From Journey to the Eagles to Barry Manilow and more, so many major names in music have chosen 2026 as their final year on the road…and now another legendary musician has announced a farewell tour.
Singer-songwriter and folk-rock icon Judy Collins, 86, will be heading out on her last-ever jaunt with the “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes” tour this year. As Ultimate Classic Rock reported, Collins will prepare with some “warmup” shows in June, with the tour officially kicking off the next month on July 4 at the “America Made in Virginia: 250 Years Together” celebration in Williamsburg, Virginia.
While dates are scheduled all over the U.S. through Nov. 29 at this time, more shows are still to be announced. After the main tour, Collins will keep the music going with “a series of encore performances for devoted fans and new audiences alike” dubbed the “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes — Celebration Encore.”
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Collins will be joined by a series of special guests throughout the tour, including Bruce Cockburn, Richard Thompson, the High Kings, Elles Bailey, Livingston Taylor and others.
As for what fans can expect to hear on this tour, Collins has decades of music to draw from, with some of her biggest hits including her 1968 cover of “Both Sides, Now” by Joni Mitchell and her 1975 cover of Stephen Sondheim‘s “Send in the Clowns,” released on her bestselling platinum album Judith. (Her latest release was 2022’s Spellbound, which was her first ever full album of original material.)
Judy Collins got her start in the ’60s Greenwich Village folk scene
In a 2022 interview with UCR, Collins opened up about the “camaraderie” she felt with other folk singers — including Bob Dylan — as part of the Greenwich Village scene in the 1960s.
“There was a lot of going down to the park there and playing on a Sunday,” Collins recalled. “And drinking a lot in the clubs and going to hear all your favorite singers. I wasn’t home all the time, but I was home enough to get — I did have an apartment in the Village for a couple of years from ’63 to ’65 on 135 West 10th…so I was sort of in the thick of it, and I’d wake up and go to breakfast at one of the funky joints, I can’t remember the name of it now, but it was very social and very interactive. And of course, I heard a lot of songs that I recorded.”
“The village is where all of the artists that he represented were either singing or performing or living or in the case of [Bob] Dylan — Dylan always has a question in his little book about his songwriting, I think he calls it Chronicles One — and he says he started out as somebody who was homeless and singing old Woody Guthrie,” Collins continued. “That’s when I met him, when he was Robert Zimmerman. I met him in Colorado a couple of times and then when I got to New York in ’61, and was singing at Gerde’s Folk City, he was still there, still homeless and still singing these old Woody Guthrie [songs].”
Fans hoping to catch Collins on her final tour can find ticket information on her official website. Tickets are on sale now.
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