The folk boom never ended. Well, if you spend a lot of time in Cambridge it never ended.

Since the opening of Club 47 in the ’50s and its transition to Club Passim in the ’60s, the Harvard Square music venue hosted Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, then Joni Mitchell and Tom Rush, then Chris Smither and Tom Waits. Call it folk or singer-songwriter or Americana, Passim has been at the heart of the coffeehouse scene for decades.

While everyone has their favorite era, with much attention being paid to the ’60s, Dar Williams’ perfect Passim time frame ran from the late ’80s to the early ’90s. That’s when Williams, along with local heroes and national names from Tracy Chapman and Patty Griffin to Shawn Colvin and Ellis Paul, helped usher in a second (or maybe third or fourth) folk revolution. On Nov. 14, Williams, Griffin, Josh Ritter and special guests including Peter Wolf will celebrate the 60th anniversary of Passim at the Boch Center’s Shubert Theatre.

NOV. 09, 2019 – Folk icon Joan Baez will Joan Baez present Betsy Siggins with Club Passim’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the club’s 60th Anniversary Concert on Nov. 14. Photo courtesy

NOV. 09, 2019 – Peter Wolf has joined the lineup of Club Passim’s 60th Anniversary Concert Nov. 14. Photo Joe Greene

NOV. 09, 2019 – Singer Dar Williams will be part of Passim’s 60th Anniversary concert Thursday, Nov. 14. Courtesy photo

“It felt like something was happening (when I came onto the scene),” Williams said. “And it felt like you could actually do this as a living. That’s because ten years before I came along, there was another wave of folk singers who were very present in the Boston scene. These singers gave us something we could aspire to and they too came through Passim.”

Williams has sold-out Passim (and rooms across the country) dozens of times. But she still vividly remembers her first set at the club.

“You’d break in by being part of a three-person, Sunday-afternoon show and Bob Donlin (who ran the club in the ’70s and ’80s) would check you out,” she said. “I remember the first time I played it, I got called up for an encore. And Bob said, ‘Go back on.’ Then, as I was going, he gently grabbed the back of my shirt and said, ‘But make it a short one.’”

Williams laughs while telling the story, but that encore was the start of a career that is still going strong.

The 60th anniversary show will see Joan Baez present Betsy Siggins with Club Passim’s Lifetime Achievement Award — Siggins was a founding member of Club 47. The evening will also raise money for Passim, a nonprofit integral to music education efforts including those of its own music school. But for many, it will chiefly be a reunion of old friends.

“The first gig I ever did was opening for Patty Griffin,” Williams said. “My housemate worked with her right before Patty quit her job to make music full-time. My housemate had slipped her my tape at the bar where they had worked. So Patty was part of a group that I knew that had just started to make music their careers. A few years later, well, four years later, I got to that place myself.”

“And Josh Ritter was one of the people who I kept hearing his songs on the radio and asking, ‘Who wrote this?’” she added. “It was almost always Josh. Every time, over and over, I would say, ‘This is a great writer, who is this?’ Again, it tended to be Josh.”

Passim’s 60th Anniversary Concert featuring Patty Griffin, Josh Ritter, Dar Williams and special guests, the Shubert Theatre, Thursday. Tickets: $38-$253; bochcenter.org.

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