Speed of the Sound of Loneliness
John Prine's song, sung as a duet with Prine himself on her Grammy-winning covers album.
Nanci Griffith, from Other Voices, Other Rooms (1993)
- Written by
- John Prine
- Released
- 1993
- Length
- 4:20
- Album
- Other Voices, Other Rooms
John Prine wrote it and first recorded it on German Afternoons in 1986. Griffith sang it with him on Other Voices, Other Rooms, recorded in late 1992 and produced by Jim Rooney, with Pete Kennedy on acoustic guitar, Philip Donnelly on guitar, James Hooker on keyboards, Fran Breen on drums and Pat McInerney on percussion. It came out as a single in the UK in 1993, with a video directed by Rocky Schenck in which Prine appears. Prine's last studio recording was one of her songs, for the 2023 tribute to her.
Live
She sang it live before she recorded it, first at Rock City in Nottingham in May 1988, and setlist.fm logs 29 performances, the last at the Cambridge Folk Festival in July 2012. It opens her live album Winter Marquee, recorded in Knoxville in 2002, and she sang it in Oslo in 2001. Kim Carnes, Alabama 3, Jeffrey Foucault, the Lemonheads and Kurt Vile are among others who have recorded it. The upload in the hypersongs web is the album version.
On stage
- 1988-05-02, Rock City, Nottingham First logged performance.
- 1994-10-11, Royal Albert Hall, London Released on the bootleg Sound of Loneliness.
- 2002-05-29, Tennessee Theatre, Knoxville Opens Winter Marquee.
- 2012-07-28, Cambridge Folk Festival Last logged performance.
Covers and versions
- Kim Carnes (1988)
- Alabama 3 (1997)
- Jeffrey Foucault (2009)
- Roddy Woomble (2014)
- The Lemonheads (2019)
- Kurt Vile (2020)
More songs by Nanci Griffith
St. Olav's Gate, From a Distance
Sources
- Speed of the Sound of Loneliness, Wikipedia
- Other Voices, Other Rooms (Nanci Griffith album), Wikipedia
- Speed of the Sound of Loneliness: song statistics, setlist.fm
- Remembering Nanci Griffith, Holler (2023-09-26)