Nanci Caroline Griffith (July 6, 1953 – August 13, 2021)
I never met Nanci Griffith. This, despite the fact that she is arguably my favorite musical artist. And that is saying a lot. Because I am not prone to picking favorites in anything. You see, generally, I believe that when you pick one thing over all the others, it somehow lessens everything else. And I have a personality that just has a hard time doing that.
But Nanci Griffith was, for sure, my favorite singer/songwriter. I discovered her when I was in my twenties, either on Austin City Limits or on Georgia Public Radio’s Folk Alley. I honestly could not tell you which one it was. But once discovered, I quickly purchased every single one of her records. And I played them all the time. Over and over.
I made cassette tapes and played them in the car, back in the days when cars had cassette tape players in them. Ha! I bought all the CDs when they came out, and I downloaded all of them to my computer, phone and tablet, just as soon as I could. I’ve purchased her music in one form or another across forty years and several formats. You could pick just about any room in my house and find something with her music on it.
Nanci Griffith’s music took me home, at least in my heart, because I could feel it, even when it was talking about somewhere else, and sometimes somewhere I’d never even been. There were other times it took me back to favorite memories — the five and dime (or as I knew it, “the dime store”) — and the Woolworth’s counter, although mine was in Asheville, North Carolina and she wrote about one in downtown Austin, Texas, and another that was a big two story affair in London.
I’ve only ever driven through West Texas, but I know it like the back of my hand because of Nanci Griffith. Same with Bluebells and the Gulf Coast Highway. I knew the love she sang about, and I’ve been somebody’s fool. I came from farmers who loved the land and suffered through the Great Depression, and I felt the weight of them working their fields, and in some cases having to leave them behind forever.
On Grafton Street always makes me think of lost family members. Because it IS funny “how my world goes round without” them. “You’re the one thing I never thought I could live without. And I just found this smile to think about you. You’re a Saturday night. Far from the madding crowd.” Who could NOT feel the emotion and the loss and the love in that song.
And Ireland? I’ve never been, despite having Irish ancestry. But listening to Nanci Griffith sing about Ireland took me there, with all things beautiful and all things ugly. Troubled times. She saw them, and understood their toll on all of us humans — from Ireland to Viet Nam.
Nanci Griffith said many of her songs were not autobiographical, and that writing them without having to tie them to real situations and real people gave her the freedom to explore other people and places with her music. But when I listen to her songs, I cannot help but think she always put a little piece of herself in them, whether or not she positioned them as her own memories. If she didn’t, we’ll never know. But I choose to believe she was a piece of everything she wrote, beyond the writing of it, and just gave herself the freedom to change the details. In the end, she was a storyteller. And her stories changed the world.