Encino : Baez at Starbucks Draws Crowd of 300

Twentysomethings and baby-boomers brushed shoulders Friday morning as Joan Baez, the queen of folk, performed to a packed Encino coffee emporium.

Three hundred people listened as Baez’s songs were broadcast live on KSCA-FM’s (101.9) morning show. The crowd spilled through the open doors of the Starbucks at the Encino Marketplace and out onto the patio.

Counter servers bustled to and fro to fill all the orders for cafe mochas and cappuccinos.

Encino lawyer Leslie Shear, who said she has been a fan since college in the late 1960s and early 1970s, read about the planned appearance in the morning paper and made a detour to attend the event.

“Her music is always passionate and thoughtful at the same time,” Shear said. “It has both head and heart in it.”

Baez--in a black turtleneck pullover, black flower-print skirt and black patent loafers--looked more like a suburban housewife than a bohemian folk singer. The only offbeat touches were her dangling silver earrings and hairstyle--short except for one slim braid down her back.

But her singing was still the mellow style that has attracted millions of fans over the years and that infused such standards as “We Shall Overcome,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Diamonds and Rust.”

The informal show was something of a novel experience for Baez, 56. Although many people assume that folk singers work their way to stardom by singing at coffeehouses, Baez had sung in only one coffeehouse before emerging as an artist at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival.

She did, however, record some songs from her new album, “Ring Them Bells,” at a cafe called the Bottom Line in New York.

Many of the young people who attended the event came to see Dar Williams, a young folk singer who was Baez’s opening act Friday morning and planned to reprise the role Friday night at the Wiltern Theater.

Asked whether she thought it was strange for her, a counterculture figure, to be performing in what could be considered the ultimate suburban establishment venue, Baez said these are the types of places she has to play unless she wants to play “under a bridge.”

“The real split in this society is between people who have everything and people who have absolutely nothing,” she said. “Most of the places where I end up smack of yuppiedom. They’re people too.”