar,'' and set to come out in the summer, also features songs by Steve Earle, Gillian Welch, David Rawlings, Ryan Adams and Greg Brown. There are no new songs written by Baez.

``About 10 years ago I quit writing songs because I don't want to do anything difficult again as long as I live, and I told my manager his job would be to find the musicians and find the music and new songs, and I would vocalize, go on stage and make new albums,'' she says, laughing.

Talk about current events and Baez sounds more serious.

``I've never seen such a bleak horizon in my life. I've talked about it, and I knew it intellectually that it could happen. Basically, it is happening. And it is so close to total disaster that it's hard to think about.''

But that hasn't stopped her from getting out there. A few days after our talk, she was at an anti-war rally in San Francisco, her second in a few weeks. Describing what she saw at the first one, though, she seems delighted not only by the numbers of people who have come out but by the atmosphere.

``Though there is a lot of anger, there is also tremendous humor. I've never seen so many imaginative signs the way they were on the (first) march in San Francisco - ``Who would Jesus bomb?'' Sarcasm is rampart, and that's good - and it's time for it.''

Baez also enjoyed the diversity. ``There was so much music just walking around in the morning before the march started. There was an Irish bagpipe band, people were dancing, there were rappers, there were African drummers. ... It's lively. It's multiethnic.

That's very different, she says, from when she marched with King, when the crowds were blacks and whites; or in the Vietnam protest, which were mostly white.

Baez, whose early albums are being re-released by Vanguard - also seems psyched about making music again. The band she's taking on the road is ``good, good, good,'' she enthuses. Though it takes a lot of energy, Baez has been studying voice for about 20 years ``because, like any other muscle in the human body, the vocal cords wear out, so you have to work with them. And like any athlete, it's the whole body that's involved.''

The results are still gratifying, she says. ``And when it's not, I'm not going to bother and put my energy into things I've put on the sidelines, like poetry.''

But she's not on the sidelines yet. Singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright recalls how he was driving to Northern California when he heard Baez talking and singing on the radio during the first San Francisco protest. ``Somehow, when huge stuff is happening, like now, singing and protesting seem natural and appropriate and needed,'' says Wainwright.

Somehow it seems natural and appropriate that Joan Baez would be there, too.

``In a sense, the timing right now is very convenient for me because I have done the work that I set out to do internally,'' says Baez.

JOAN BAEZ

Where: UCLA's Royce Hall.

When: 8 tonight.

Tickets: $35 to $40. [phone]; ticketmaster.com.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) PEACE WORK

Joan Baez returns to the road - and to her role as a voice against war

Photo by Scott Sommerdorf/San Francisco Chronicle

(2) no caption (Joan Baez)