1/7/2024 0 Comments Songwriters who have done time![]() That was the first time I knew that I had done OK.” After I’d sent it to Dylan, to tell him we had recorded it and let him know it was done, we heard back from him that he wanted to come in and play harmonica. “The Dylan piece, ‘Boots of Spanish Leather,’ was probably the most intimidating piece. And I really didn’t know if I had or not. It was so important to me to do it right. “There was actually more pressure than when I’m doing my own songs, because as writers we all want that song to be heard with the greatest voice. “What I’m always after is a performance, and Nanci is fully capable of performing live in the studio.” “She still has that ability to focus and concentrate, and yet be pretty relaxed at the same time,” Rooney says. Their collaboration was as smooth as their first work together nine years ago, when they recorded the 13 songs of “Once in a Very Blue Moon” in two days. It really was a statement that said it’s time for me to do this record.”įinancing the project herself while extracting herself from her MCA Records contract, Griffith reunited with producer Jim Rooney. Emmy said the most marvelous thing, which was that songs need to be sung in new voices in places that they’ve never been heard before, in order to stay alive and have new life. “And if you don’t record the songs, they just die, they go away, no one sings them. “Emmy and I were talking about Kate Wolf, and the fact that Kate has been gone since 1986 and that no one was recording her songs,” says Griffith, telling the story she recounts in the album booklet. The project was something Griffith had often thought about, but it took solid form in the final hours of 1991, at her traditional New Year’s Eve get-together with Harris. Clark and heralded newcomer DeMent are part of Griffith’s concert tour roster, which plays April 16 at the Wiltern Theatre. Guest musicians include Emmylou Harris, Dylan, Prine, Carolyn Hester, Iris DeMent, Guy Clark and Chet Atkins. In between are Woody Guthrie and the Weavers, Dylan, Tom Paxton and John Prine, Janis Ian and the late Kate Wolf, among others. In “Other Voices, Other Rooms"-named for Truman Capote’s first book-Griffith has assembled songs representing each folk revival, from the Carter Family’s 1877 composition “Are You Tired of Me Darling” to works by such contemporary writers as Buddy Mondlock and Frank Christian. And the fact that I’m still surviving, I’m still here. I see R.E.M., I see the Indigo Girls, Tracy Chapman. So I think it deserves to be on the radio, deserves to be heard.” “Folk music and rap music are the only two American forms of music that have any kind of social conscience whatsoever. “It’s always made me incredibly angry that the music industry turned its back on folk music and said it’s not commercially viable,” says Griffith, sitting in an office at Elektra’s Beverly Hills headquarters. What the blues is to Raitt, folk music is to Griffith-a personal passion and a musical foundation, and she speaks of it with the same zeal Raitt applies to the blues. Rather than the commercial gesture that might pull that off, the new “Other Voices, Other Rooms” is a tribute to the songwriters who have influenced her, and to the tradition that’s the wellspring of her music. We hope we can have that kind of success with Nanci.” “She had a career based on goodwill and honesty, and it all came together. “Who knows why everything conspired for Bonnie Raitt?” says Steve Ralbovsky, the vice president of artists and repertoire who signed Griffith to Elektra Records last year. But her new record company doesn’t see any reason why it can’t happen somewhere down the line. That final chapter of the Bonnie Raitt story hasn’t happened yet for Nanci Griffith, and it isn’t likely to happen with her just-released 10th album. Mixing her own songs with material by other writers and playing music that extends a “root” American style, she earns a reputation for taste and integrity and becomes a consistent record seller in the 200,000 range.įinally, a hip record producer makes her a little more radio-friendly, and she unexpectedly connects with a mass audience, selling millions of records and raking in Grammys. But people respond to the honesty of her singing, and she gradually builds a loyal audience through a backbreaking tour schedule. ![]() The singer doesn’t get any mainstream radio play, maybe because she’s a little too close to a traditional form.
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