Pop Music : Joan Baez--Intimate and Expressive

On the Amnesty International tours and other cause-related events, Joan Baez has often been trotted out like the hallowed ghost of protest past, the bona fide conscience of a whole generation, instead of a flesh and blood person. And the scale of those shows seemed to encourage her to fill the large settings with volume and histrionics that overwhelmed rather than revealed the lyric content of her songs.

In the intimate environment of the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on Friday, though, the singer connected with wit, grace and a splendid, expressive voice. Accompanied by her own guitar and second guitarist Jamie Fox, she gave a career-spanning, 14-song show.

Throughout her career, Baez (who turned 50 in January) has been inextricably linked with social causes, particularly pacifism. That has often meant swimming against the tide, and she was unhesitant Friday in opposing the powerful current of war exultation sweeping the nation, with a poem and with an impassioned version of Dylan’s “With God on Our Side.”

Other entries from her early folkie days included “House of the Rising Sun” and “The Butcher Boy,” one of those love ‘n’ death ballads from antiquity. There was a trio of songs with sing-along “la la” choruses: “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” Paul Simon’s “The Boxer” and “Gracias a la Vida,” one of two Spanish-language songs in the set. Like Linda Ronstadt’s, Baez’s voice proved especially well suited to the more expansive drama of the Spanish tunes.

It has been easy to forget sometimes what a splendid, human-scale communicator Baez can be. That quality was reasserted in this sterling, low-key performance.