Nanci Griffith
Nanci Caroline Griffith was an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She often appeared on the PBS music program Austin City Limits, starting in 1985 during season 10. In 1994, Griffith won a Grammy Award for the album Other Voices, Other Rooms.
Griffith's career spanned a variety of musical genres, predominantly country, folk, and what she termed "folkabilly." She won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1994 for her 1993 recording, Other Voices, Other Rooms. The album features Griffith covering the songs of artists who were her major influences. One of her better-known songs is "From a Distance," which was written and composed by Julie Gold. Similarly, other artists have occasionally achieved greater success than Griffith herself with songs that she wrote or co-wrote. For example, Kathy Mattea had a country music top-five hit with a 1986 cover of Griffith's "Love at the Five and Dime" and Suzy Bogguss had one of her largest hits with Griffith 's "Outbound Plane".
Griffith toured with various other artists, including Buddy Holly's band - the Crickets, John Prine, Iris DeMent, Suzy Bogguss, Judy Collins, and the Everly Brothers. Griffith recorded duets with many artists, among them Prine, Emmylou Harris, Mary Black, Don McLean, Jimmy Buffett, Dolores Keane, Willie Nelson, Adam Duritz, the Chieftains, John Stewart, and Darius Rucker. Griffith referred to her backing band as the Blue Moon Orchestra.
Early life
Griffith, the youngest of three siblings, was born in Seguin, Texas, and grew up in Rollingwood, a suburb of Austin, where her family moved shortly after her birth. Her mother Ruelene was a real estate agent and amateur actress; her father, Marlin Griffith, was a printer, publisher, graphic artist and barbershop quartet singer. Griffith began her music career at age 12, singing in a local coffeehouse. When she was a teenager, her father took her to see Townes Van Zandt. At 14, she performed her first professional gig at the Red Lion Cabaret in downtown Austin.Griffith attended the University of Texas at Austin and received a degree in education. She taught kindergarten and first grade for a couple of years, before fully focusing on music.
Career
Independent labels (1978-1986)
Her debut album, There's a Light Beyond These Woods, was released in 1978; the cover was designed by her father. Her second album, Poet in My Window, was released in 1982. Both albums were folk-oriented and released on small labels.Griffith attracted attention of record producer Jimmy Rooney and recorded her third album, Once in a Very Blue Moon in 1984, in Nashville, with musicians such as Béla Fleck, Mark O'Connor and Lloyd Green. In the same year, she performed on PBS music program Austin City Limits. In the next year, with mostly the same musicians, she recorded the album The Last of the True Believers, which won her first Grammy nomination. The album included the songs "Love at the Five and Dime" and "Goin' Gone" which became hits for Kathy Mattea.
MCA years (1987-1991)
Griffith signed to MCA Records and moved to Nashville; her first album for MCA was the country-oriented Lone Star State of Mind, which included two songs, "Trouble in the Fields", co-written by Griffith, and "From a Distance", written by then unknown songwriter Julie Gold. These songs became popular in Ireland, and both have been covered by many singers. It was followed by Little Love Affairs, featuring "Outbound Plane" which later became a hit for Suzy Bogguss. In 1988, Griffith released One Fair Summer Evening, a live album recorded in Anderson Fair in Houston.Griffith transferred to the MCA pop division and recorded Storms, which included a song she considered the most important she wrote, "It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go", about conflict in Northern Ireland and racism in the US.
In 1990, Griffith appeared on the Channel 4 program Town & Country with John Prine in a segment entitled "White Pants", where she wore white pants at the Bluebird Café in Nashville, Tennessee, along with Buddy Mondlock, Barry "Byrd" Burton, and Robert Earl Keen.
Griffith released Late Night Grande Hotel in 1991, and then left MCA Records.
''Other Voices, Other Rooms'' and later works
In 1993, Griffith released the album Other Voices, Other Rooms, which won her first and only Grammy award. The album featured songs by various folk and country songwriters, and a large group of musicians, from Bob Dylan to Odetta. The album was certified gold by RIAA in 2005, more than a decade after it was released.In 1994, she released the album Flyer, which received another Grammy nomination.
In the same year, Griffith teamed with Jimmy Webb to contribute the song "If These Old Walls Could Speak" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization. She survived breast cancer which was diagnosed in 1996, and thyroid cancer in 1998.
