MICHAEL WILSON
PATTY GRIFFIN
Austin-based singer-songwriter Patty Griffin has delivered searingly emotional, well-crafted songs since her 1996 debut album, Living with Ghosts. Her 2022 album Tape — assembled during the pandemic — is a collection of thoughtful, intense home recordings and rarities from her past.
In 2019, after battling breast cancer, Griffin — who will perform at The Outpost in the Burbs in Montclair, April 25 — released an evocative self-titled album that won a Grammy Award for Best Folk Album. She had previously won a Grammy for 2011’s Downtown Church, in the Traditional Gospel Album category.
Robert Plant contributed backing vocals to both Tape and Patty Griffin; she was in a relationship with him for years, and toured as a backing vocalist for him in 2010. Plant also featured her on his 2010 solo album Band of Joy.
In “Don’t Mind,” from Tape, her voice, together with Plant’s, creates a sultry, smoky mood. Their flirtatious banter opens with Griffin confidently singing “Your lips say, ‘Who’s gonna kiss me?’/Your eyes say, ‘Look my way’/I don’t mind if I do.” Plant responds by singing “Your arms are making an easy chair, waiting and waiting, just for me to get there.”
“Sundown” (listen below), from Tape, is a stunning and ethereal song that could fill the sanctuary of the church where Outpost hold its concerts with its almost spiritual tones. I hope she sings that one on April 25. When I hear this exquisite, sad tune, it is hard not to hold my breath as she sings, “When the sun goes down, it really goes down/Never stops or hesitates or turns around/I guess I’ve stopped searching for you in the dark/Oh, my old friend/This is what they call the end/This is where the rainbow bends across the sky.”
Griffin’s songs have been recorded by many artists, including Linda Ronstadt (“Falling Down”), The Chicks (“Truth No. 2” and others), Mary Chapin Carpenter (“Dear Old Friend”), Joan Osborne (“What You Are”) and Miranda Lambert (“Getting Ready”).
MICHAEL WILSON
PATTY GRIFFIN
I interviewed Griffin recently, touching on what grounds and inspires her.
Recovering from your battle with cancer, were you confronted with soul-searching?
“(I) definitely had to shift gears on a lot of things with cancer,” she said. (Griffin lost her voice during cancer treatments in 2016, but regained it before the release of Patty Griffin).
Like Lucinda Williams, who discussed her recovery from a stroke in a prior interview with me, Griffin has found that music and songwriting have served as a way to process difficult times and find comfort and inspiration.
I have always loved the raw, intimate sound of home recordings, including Griffin’s songs on Tape. There is a haunting quality that is sometimes lost in a studio. How did Griffin develop Tape?
“Tape is, for the most part, a pile of songs I found that I had written and forgotten about,” she said. “I loved the sound of the recordings so I left most of them as I found them.”
On Patty Griffin, I hear a connection between women and nature. On that majestic album, she elegantly sings on “River” (listen below):
Isn’t she a river?
She doesn’t need a diamond to shine
You can’t really have her
But you can hold her for a time
Takes an army just to bend her
Be careful where you stand her
You can’t hold her back for long
The river is just too strong
She’s a river
PATTY GRIFFIN
I wondered if nature inspires her songwriting.
“I was born in nature, grew up on the edge of a forest in Maine,” she said. “My mom’s family had been in the region for hundreds of years. It inspires a lot. Also, my family history and other’s stories. I have had a huge bunch of animals I have called family. They keep my feet on the ground.”
In “Where I Come From,” also from her self-titled album, she mentions her childhood in Maine and sings:
Where I come from, it’s a land of many islands
Two rivers run to the east and to the west
Wanted to run far away as I could, as fast as I could get
No matter where I’ve been, I can’t escape who I am or forget.
The winter’s long, gets into your boots
The river runs high and wild, high and wild in the springtime.
Do you return to Maine, I asked, and if so, how does that feel? Where do you feel at home now?
“Home is in me,” she said. “It has to do with places but it’s also a feeling. I have homes in different places … Maine will always be home … Texas gets a bad rap because of its politics, but I love a lot of people here now … there are so many here that have shaped me in profound ways. It’s home, too.”
Griffin’s mother had seven children in seven years. Her parents were both teachers. Sadly, her mother passed recently.
“My mom was a singer and she plunked us all down in the woods and taught us what birds were singing, the names of the trees and the plants and bugs and other animals,” she said. “It’s hard to miss how all that shaped me.”
What is next for you? Are you working on another album or other projects?
“I have a record coming out this summer, a lot inspired by my mom and nature, so it’s interesting you would tap into that specifically,” she said.
The cover of Patty Griffin’s album, “Tape.”
“Get Lucky” (listen below), the opening track on Tape, encourages hope and gratitude in me. Is Griffin feeling hopeful during these fractured times? Can music still be used to change the world, as Graham Nash often suggests?
“Music seems to be one of the things that keeps it from blowing up altogether, yes,” she said. “That and all the people going about their lives creating goodness from what lives in their hearts and their histories. That’s something to try for.
“It’s not easy, but my life is better when I stick to that understanding … there are so many high bars of goodness out there. There are a lot among us serving up love very generously and in small ways every day. They are also keeping things from blowing up altogether. They are doing the heavy lifting. The basic stuff that adds up and makes huge differences.”
The Outpost in the Burbs will present Patty Griffin at The First Congregational Church in Montclair, April 25 at 8:30 p.m. Visit outpostintheburbs.org.
For a chance to win two tickets, send an email to njartscontest@gmail.com with the word “Griffin” in the subject line by noon April 22.
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