The Unofficial Web Site

















Created On: 11/30/99
Last updated 8/1/01

"The Queen Of Folkabilly"

Texas honky-tonks to Carnegie Hall
Nanci Caroline Griffith was born July 6, 1954 in Seguin, Texas

Singer-songwriter Griffith brilliantly straddles the boundary between folk and country music, with occasional nods to the mainstream rock audience. Her mother was an amateur actress and her father a member of a barbershop quartet. They passed on their interest in performance to Nanci, and although she majored in education at the University of Texas, she eventually chose a career in music in 1977, by which time she had been performing in public for 10 years. In 1978 her first album, There's A Light Beyond These Woods, was released by a local company, BF Deal Records. Recorded live in a studio in Austin, it featured mainly her own compositions, along with 'Dollar Matinee', written by her erstwhile husband Eric Taylor. The most notable song on the album was the title track, and as a souvenir of her folk act of the time, the album was adequate. In 1982, Poet In My Window was released by another local label, Featherbed Records; like its predecessor, this album was re-released in 1986 by the nationally distributed Philo/Rounder label. It displayed a pleasing maturity in composition, the only song not written by Griffith herself being 'Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown', penned by Jimmie Gilmore and John Reed (once again, Eric Taylor was involved as associate producer/bass player), while the barbershop quartet in which her father, Marlin Griffith, sang provided harmony vocals on 'Wheels'.

First steady gigs were at Austin's
"Hole In The Wall" Bar 		By 1984 she had met Jim Rooney, who produced her third album, Once In A Very Blue Moon, released in 1985 by Philo/ Rounder. This album featured such notable backing musicians as lead guitarist Phillip Donnelly, banjo wizard Bela Fleck, Lloyd Green and Mark O'Connor. It was recorded at Jack Clement 's Nashville studio. As well as more of her own songs, the album included her version of Lyle Lovett 's 'If I Was The Woman You Wanted', Richard Dobson's 'Ballad Of Robin Wintersmith' and the superb title track written by Pat Alger - Griffith named the backing band she formed in 1986 the Blue Moon Orchestra.
Following on the heels of this artistic triumph came 1986's Last Of The True Believers. Released by Philo/Rounder, the album had a similar feel to its predecessor, and one that set it apart from run-of-the-mill albums by singer-songwriters. It included two songs that would later achieve US country chart celebrity as covered by Kathy Mattea, Griffith's own 'Love At The Five And Dime' and Pat Alger's 'Goin'Gone', as well as several other songs that would become Griffith classics, including the title track, 'The Wing And The Wheel' (which inspired Griffith's music publishing company), 'More Than A Whisper' and 'Lookin' For The Time (Working Girl)', plus the fine Tom Russell song 'St. Olav's Gate'. The album became Griffith's first to be released in the UK when it was licensed by Demon Records. Signed by MCA Records, her debut album for the label, Lone Star State Of Mind, was released in 1987, and was produced by MCA's golden-fingered Tony Brown, the influential A&R representative in Nashville who had signed Steve Earle and Lyle Lovett as well as Griffith herself (she also co-produced the album).
The stunning title track again involved Alger as writer, while other notable tracks included the remake of 'There's A Light Beyond These Woods' from the first album, Robert Earl Keen Jr.'s 'Sing One For Sister' and Griffith's own 'Ford Econoline' (about the independence of 60s folk singer Rosalie Sorrels ). However, attracting most attention was Julie Gold's 'From A Distance', a song that became a standard by the 90s as covered by Bette Midler, Cliff Richard and many others, but which received its first major exposure with Griffith's own version. Little Love Affairs, released in 1988, was supposedly a concept album, but major songs included 'Outbound Plane', which she co-wrote with Tom Russell, veteran hit writer Harlan Howard's '(My Best Pal's In Nashville) Never Mind' and John Stewart 's 'Sweet Dreams Will Come', as well as a couple of collaborations with James Hooker (Amazing Rhythm Aces), and keyboard player of the Blue Moon Orchestra.
Nanci makes her debut in
1984 on Austin City Limits
Later that year Griffith recorded and released a live album, One Fair Summer Evening, recorded at Houston's Anderson Fair. Although it only included a handful of songs that she had not previously recorded, it was at least as good as Little Love Affairs, and was accompanied by a live video. However, it seemed that Griffith's appeal was falling between the rock and country audiences, the latter apparently finding her voice insufficiently radio-friendly, while Kathy Mattea, who recorded many of the same songs some time after Griffith, became a major star.
In 1989 came Storms, produced by the legendary Glyn Johns, who had worked with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Eagles, Steve Miller, the Who, Joan Armatrading and many others. Johns deliberately geared the album's sound towards American radio, and it became Griffith's biggest seller. The album featured Hooker, Irish drummer Bran Breen (ex- Moving Hearts ), Bernie Leadon (ex-Eagles), guitarist Albert Lee and Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers providing harmony vocals on 'You Made This Love A Teardrop'. Although it was a sales breakthrough for Griffiths, it failed to attract country audiences, although it reached the album chart in the UK, where she had regularly toured since 1987. However, her major European market was Ireland, where she was accorded near-superstar status.
Late Night Grande Hotel was produced by the British team of Rod Argent and Peter Van Hook, and again included a duet with Phil Everly on 'It's Just Another Morning Here', while English singer Tanita Tikaram provided a guest vocal on 'It's Too Late'. In 1991, singing 'The Wexford Carol', she was one of a number of artists who contributed tracks to the Chieftains' The Bells Of Dublin. Other Voices Other Rooms was a wholehearted success artistically and commercially. Griffith interpreted some outstanding songs by artists such as Bob Dylan ('Boots Of Spanish Leather'), John Prine ('Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness') and Ralph McTell ('From Clare To Here').
The following year, Griffith's tenth studio album Flyer continued her dedication to folk. The exquisite record, maintained her popularity with some excellent new material that indicated a strengthening and hardening of her vocals, with greater power and a hint of treble. On Blue Roses From The Moons, Grammy-winner Griffith celebrates a decade of musical roads traveled with the Blue Moon Orchestra on songs that take her back to her folk and rock & roll roots. The album is a journey in its own right -- fourteen songs about distances great and small, from the many miles that separate the continents to the close bonds that connect kindred spirits --- with the joys, sorrows and bittersweet moments Nanci has found along the way.
Then came her next album, Other Voices Too (A Trip Back to Bountiful) is volume two of Other Voices, Other Rooms, with dozens of special guests. Trailed in 1999 by Dust Bowl Symphony... "Contemplation of recording this album with The London Symphony was like being that small child atop the caprock looking out at the vastness of the dust bowl," writes Nanci Griffith in the liner notes to her new album, The Dust Bowl Symphony. "It is a retrospective of twenty-odd years of my songwriting and shaping those songs with the colors I had always wanted to hear in them and the opportunity to work with the finest musicians of the London Symphony Orchestra and their conductor, Andrew Jackman."
Nanci Griffith A new song on the album, "1937 Pre-War Kimball" is dedicated "to the hands of the children at the W.O. Smith School Of Music." Nanci explains, "The school teaches musical skills to children. I donated my piano, a 1937 Kimball that I loved. Two days later, the school was firebombed, and the piano and many other instruments didn’t survive. Glen D. Hardin, Beth Nielsen Chapman and I recorded the track as a PSA to raise awareness for the school." The album was produced by Peter Collins, who also produced Nanci’s 1994 Grammy nominated album Flyer. Nanci's next new album Clock Without Hands is due to be released on Tuesday July 31, 2001. This will be the first album in four years, since Blue Roses From The Moon, with original material.
Career highlights:

