Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

PBS’s usual “A Capitol Fourth” concert and fireworks from Washington, D.C., moves up a day this year, airing on WQED-TV at 8 p.m. July 3 to make way for the Semiquincentennial special “America Made in Virginia: 250 Years Together” (8 p.m. July 4), a telecast from Virginia’s Colonial Williamsburg that mixes live performance with historic interpretation and fireworks.

Singer Judy Collins will perform in the program along with Great American Songbook ambassador Michael Feinstein, opera bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green and Tony winners Kelli O’Hara and Adrienne Warren.

“America Made in Virginia” will feature a dramatic presentation of excerpts from the Declaration of Independence by a cast representing historic figures, including Thomas Jefferson, Martha Washington and James Lafayette, an enslaved Virginian who won his freedom as a Revolutionary War double agent.

Collins, 87, will sing a few songs, including “Beyond the Sky,” commissioned by NASA in honor of astronaut Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a space shuttle mission in 1999. (Judy Collins and Eileen Collins are not related.)

Collins is known both for interpreting others’ songs and for writing her own. But she didn’t write her own songs at the start of her career. When Collins recorded Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” in 1966, Cohen said to her, “I don’t know why you aren’t writing your own songs.”

“I went to the piano in the next room, and I wrote a song called ‘Since You’ve Asked,’ which is the first song that I wrote, and I’ve never stopped writing songs,” Collins said.

But it wasn’t the first time she’d been asked a version of that question.

“[Bob] Dylan would say to me, ‘Why don’t you write your own songs, [instead of singing] mine?’ And that’s just rude, you know?” Collins said. “With Leonard, it was like it was from the early centuries, where everybody lived on an island and they were either Greek or Roman and they knew how to speak to you instead of insulting you. It’s the way he said the question.”

Collins’ appearance on “America Made in Virginia” kicks off her “farewell tour,” although she’s quick to acknowledge she’s not retiring.

“You remember all of the groups that have done ‘farewell tours,’ which lasted a number of years? I can name 20,” Collins said. “I will always be performing as long as I’m alive.”

Collins’ tour brings her to Munhall’s Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall on Nov. 4.

“It’s a very, very educated audience in Pittsburgh,” Collins said. “That’s a divine place to work, because people know what they’re hearing. And they’ve come to hear certain things. And they know how to sing.”

Collins tries to get the audience to sing with her for at least one song at her concerts. She usually sings songs the audience associates with her: “Both Sides Now,” “Send in the Clowns” and “Amazing Grace.” Beyond that, her set list changes from show to show.

“I mix the show up,” Collins said. “I always try to make it different, so I’m not singing the same things every night.”