Music: Nanci Griffith talks passion, justice and peace

Jul 6 2007 by Lew Baxter, Liverpool Daily Post

Singer Nanci Griffith tells Lew Baxter about her passion for justice and peace

IT SEEMS our own beloved, and sorely missed, Princess Diana was the inspiration for Texan country singer Nanci Griffith’s passionate commitment to the worldwide anti-landmine campaign, which has seen her visit such war-torn regions as Kosovo, Serbia and Cambodia.

Such issues mightily inflame the gal from the little cowpoke town of Seguin, but golly it did take a while to rouse her ire – or even her interest for that matter – when we were skittering around these subjects in a chat about her forthcoming British tour.

She’s a grand singer whose voice can soar to almost quivering heights and engages with audiences easily, but clearly the publicity bandwagon is just part of the package for being a celebrity that Nanci ain’t that keen on.

Maybe it was a bad hair day, so to speak, but after three false starts we eventually picked up the threads of an interesting conversation but not before her manager in Nashville had apologetically pitched in with the explanatory line that she had something of a tummy ache.

In those first moments, there is little spark but we mull over a few questions about her latest album – a truly lovely collection of what the sleeve notes call “intimate torch songs” with a couple penned by Griffith. The rest are by a number of her self-proclaimed heroes like Tom Waits, David Mann and Bob Hilliard, whose Wee Small Hours of the Morning was one of Frank Sinatra’s crooning sign- offs.

“I’m at an age now (she’s just on 53) when I have nostalgia for these great old songs from that long ago era,” remarks Nanci about the anthology which has just been released in the UK.

“I can recall my parents listening to Julie London and Billie Holiday and I thought it would be wonderful to record some of these songs,” she adds, although, in fairness, Nanci might concede that most of them are quite contemporary, aka three songs by Waits, and the country-style weepy ballad When I Dream by Sandy Mason Theoret et al.

Nevertheless, it is another example of her extraordinary range that has tapped into country, folk and a smattering of other styles and includes her best-known hit From A Distance, the evocative Julie Gold song that paradoxically – and maybe a little bit unfairly – was a bigger block-buster for Bette Midler. Nanci’s musical muse was tagged “folkabilly” by Rolling Stone magazine, which is an apt description of her often haunting-sounding songs that are peppered with social polemic and tirades against injustice, which goes some way to explain why her admirers include veteran “poetic protester” Bob Dylan.

He specifically asked for her version of his Boots of Spanish leather, at the now historic Madison Square Garden gig, some years back.

The one-time kindergarten teacher is, as you might easily acknowledge after glancing through her back catalogue, an avowed pacifist and a documentary form of songwriter whose material is often startlingly, and at times brilliantly, confessional.

Her recording career has, though, been rather eclectic with a saunter into the pop world when she found the commercial country radio “mafia” in the US didn’t quite genuflect at her feet. This despite the fact that her song writing skills were recognised by the likes of Kathy Mattea who had a country top five hit with a cover of Love At the Five and Dime while Suzy Bogguss also had a massive success with Outbound Plane, a writing collaboration between Griffith and Tom Russell.

She’s been nominated for a Grammy five times and won one for her early 1990s album Other Voices, Other Rooms which interpreted the songs of others, and then picked up another two for her recordings with Ireland’s fabled Chieftains – which might partially explain her own almost iconic status amongst the Irish where she is hailed as a heroine.

Perhaps as a tribute to those fans, she’s also included on the new album set the heart-rending song Never Be the Sun by Donal Long, about the death of his son by drowning.

We veer back to the landmines issue, and Nanci explains: “I was first made aware of the problems by the actions of Princess Diana. Sadly I never met her but she was the stimulus for me getting involved.”

In recent years, Nanci and her chum Sheryl Crow visited Cambodia to see first-hand the devastation that landmines continue to cause across the world. She also went to Vietnam, largely a difficult psychological journey for most liberal-minded Americans. “I fell in love with the people and the country and I’ve written numerous songs about these trips and what I’ve seen,” she offers.