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IT’S A MISTY AFTERNOON IN NASHVILLE, and Nanci Griffith is sitting in a nearly empty restaurant by a cold fireplace. Her face, like abandonment except for her animated brown eyes, is tired. Griffith may be one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved veterans of the country-folk-pop scene, but she’s sick of it.
Not that anyone can blame her. After touring almost constantly for ten years, landing a Grammy nomination in 1986, and achieving huge success in Ireland and England, she has yet to enter American consciousness. “Why do I have to do this?” ” she asks. “I write great music, and I don’t just reject it. Why, at 37 and my ninth album, do I still have to be on the road 11 months out of the year when someone like Tracy Chapman can come and have huge success and be ready for life? Like any self-respecting songwriter, Griffith took his frustration, added some good hooks and released an album, Late Night Grande Hotel, much of which reflects the hopeless loneliness of life on the road.
Griffith’s distress is all the more poignant when you consider that she’s been working on it almost since she learned to read. Growing up in Austin, Texas, Griffith was surrounded by music – her father listened to Woody Guthrie, her mother Sinatra. Nanci was six when they divorced. She turned to the guitar and eight years later was playing in local cafes. After graduating from college, Griffith taught at the school and married local songwriter Eric Taylor. Eventually Griffith quit teaching and her husband. “I’m very close to him,” she said, “but when we got married he was a Vietnam vet with a drug addiction.”
Griffith began recording albums for independent labels. His fourth record, The last of the true believers (Rounder Records), was nominated for a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, and Griffith soon signed with MCA Nashville. According to Griffith, the label didn’t know what to do with her. She admits that her voice, which is very high-pitched, takes a while to get used to, but she was flabbergasted when “the radio person at MCA Nashville told me I would never be on the radio because my voice hurt people’s ears. ” After a few albums, she transferred to MCA’s pop division.
Griffith seems happy to Late Night Grande Hotel. It features an orchestra on some cuts, allowing for a romantic, generous and certainly more pop sound than its past efforts. Although it was recorded in England with English producers (Rod Argent and Peter Van Hooke, who produced Tanita Tikaram’s film Ancient heart), Griffith says, “It’s very southern. The album has a sense of place. For Griffith, whose best songs work like clean, evocative short stories, finding the right place and the right character is paramount. She can sing the allure and sadness of loneliness to “It’s Just Another Morning Here,” which sounds pretty autobiographical, and then take on the character of a homeless person with equal effectiveness.
Despite Griffith’s performing skills, other artists have had more success than her with her material. The Grammy “From a Distance,” written by Julie Gold, has been a Griffith signature for years. But it was Bette Midler who got the hang of it. And Kathy Mattea took Griffith’s “Love at the Five and Dime” to the Top 10 of the country charts. Griffith says she doesn’t really mind, “It’s great that Kathy has to sing this for the rest of her life and I don’t.”
Griffith seems to appreciate the freedom that his moderate success affords him. As soon as she finishes her tour in late spring, she plans to return home to her century-old home in Franklin, Tennessee, and settle in with her boyfriend, singer-songwriter Tom Kimmel. She even talks about having a baby. “I’m like ET,” she says. “Home is this amazing thing to me.” Not that she is retiring. Griffith still intends to perform once in a while, and if she’s successful, she’ll write songs as long as she can wrap her fingers around a pen. “Longevity – I guess that’s the brass ring for me,” she says. “I always want to hear my music come back to me when I’m sixty-five.” Suddenly, she looks a lot less tired.
This story originally appeared in issue number 627 on April 2, 1992
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