Five Grammy nominations, her first nomination coming for The Last Of The True Believers in 1986 and her first win (for Best Contemporary Folk Performance) coming in 1993 for Other Voices, Other Rooms. She also has received two Grammys for her performances on albums by Irish artists the Chieftains. Nanci has enjoyed superstar status in the UK and Ireland since her take on Julie Gold's "From A Distance" became a #1 hit there, five years before Bette Midler's version.

Nanci has also published her first book, Nanci Griffith's Other Voices -- A Personal History of Folk Music, a companion to the Other Voices albums.

In 1997 she celebrated ten years with the Blue Moon Orchestra.

The Blue Moon Orchestra:

  • James Hooker -- Keyboards, vocals
  • Lee Satterfield -- Guitars, mandolin, vocals
  • Lee Ann Etheridge -- Guitar, vocals
  • Doug Lancio -- Electric guitars
  • Ron de la Vega -- Bass, cello
  • Pat McInerney -- Percussion
  • Charles Williams -- Guitar, Slide guitar, Dobro

Notes Of Interest:

Griffith makes her own thumbpicks by attaching a very light-gauge flatpick to a National brand thumbpick. She cuts the old pick part off the thumbpick, connecting the new pick with a brad. She wears three metal fingerpicks, either Dunlops or Nationals, and endorses light-gauge bronze John Pearse® Strings.

Quotes by Nanci:

"I was six years old when I learned to play the guitar, and only because I had been trying to learn to play the French horn. I came home one day, and my parents had taken the horn away because they said it was too painful. I highly recommend Taylor guitars. They practically play themselves."

"Even though my songs may sound very personal, to me most of them are fiction. It is a great way for me to be able to live a fantasy life as a writer because I get to be someone else, someplace else for three and a half minutes, just like the listener."

"Being a good songwriter means paying attention and sticking your hand out the window to catch the song on the way to someone else's house!"

"The unique challenge of working with an orchestra was leaving Nanci Griffith, the writer, at the door and entering the Abbey Road studio as part of the orchestra."

"I really don't know what tone it (the next CD) will take. I am writing a lot, and at the moment it just sounds like Nanci Griffith songs to me. I never know the difference. It is always the listeners who know what slot to put it in."

"I think [that], like most artists who end up in music and stay in music, it is because we don't know how to do anything else. We live it and walk it and talk it. I can't imagine doing anything else now!"

"Live well. Sing out, sing loud, and sing often.
And God bless the child that's got a song."