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First, it's important for me to say that I can't be entirely objective on the subject of Nanci Griffith, because I have quite literally grown up on her music, and followed her career for the last twenty years or so, and she's become kind of a beloved object to me. This is, of course, due to her incredible force as this tiny Texas woman with a voice that alternates from a little girl's twang to the deep holler of a bluegrass troubadour, and her profoundly confessional songwriting coupled with a very sort of Literary America South method of storytelling. Her fans tend to be devoted, and her detractors tend to hate her quite a lot, which is interesting considering she's never really achieved popular recognition and has sort of made a career of not-quite-conforming to whatever genre she happened to be playing in, from folk to country to pop and back again.

There's a good biography of her here, and her Wikipedia entry is here and handy. The nutshell is that Nanci Caroline Griffith was born in the mid-fifties in West Texas, and grew up in Austin where she taught herself to play guitar as a small child by watching Miss Laura on the tee vee. Her beatnik parents introduced her to the seedy underbelly of the city, showed her drugs and nightclubs, and gave her a love for music that sent her to the stage with her own guitar and her own songs when she was fourteen years old. Blah blah, education major at U Texas Austin, taught kindergarten, played rhythm guitar in a honky-tonk band, played her music and crafted her stage performing, so she could pack up her car and get herself the hell outta West Texas. While touring around the country she recorded several albums, starting with There's a Light Beyond These Woods (Mary Margaret) in about 1978. Poet in my Window followed, Once in a Very Blue Moon, and Last of the True Believers, all in her folk angel style. Many of these songs she performed on her live album, One Fair Summer Evening, considered by many folkies to be one of the great concert recordings of all time, and a serious mainstay of mine. I used to wear this cassette out, memorizing the stage patter, and now if you ever want to hear a self-respecting Los Angeleno tell the tale of Great Uncle Tootie in a West Texas drawl, I can darn well do it.

Here are some of my favorite songs from the Texas years, which are generally examples of Griffith's style of crafting songs as little four minute stories, starring plainfolk Texans and strong women and old folk and young lovers in love. And every now and again we get a glimpse into Nanci's own life, and her own loneliness, packing up her car and driving herself around America alone.

> There's a Light Beyond These Woods, Mary Margaret, very early in the Texas canon and in classic acoustic folk tradition. Nanci and her childhood best friend.
You Can't Go Home Again, a searing farewell to Texas, which ends up being a major theme later.
> Love at the Five and Dime, one of those short stories, about Rita and Eddie falling in and out of love at the Woolworth's store. The version of this on the OFSE live album comes prefaced with an adorable story about the iconic Woolworth's store, delivered in Griffith's dainty twang, and it's worth it to note that in the live version dear Rita gets to WRITE "dime store novels of a love so sweet." Anyway, this is the album version.
> Last of the True Believers, an enduring folk song, sort of tough and earnest at the same time.
> More Than a Whisper, one of the more personal love songs.
> Workin' in Corners deserves special note, because it's probably my favorite early Nanci song and has been on repeat play in my head since I was twelve years old. This is the live version, because I couldn't stand not to have you hear it.
> Banks of the Ponchartrain is definitely more of a rollicking, more countrified number, and was played at more than one Katrina benefit after that.
> Trouble in the Fields, where Great Uncle Tootie and Great Aunt Nettie Mae survive the Great Depression on their farm in West Texas, in the dustbowl of the century.
> Spin on a Red Brick Floor, the closing song from the live album. To Anderson Fair, an old time Texas dance hall, where Nanci Griffith and Lyle Lovett and Eric Taylor all came up listening to the music and then playing their own. There's going to be a documentary out soon about Anderson Fair, and naturally all these folks are interviewed. The clip of "Spin on a Red Brick Floor" is just beautiful.

While in Texas she was married to singer-songwriter Eric Taylor, and after their divorce, Griffith got herself out of Texas and hasn't moved back since. Her political beliefs, common in her songs, lean pretty heavily to the left for a West Texas girl, and this was back before the Dixie Chicks stood up and let their freedom ring. Griffith's relationship to her Texas roots is complicated, because her love for her family and her ancestry is displayed proudly in her songs, and she sings with the heart of a Texas chanteuse, but then this is the same woman who moved to Ireland after the election of President Bush and has been fiercely active in the anti-war movement.

MCA signed her in Nashville, because her voice and her songwriting style were so unique they figured she'd be the next big thing in country music, but she didn't really gain traction in the Nashville market either. Her critics said she was too earnest, not edgy enough for the Nashville charts, or that her childlike voice wasn't able to convince audiences that she packed a power.

Still, she wrote nearly a dozen songs during this period that other artists performed and charted with, and Griffith's versions of these hits and others have always been fan favorites. From the folk-country end of the Nashville years, here are two songs that became hits for other artists:

> Ford Econoline, dedicated to Rosalie Sorrells and Kate Wolf, two women who packed up their cars and got away from abusive husbands. A rocking country tune.
> Outbound Plane, another example of the rockin' "gettin' away from that bad man of mine" country song.

I put these all together on a zip file, which you can get from YouSendit, The Folk-Country Years. This is only a handful of songs from at least six albums, so if you like any of them, please consider supporting the artist by purchasing more.

In the next day or two expect volume two of Workin' in Corners: The Nanci Griffith Story: The Country-Pop Years.