I just got off the phone with Joan Baez, who performs March 24 at the Waterville Opera House.

She was in good spirit, and effusive in her praise for presidential candidate Barack Obama. The folk singer, who marks her 50th year in music this year, has never endorsed a candidate for president before, but felt compelled to get behind Obama.

She said the Illinois senator brings her back to the 1960s in terms of inspiration and spirit. Baez was at the forefront of America’s musical-activist movement in the '60s.

“It throws me so back into the civil rights movement. The things that he says, the ways he says them and the hope it produces are just irresistible,” she said.

Baez hopes Obama resists the temptation to allow his campaign to turn ugly and negative, but also feels that such a turn might be inevitable in light of Hillary Clinton’s big victories in the Tuesday primaries.

“I don’t know what happens next. I know the general talk is that he has to put his boxing gloves on and step on her neck, because she does all traditional nastiness. It will be interesting to see, because he is so intelligent, so eloquent and so elegant.”

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