Christine Lavin, a singer and songwriter, remembers the first time she saw Griffith perform:
I was struck by how perfect everything was about her singing, her playing, her talking. I realized from the get-go that this was someone who was a complete professional. Obviously she had worked a long time to get to be that good.
In the late 1990s, Griffith wrote a letter to a number of Texas media, expressing her frustration with recent reviews.
Griffith contributed background vocals on many other recordings.
Griffith performed four songs, "The Day the Earth Stopped Cold", "Gravity of the Situation", "So Strange", and "Hold My Hand" with Hootie & the Blowfish during their MTV Unplugged performance in 1996 in Columbia, South Carolina, to raise awareness for Sweet Relief Musicians Fund.
Griffith suffered from severe writer's block after 2004, lasting until the 2009 release of the album The Loving Kind, which contained nine selections that she had written and composed either entirely by herself or as collaborations.
After several months of limited touring in 2011, Griffith's bandmates the Kennedys packed up their professional Manhattan recording studio and moved it to Nashville, installing it in Griffith's home. There with her backing group including the Kennedys and Pat McInerney, she co-produced her album Intersection over the summer. The album included several new original songs and was released in April 2012 on Proper Records. Her website lists live performances through 2013.
Awards
Griffith won the 1994 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album for Other Voices, Other Rooms. She was inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame in 1995. Griffith was awarded the Kate Wolf Memorial Award by the World Folk Music Association in 1995. In 2008, the Americana Music Association awarded her its Lifetime Americana Trailblazer Award. Lyle Lovett, who contributed backing vocals to her third album, Once in a Very Blue Moon, had won it before her. In 2010, Griffith received a Lifetime Achievement Award at BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.Griffith was posthumously inducted into the Texas Heritage Songwriters Association's Hall of Fame in February 2022 at the Paramount Theatre in Austin.
The Blue Moon Orchestra
Griffith called her backing band the Blue Moon Orchestra. With regard to the chosen stage name, she wrote:The title selection of the Once in a Very Blue Moon album reached number 85 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in 1986. In 1986, Griffith showcased tracks from her Lone Star State of Mind album on The Nashville Network TV show, New Country.
;Final members
- Nanci Griffith - lead vocals, guitar
- Pat McInerney – drums, percussion
- Maura Kennedy – vocals, guitar
- Pete Kennedy – guitar, vocals
- James Hooker – piano, B-3, keyboards, vocals
- Byrd Burton – guitar
- Frank Christian – guitar
- Philip Donnelly – guitar
- Danny Flowers – guitar
- Clive Gregson – guitar, vocals
- Thomm Jutz – guitar, vocals
- Doug Lancio – electric guitar
- Lee Satterfield – vocals, rhythm guitar, mandolin
- Denny Bixby – bass, harmony vocals
- Ron De La Vega – bass, cello
- Le Ann Etheridge – vocals, bass guitar, rhythm guitar
- Pete Gordon – bass
- Pete Gorisch – bass, cello
- Danny Milliner – bass
- J. T. Thomas – bass, vocals
- Fran Breen – drums
- Liam Genockey – drums
- Steve Smith – drums
- Emmylou Harris
- Iris DeMent
- Lyle Lovett
- Denice Franke
Personal life
Griffith was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996, and thyroid cancer in 1998. Dupuytren's contracture led to her losing flexibility in her fingers, which made playing the guitar difficult.
Political views and activism
Griffith was outspoken in her political views, supporting liberal, pacifist and left policies. She was "a total abolitionist on the death penalty" and wrote a song, "Not Innocent Enough", which appeared on her album The Loving Kind in 2009.Her song "It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go" addressed the Troubles in Northern Ireland and racism in the United States.
Together with Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell and other artists, she was a member of Music Row Democrats, an organization promoting Democratic Party candidates in Nashville. She also supported Barack Obama and said, after he was elected: "the election brought out the acceptance of hope and a new direction. When I went to Europe, I wasn't embarrassed about my country."
For years, Griffith wore buttons with political messages on her guitar strap, most often buttons from the Lyndon Johnson presidential campaign.
Griffith visited Vietnam, Cambodia, Kosovo and Angola in the 2000s, supporting Campaign for a Landmine Free World.
She considered herself a non-practicing Catholic.