PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: DAVID FIELDING / DAVID HOFFMAN PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM 119 tors. He and Doc Watson dragged chairs onto the lawn to strum in the great outdoors. Earl also paid a house call to Bob Dylan, playing as the pendulum of the old wall clock kept time like a metronome. And now, he’d arrived on the Peninsula. The East Coast-West Coast divide was evident as soon as Earl and the gang entered Joan’s house. “I'm gonna call it a hippie house,” New Yorker David says of the legend’s modest farmhouse with hillside views and outdoor shower. “I’m an East Coast guy—I’d never seen an outdoor shower!” he notes with a chuckle. “Two extraordinarily different cultures.” As the protest folk singer, the trailblazing country musician and his sons settle onto chairs and an earth-brown couch in the living room and begin tuning their instruments, a sense of anticipation builds. What’s about to transpire? While their home lives may have looked different, Joan and Earl were united in opposing the Vietnam War. This was a particularly gutsy stance for Earl. “For him to say that is a big deal, because country music was notorious for people being for the Vietnam War,” David explains. “Earl was not highly political, but he was bold.” In the midst of a national draft and seemingly endless conflict, “he wanted the boys to come home,” David reflects. “That’s all he cared about.” Joan and Earl also shared the easy camaraderie of old friends. About a decade earlier, they had met at the Newport Folk Festival, then went on to play together. The first few times the two interacted, Earl had a quiet but sweet line of approach. “He was so shy,” Joan recalls. “He used to come up and say, ‘Remember this one?’” Then he’d launch into a song on the banjo and wait for her to join in. “I had reason to be shy,” Earl protests. “I admired your singing so very much.” And then Joan, strumming her OPPOSITE: Joan Baez's outdoor shower was a foreign concept to East Coast filmmaker David Hoffman. When she invited him to try it out, he went in with his clothes on. Joan, finding this hilarious, joined him while also fully dressed.
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