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Cover Story [Issue
#
25 ]
Patty Griffin:
All Good News
By
Dean Truitt
Children Running Through
(
CD ATO )
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Patty Griffin
is a stalwart survivor, which has served her well in weathering the torrential
storms of the music business. She didn’t begin her professional music career
in earnest until signing with A&M Records a few years after turning 30.
Almost immediately, the label took its talented prospect and spun her career aimlessly
like a ship without a rudder. Which is not to say that the redheaded songstress
never produced some great material because she in fact turned out incredible albums
for the record company. Her first two offerings, Living with Ghosts and Flaming
Red, feature some of the decade’s finest songwriting. Regrettably, A&M
refused to recognize the brilliant diamond they had discovered and failed to release
half the albums she recorded for the conglomerate. Much to her relief, the brass
did release Griffin from her contract and unwittingly launched a blissful union
between the artist and ATO Records, owned by a Griffin devotee, Dave Matthews.
Matthews is one of countless Patty Griffin fans, who run far and wide within the
entertainment industry. The Dixie Chicks - the belles of 2007’s Grammy Awards
ceremony – have recorded three of her songs (“Let Him Fly,” “Top
of the World,” and “Truth No. 2). Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Solomon
Burke, Bette Midler, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Jessica Simpson have also interpreted
material from Griffin’s astounding catalog. Academy Award-winning director
Cameron Crowe personally asked the singer to appear in his 2005 film, Elizabethtown.
The artist cannot believe that so many significant artists have recorded and performed
her material, but the simple truth is that no one can sing a Patty Griffin song
better than Patty Griffin. After a three-year hiatus, the singer-songwriter returns
with an effort that rivals her strongest work to date. Drawing the album’s
title from a poem of the same name by 13th century Persian poet, Rumi, Children
Running Through finds Griffin coming full circle in many ways. She says, “I
realize the things I really liked when I was ten years old are the things I really
like now – the things that are important (laughs). And all the stuff in between,
a lot of it’s not very important anymore. So, I guess if there is a theme
[to Children Running Through], that’s it.”
Such simple concepts may seem trite when spoken, but the same ideas will take
on unrestrained power once Patty Griffin begins singing about them. The artist
finds inspiration can be overpowering once the muse strikes her. She reveals,
“They [songs] tend to erupt and be in one piece. That’s the way I like
them best, I think. It’s almost like phonetics. You make them up just scatting
them and then you realize you’re saying this. It’s kind of weird sometimes
the things that show up. Sometimes the things I resist and fight with the most
turn out to be my favorite songs or the ones that live the longest.”
One of Griffin’s Children that will surely live a long life is the triumphant
“I Don’t Ever Give Up.” In many ways, the track also serves as
a slogan for Griffin’s life. As the track whispers into existence, her velvety
alto sings, “I’m no kid in a kid’s game.” Griffin admits,
“I turned 40 a couple of years ago and I noticed at a certain point I had
begun to doubt myself so easily that it was just the standard M.O. with me. When
I would sit down to write, I had to really talk myself into doing it [saying],
‘You can do this (laughs)! Who cares if you’re good enough?’”
While her songwriting catalog has unexpectedly garnered much praise and income
from successful covers of her material, Griffin recognizes the challenge of aging
in a youth-dominated industry. She muses, “Getting older as a woman, especially
as a performer, the doors start to close. Unless you’re willing to plow people
down for help, there’s a sense that it’s ridiculous to ask for any attention
at all. It’s a really strange experience. I just sort of decided, ‘What
the hell? I’m going to keep on going anyway (laughs).’ You feel like
you’re up against an ocean when you’re still doing this, but there are
a lot of older women still hanging in there. I think that’s a fairly new
thing, too. It’s rare, but it’s getting less and less rare.”
Although Griffin’s material often paints wrenching heartbreak that rivals
the despair William Faulkner conjured in his novels, she welcomes the chance to
sing of joyful experiences. One of the many stellar moments on Children Running
Through is the song, “Burgundy Shoes.” She recalls, “It began with
a conversation I had with Craig Ross, who is really good friend of mine - not
Craig Ross who plays with Lenny Kravitz - there’s another guy here in Austin
who’s a great songwriter and producer. He produced Impossible Dream for me
and has been a friend of mine for years. We were talking about old songs and how
it used to be that nobody ever wrote sad songs and that now that’s sort of
all anybody ever writes. They’re credible if they’re sad and if they’re
not, nobody gives them the time of day. So we put a challenge to each other because
there are other things to think about besides sad thoughts (laughs). Although
those make great songs, there are other colors to paint with and, frankly, I wanted
something like that to sing.”
One might expect the end product of such a casual challenge among friends to be
a respectable ditty that extols some mundane pleasure in life; however, Patty
Griffin doesn’t seem to possess the ability to create anything lukewarm.
The resulting song, “Burgundy Shoes,” is a loving anecdote involving
a young girl’s mother. As the piano trickles out a melody of childlike simplicity,
Griffin unfolds a tale that feels both otherworldly and familiar. Her sensory
details transport the listener across the ether and into the past. She describes,
“‘Burgundy Shoes’ was really trying to find a moment in my memory
that I could really feel joy in and I went back to one of my earliest memories
of waiting for the bus in the town that I grew up in. It was a big, exciting trip
to the big city that was Bangor, Maine (laughs) with my mom on a really beautiful
spring day. When you grow up in the Northeast, you have to wear big boots for
the whole winter and then suddenly your mom says it’s OK to take your boots
off and you feel like you’re walking on air ‘cause your feet are in
these shoes. And they’re pretty shoes, not ugly boots. It was just that simple
moment - having that time with my mom and thinking about I used to think she was
the most beautiful woman in the world. When you start digging back into being
really little, you find all these memories that are very pure and aren’t
crowded by anxiety or anything like that. I was trying to write that song from
the point of view of who I was then.”
Griffin has a rare gift for creating sonic scrapbooks that all can enjoy, but
she can’t ignore the growing concerns of living in today’s world. The
singer found herself struggling to find glimmers of hope in a weary world. She
explains, “I’ve been paying attention a lot more lately to Martin Luther
King, especially after the [Iraq] war broke out. I think seeing the political
machine on such a low level, I really was looking for inspiration from anywhere
of people being courageous. I think things are in a corrupted state and it really
is a make it or break it time for our country - and therefore the world. Martin
Luther King: what a hill he had to climb. I was just watching some documentary
and you see him make that speech. [Former mayor of Atlanta] Andrew Young gives
the narration and he said MLK got to Memphis and he knew he was a dead man and,
on top of that, he was physically very ill. They propped him up on the podium
and while he’s making that speech, he kind of walks right through his fear
and you can see him do that. It’s just a remarkable moment to be able to
witness and I feel like I got a little bit of what courage looks like and I’m
always looking for more courage.”
Despite seeking inspiration in others, Patty Griffin has served as a beacon of
hope for her audience, which appears to be growing throughout the world. With
a stunning performance of “Heavenly Day” on The Late Show with David
Letterman and a debut at #34 on Billboard’s Top 200 chart, one would expect
all good news in Griffin’s forecast.
Children Running Through
ATO
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