The Curmudgeon remembers the late troubadour folk poet Nanci Griffith, 'Emily Dickinson at the rodeo':
Nashville tried to turn Nanci Griffith into a country star in the mid-1980s, but it didn’t take. It seemed like a good idea at the time, for she was a terrific songwriter, a sweet singer with a girlish face, and a Texan through and through. Griffith, who, never quite fit in on Music Row, though. She was too much the troubadour folk poet. She was Emily Dickinson at the rodeo.
Travis, Yoakam and Stuart went on to have successful country careers, but Brown’s three Texan misfits didn’t. Earle had two top-10 country singles off his debut album, and Lovett had three top-20 hits. But Earle was too ornery and Lovett too eccentric to be comfortable at country radio, and they soon went their own way to become successful Americana artists before the term even existed.
And many times, the songs deserved such scrutiny. “There’s a Light Beyond These Woods,” the title song from her 1978 debut album on a tiny Texas label, is a wonderful evocation of a friendship between two 10-year-old girls. After an all-night gabfest, the way the rising sun hides behind the trees and shines through them embodies the future beyond their grasp.
Accompanied only by acoustic guitarist Frank Christian, she began the show with “Lone Star State of Mind,” the title track and first single off her soon-to-be-released first MCA album. This bouncy, twangy ode to her native state was written by Nashville’s Pat Alger and Fred Koller. She followed it with the traditional folk song, “The Banks of the Pontchartrain.” So right off the bat, she was acknowledging the nations of country and folk—and the no man’s land between where she was camped.
Best of all was “Trouble in These Fields,” which described the plight of the nation’s farmers in lines such as these: “When the bankers swarm like locusts out there turning away our yield / the trains roll by our silos, silver in the rain / They leave our pockets full of nothing / but our dreams and the golden grain.” For the encore, she sang “Love at the Five and Dime,” already a #3 hit for Kathy Mattea.
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