Nanci Griffith

The Texas singer and songwriter who called her music folkabilly, recorded From a Distance before anyone else, and won a Grammy singing the songs of the writers who made her.

Origin
Seguin, Texas, United States
Years active
1977-2013
Genres
country, folk, Americana
Labels
B.F. Deal, Featherbed, Philo, MCA, Elektra, Rounder, New Door

Austin

Nanci Caroline Griffith was born in Seguin, Texas, on 6 July 1953 and grew up in Austin, the youngest of three children. Her mother sold real estate and acted as an amateur; her father was a printer and graphic artist who sang in a barbershop quartet. She first sang in a local coffeehouse at twelve and played her first paid show at fourteen, at the Red Lion Cabaret downtown. That same year she saw Townes Van Zandt perform, which she later said set the course of her life. She took an education degree at the University of Texas, taught kindergarten and first grade for a couple of years, and held a Sunday night residency at the Hole in the Wall.

Her first album, There's a Light Beyond These Woods, came out on B.F. Deal in 1978, the year she won the New Folk competition at Kerrville. Poet in My Window followed in 1982. In 1983 she met the producer Jim Rooney at a barbecue, and he made her next records for Philo. In 1985 she moved to Nashville and made the first of eight appearances on Austin City Limits, with Lyle Lovett singing backup. The Last of the True Believers (1986) was nominated for a Grammy and included Tom Russell's St. Olav's Gate. Kathy Mattea took its Love at the Five and Dime into the country top five. Griffith called her style folkabilly: plenty of Woody Guthrie and plenty of Loretta Lynn, mixed together.

MCA and Ireland

MCA signed her, and Lone Star State of Mind (1987), made with Tony Brown, became her highest placed album on the US country chart and topped the UK country chart. It held the first recording of Julie Gold's From a Distance. Over the Christmas holidays of 1986 she had put together a touring band, the Blue Moon Orchestra, named after her album Once in a Very Blue Moon. Little Love Affairs (1988), the live One Fair Summer Evening (1988), Storms (1989) and Late Night Grande Hotel (1991) followed. The AV Club heard the MCA years as a push toward country.

Ireland took to her after she arrived in 1987. From a Distance reached number nine there in 1988, and an RTE documentary later called her the best selling female artist in the country within a year. She lived in Dublin for a time in the 1990s. Other singers had hits with her songs, among them Suzy Bogguss with Outbound Plane and Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson with Gulf Coast Highway.

Other voices

She moved to Elektra and in 1993 released Other Voices, Other Rooms, songs by the writers who had shaped her, named after Truman Capote's novel. Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Arlo Guthrie and Guy Clark joined her, and John Prine sang his own Speed of the Sound of Loneliness with her. It reached 18 in the UK and won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Flyer (1994) also made the UK top 20.

She came through breast cancer in 1996 and thyroid cancer in 1998, and kept recording: Blue Roses from the Moons (1997), a second covers album, Other Voices, Too (1998), The Dust Bowl Symphony (1999) and Clock Without Hands (2001). She campaigned for a world free of landmines, traveling to Vietnam, Cambodia, Kosovo and Angola, and toured with John Prine, Iris DeMent, Judy Collins, the Crickets and the Everly Brothers.

Last years

The live Winter Marquee (2002) caught her band at the Tennessee Theatre in Knoxville. After Hearts in Mind (2004) came years of writer's block, with Ruby's Torch (2006) in between, until The Loving Kind (2009). Her masters were among the recordings lost in the Universal Studios fire of June 2008. Intersection (2012), co-produced with Maura and Pete Kennedy in a studio in her Nashville home, was her last album, and afterward she largely left public life. She died in Nashville on 13 August 2021, aged 68.

Lyle Lovett said his life and career would not be the same without her. Taylor Swift put her singing level with anyone of her generation, and Mary Gauthier said she deserved her own head on Mount Rushmore. She entered the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2022. In 2023 Craft issued the box set Working in Corners, and the tribute More Than a Whisper gathered Iris DeMent, Lovett with Kathy Mattea, Mary Gauthier, Sarah Jarosz and others, along with John Prine's last studio recording, Love at the Five and Dime with Kelsey Waldon.

Records

Songs

Townes Van Zandt, John Prine, Lyle Lovett, Tom Russell, Emmylou Harris

Where to go next

Reference

Discography and data

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Live performance archives

Sources

  1. Nanci Griffith, Wikipedia
  2. Nanci Griffith's Irish hit, cancer history and really dysfunctional family, The Irish Times (2021-08-16)
  3. Songwriter and performer Nanci Griffith has died, Saving Country Music (2021-08)
  4. R.I.P. Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith, The A.V. Club (2021-08)
  5. Remembering Nanci Griffith, Holler (2023-09-26)
  6. Nanci Griffith, FolkWorld