The San Francisco club where Joan Baez danced with Lana Del Rey
There is nowhere in San Francisco quite like Bissap Baobab. The Mission Street establishment is a one-of-one combo: part Senegalese restaurant, part nightclub that keeps bumping until 4 a.m. It’s a spot that’s drawn scores of fans, who gather to dance into the wee hours of the night. And apparently, those fans include Joan Baez and Lana Del Rey, too In a Rolling Stone interview published Wednesday, Joan Baez, 84, mostly discussed social activism in the context of the second Trump administration. But one segment of that conversation stuck out: a brief aside in which the Bay Area folk legend mentioned an outing with Del Rey, the pop star and onetime Coachella headliner adored by Gen-Z listeners.
“We had dinner and then went off to this Senegalese club in San Francisco where I’ve danced for years,” Baez told Rolling Stone. “She didn’t dance. Her sister danced. She was very, very shy, actually, in some ways. I did the dancing for her.”
Del Rey briefly alludes to this encounter in her song “Dance Till We Die,” off her 2021 album “Chemtrails Over the Country Club.” That track begins: “I’m coverin’ Joni and I’m dancin’ with Joan.”
There’s only one Senegalese club in San Francisco that fits the bill. Marco Senghor, owner of Bissap Baobab, told TheDailyVantagethat Baez is a friend of the restaurant. Although the singer-songwriter doesn’t come by as often as she used to before COVID-19, she showed up to Bissap Baobab’s grand reopening a couple of years back and has remained a friend.
“I know every time I call her, she’s going to respond and she’s not too far from us,” Senghor said.
From interviews, it seems that the two musicians have forged a friendship rooted in mutual admiration. Baez told Rolling Stone that they first met after Del Rey invited Baez to join her onstage at a Greek Theatre concert in 2019. “She’s an interesting woman,” Baez told Rolling Stone of Del Rey. “She’s slightly on another planet, but I appreciate that and her and her music.”
“Joan is my favorite female singer,” Del Rey told the Washington Post in 2021.
This isn’t the first mention of the episode; Del Rey told the Post that she and Baez went out dancing at the restaurant after she brought Baez onstage at the Greek. She confirmed that Baez kept dancing until 4 a.m., outlasting her.
“I never really ask who is who, but I know she sometimes brings very well-known people,” Senghor said of Baez. “And everybody feels the simplicity of the Baobab and they right away feel at home.”
