Judy Collins brings 1st all-original album to Pittsburgh's Byham Theater

At 82, Judy Collins attained a career milestone.

Her latest album, “Spellbound,” released Feb. 25, is her first collection of all-original songs.

She’ll perform selections from the album — along with favorites and deep cuts from a catalog spanning 60-plus years — during “An Evening With Judy Collins,” at 7 p.m. Oct. 23 in the Byham Theater in Pittsburgh.

The performance will be a tease for the new album, said Collins, who turned 83 on May 1.

“I don’t try to do more than four new songs in any given concert. I don’t think it’s fair to overwhelm people with brand new things,” she said. “I integrate them with the rest of the more familiar material, and it seems to work out fairly well.

“The audience probably wants to hear ‘Both Sides Now,’ they probably want to hear ‘Amazing Grace,’ they probably want to hear ‘Send in the Clowns.’ Chances are that they will,” she said. “That’s sort of the backbone of my performances, and it’s a very dependable center on which to hang brand-new things — older things, songs they may have forgotten about, songs I may have forgotten about.”

Collins’ 1961 debut album, “A Maid of Constant Sorrow,” featured traditional folk songs. Since then, she has sung everything from folk to country, show tunes to standards, pop to rock. She has won six Grammy Awards, in both folk and pop categories.

The songs on “Spellbound” had their origins in 2016, when Collins tasked herself with writing one poem a day for 90 days. At the suggestion of her husband, Louis Nelson, the 90 days stretched into one year.

“It’s always been part of my songwriting process to come at it from different angles,” Collins said. “Sometimes I can sit down at the piano and kind of worry my way through what might be sitting there. Sometimes it’s writing something down that occurs to me on the road.

“When I started to write poems every day in 2016, that was a lead-in, because then I could take the poems to the piano and figure out whether they would turn into a song,” she said. “Very few do. It’s a pretty low ratio.”

With all that new material, it seemed like the perfect time for Collins to do an album of original songs.

“I determined that this time I would write an album of my own songs. It seemed like a natural next step,” she said. “In the past 60-some-odd years since I started writing in 1966, I recorded and presented 60 of my own songs on albums, starting in 1967 with ‘Albatross,’ ‘Since You’ve Asked’ and ‘My Father.’

“I’ve kept up a pretty good average, but this is really what I needed to do this time.”

Life story in song

“Spellbound” contains 12 new songs, along with a new version of “The Blizzard,” another original from her 1990 album, “Fires of Eden.” The lyrics reminisce on personal experiences, family history and her love for her longtime home of New York City.

The album is dedicated to two of Collins’ early musical influences, folk singers Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.

“Most of my songwriting and prose writing is personal, I have to admit,” Collins said. “Somebody said it’s almost like the story of my life written in song, and I think that’s pretty close to the mark.

“I don’t do messages. I just do reflections on my own life and on the planet and on my friendships and family. But they are reflections, they are not suggestions,” she said. “They’re not instructions; they’re my own personal musings on what it’s like to be on the planet.”

Collins said she’s still working on poems that didn’t turn into songs for “Spellbound.” Some might be compiled in a book, and others might be the basis for another album.

“I have a lot of work to do,” she said. “I have more albums than you can shake a stick at, and they involve all kinds of different ideas and situations. Some of them will be my own songs, some of them will be other people’s songs.”

She would like to do collections from the works of favorite singer-songwriters “that I’ve always been in awe of,” she said. “Of course I have to do a Jimmy Webb — there’s no question about that.”

Being drawn to a particular song is a mysterious process, something like falling in love, Collins said.

“It doesn’t matter what a song is about, who wrote it, when it was written. It’s something that strikes you and makes you want to sing it, that’s all I can say,” she said. “Once you get hooked on a song, there’s not much chance you’ll pass it by or forget about it. It sticks with you and insists on being dealt with.”

Collins’ personal playlist is heavy on classical music, particularly Chopin, along with fellow singer/songwriters like the aforementioned Jimmy Webb, Shawn Colvin, Bess Nelson Chapman and Ari Hest.

She said she doesn’t feel compelled to keep up with what’s happening in contemporary music.

“Unless something is pointed out to me by somebody, I don’t,” she said. “I don’t have to keep up with anybody, quite frankly.”

Along with putting out new music, Collins intends to keep hitting the road.

“When the pandemic hit, I was doing about 120 shows a year, and I think we’re getting back to that level,” she said. “It’s what I do. If they’re out there wanting to hear me, I’m surely going to make an effort to get there.”

Tickets for “An Evening With Judy Collins” are $34.50-$64.50. To reserve, call 412-456-6666 or visit trustarts.org.