Her latest album, The Loving Kind has been on shelves for a month and she’s got several tour dates scheduled around the country in support of the record.
Just before the album release, Nanci Griffith took some time to answer our questions about her amazing career, her political views and the Patti Smith song she wishes she could cover.
More than two decades after her first record, Nanci Griffith is still making beautiful, honest and relevant music. Her latest album, The Loving Kind, has nine original songs and a small handful of covers.
Using a blend of folk, country and a tiny bit of pop, she tells vivid stories about the lives, loves and losses of the characters she creates.
Townes Van Zandt is one of those musicians that you don’t know that you know.
His song have been covered by Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, Bob Dylan, Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, Guy Clark, Steve Earle and Willie Nelson did a little tune of his called Pancho and Lefty.
A little bit like the Texas version of Gram Parsons, Townes grew up in a wealthy family and headed off to college in the ’60s. He left school, partially to become famous and partially due to the onset of mental health problems that would plague him the rest of his life.
Maybe it was the time you drove 16 hours to see your girlfriend/boyfriend.
Or the summer you had to visit Aunt Edna in Alabama.
Or that one time you and 4 of your closest friends decided to follow String Cheese Incident (or any other band) across the country in a beat up van.
Chances are you’ve been stuck in the seat of a car for far too long at some point in your life and can at least sympathize with the truckers who haul food and other such goodies.
In this roundup we’ll look at driving of various origin.
It takes a certain kind of man to shoot someone in a bar fight.
It takes a whole different type of man to fess up, surrender himself to the police, make bail and show up the next night to play an in-store show asking his fans to pray for him.
But that’s Billy Joe Shaver for you.
The 2007 event may scream the ending of a Lifetime movie even though it’s just one side of the singer, songwriter and country music renegade.
He’s been making music for over 35 years and is responsible for songs such as “Live Forever,” “Way Down Texas Way,” “I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train,” “Old Chunk of Coal” and “Old Five and Dimers Like Me.”
CMT has this new reality show called, “Can You Duet?”
As if we haven’t had enough American Idol, it’s coming to haunt us over in country music land as well.
Of course there are always those people that have a difficult time carrying a tune in a bucket, and there are the duos where each party thinks they’re holding the reins of the horse. It’s what makes the show even slightly interesting. And it’s better than watching celebrities reveal their “hidden talents.”
While Naomi Judd looks for the winners that make good television, we’ll take a look at some (not all) real vocal marriages made in musical heaven.
Nanci came into the venue from the main building, right through the crowds. She wore a white button up tunic sheer top with a white tank top underneath and worn light blue jeans. She had on flip flops which were gone a few songs into the set. She started by waving to all four sides (the venue is set up so there are people on all sides) and then saying “Good Evening Denver!”
She went right into Simple Life and after the song said hi to a baby in the front with his dad. She said it was a “pleasure to be here among all the growth and that she was going to sing a song written by John Prine and that it had been “good to both of us”, Speed Of the Sound of Loneliness.
Then the next song was a “tune of mine that’s a thumbnail sketch of two singer songwriters, the late Kate Wolf and (someone else) who had something else in common, they both left their abusive husbands in a car they had bought for them. This song is for anyone who needs this, the keys are in the ignition, motors runnin’ in that Ford Econoline!” She used the pedal to the metal adlibs and at the end she said “keep it up mama, next year you’re gonna be driving yourself a brand new electric Humvee!”
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