Though I spent my days as a small town news reporter in Eastern Connecticut in the mid-80s, I got my foot into the features writing at the Hartford Courant by agreeing to be the folk reviewer. It was a crash course in a field that had not only a rich heritage but was also undergoing a very fertile period from newer singer songwriters. The assignment allowed me to appreciate in very close proximity — in nature centers, church basements, and restaurants — people like Townes Van Zandt, Lyle Lovett, Ani DiFranco, Guy Clark — and Nanci Griffith.
Griffith, who died Friday at 68, was not just an affecting songwriter with a lovely, yearning voice, she was also a conduit to her fellow Texas songwriters and inspiration to new ones.
Commercially, she came at an odd time, when country music wouldn’t touch something so pure. Pop music had moved to heavier and electronic things, and the folk audience was so limited, it had almost literally underground in those church basements, creating a small, shared society of welcoming, literate and loyal fans).
Put on one of Griffith’s 18 albums today (or, more likely, order it up on Spotify) and they are likely to beguile a listener with their quiet intensity like anything from Kacey Musgraves or the best of acoustic Taylor Swift. But back then, she couldn’t catch a break, until her 1993 album of covers and inspirations “Other Voices, Other Rooms” got her a Grammy. Just this summer, she was inducted into the Texas Songwriters’ Hall of Fame.
Beautiful. Thanks, Roger.