E-mail a friendNanci Griffith
airdate June 9, 2009
The daughter of musical parents, self-styled "folkabilly" singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith got her own start early. At age 6, she was writing songs and, at 14, began playing clubs around Austin, TX. She performed during her University of Texas college years and while teaching kindergarten. Since deciding to pursue music full-time, she's toured with and contributed background vocals for various artists, recorded more than 18 albums, won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Recording and performed concerts worldwide.
Self-styled folkabilly singer-songwriter performs. (2:36)
Full interview. (12:07)
Nanci Griffith
Tavis: Nanci Griffith is a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter whose latest project is in stores as of today. The new disk is called "The Loving Kind" and is receiving some terrific reviews. In just a few minutes she'll perform a track from the new disk, but first, Nanci Griffith, nice to have you on the program.
Nanci Griffith: Thank you, Tavis; it's a pleasure to be here. I'm such a fan.
Tavis: Oh, I'm honored to have you here. Fair to say that this is probably the most - my phrase, not yours - politically charged CD you've done in a while?
Griffith: It is. It's the first new writing for me in probably seven years, and there was just a lot of - it was like a writer's block because I was very depressed about the direction our country was going in, and just couldn't get anything out. And with the election of Obama, the dam burst and it just all came out.
Tavis: To your point now, as a songwriter, when you say that there's a block because you obviously are such a humanist and you care about people, when you say there's a block in your writing because of the direction the country is moving in, give me - fill that in for me.
Griffith: I consider myself a folk songwriter, and that means you write about the social times and the people of your time, to chronicle it for history. That's what folk songs are. And it was, for me, such a nightmare of a time, and all those things that were happening with the Bush administration and oppression of rights, the whole thing just created this total wall for me.
Tavis: And yet when the block goes away and you finally break through, you still end up writing about a number of injustices in our country.
Griffith: That's true.
Tavis: Starting with the title, "The Loving Kind."
Griffith: "The Loving Kind." It just touched my heart, the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, in reading Mildred's obituary last spring, when she passed on, and I wondered why don't I know about this case? She was Black and he was White and they'd known each other since childhood, and they married in 1958 in Virginia and they got thrown in jail because interracial marriage was illegal at that time.
And their case, Loving vs. Virginia, is the reason that it's okay now, and there are no more laws that ban interracial marriage. And I was so moved by their story, and the song wrote itself. First of all, I sat and cried for four hours after reading her obituary and hearing that in her last interview she hoped that their case would someday be the cornerstone for equality in marriage in same-sex marriage.
And what a blessing those two people were, and the song just wrote itself. The song is just the facts.
Tavis: You said it wrote itself. Help me understand a little bit better, to the extent you can, how you read something like that and you're able to turn it into a song with music and accompaniment and lyrics. How does that work? How does that happen for you?
Griffith: Sometimes it's a struggle. For example, on "The Loving Kind" there's a song called "Not Innocent Enough," about the execution of Philip Workman in the state of Tennessee and I started writing that song four years ago, and it didn't get completed until it had an end, until he was actually executed for killing a police officer, and it turned out that it wasn't his bullet that killed the police officer; it was friendly fire.
Even though Philip always said, "I was the reason, I was robbing the Wendy's, I was high on heroin, I was the reason the officer was there; I didn't kill him." So there are things like that, you just get moved. But it takes a long time for that process to complete, because there is no ending.
Tavis: How did you get this way? How did you get to be the kind of artist who spends her time writing about humanity in the way that you do? You were raised this way? Does it go back to your childhood? How did you turn out to be this way?
Griffith: I think it is - I was raised this way. I was raised to be very aware of other people around me. Sometimes we say young people today are just totally unaware of other people around them, but I was raised to respect other people, to appreciate their presence, to respect when injustices take place and to speak out about them, and it just runs in my family.
Tavis: When you said earlier in this conversation, Nanci, that sometimes your songs write themselves because it's really just the telling of truths, you ever sit down and put something on paper and say this is too much truth, or the audience isn't going to hear this, it's not going to resonate? You ever put something down and say, that may be a little too much?
Griffith: I think when I wrote "Not Innocent Enough" about Philip Workman, I knew that when the song finally was completed, even though it does not express my opinion about the - because I'm a total abolitionist when it comes to the death penalty - but even though it doesn't express that opinion, there are going to be a lot of people who say he deserved to die.
And in the South, whenever a policeman is killed, somebody's going to die. And there's a case right now in Georgia with Troy Davis that's almost a mirror image of the Philip Workman case, and he's scheduled for execution this week.
Tavis: I understand, obviously, the gift that you have as an artist, but where does the courage come from to put stuff out that you know is going to be controversial?
Griffith: I guess I'm just fearless. I don't have a fear of backlashes, I really don't. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen, but I think I would be a coward if I didn't speak up. I think that people who don't speak up who witness injustices and just walk on by, I think that's wrong.
Tavis: You never give consideration to the fact that this might not sell; this might not be my biggest-selling record if I put this on there?
Griffith: Oh, I don't care.
Tavis: Yeah, you don't care about the record sales?
Griffith: Yeah, sales are never - they only matter to the record label, they don't matter to the artist in general. (Laughter)
Tavis: How much touring do you do, still, these days?
Griffith: A lot, a lot. And we're in Europe a lot, and I've played in southeast Asia, I played in Vietnam, I've played in Cambodia, played in Laos, I've played in Kosovo and Bosnia, and I guess all of that is part of being fearless and wanting to get the music out there and wanting issues to be heard.
Tavis: To your point now, having done this for so long now and so well, compare for me, if you can, the receptivity, for lack of a better word, to your stuff now as opposed to a past era. Do you notice any significant change at all in how your stuff is received?
Griffith: Not really. Not really. I have one song called "It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go," and it covers everything from the conflict in Northern Ireland to racism in America to unjust wars that Americans have been involved in, and it's very exciting for me to write something like that, and I wrote it in 1988, and to have a song like that where the first verse about Northern Ireland is no longer relevant and the second verse now with Obama is no longer relevant. And hopefully, with Obama in there, the third verse will no longer be relevant.
And that's really exciting for me. At that point I'm just gonna send it to Pete Seeger and say, "Hold this for me," (laughter) because it's great to see, when you write about an injustice and it's righted.
Tavis: It also could mean, though, you keep doing this you may be writing yourself out of a job.
Griffith: Yeah. (Laughs) That's true.
Tavis: I was about to say, I suspect that you would like being able to live in a world where your skills would not be necessary.
Griffith: That would be true. It would be - in Europe, when they banned the death penalty, that was in the late 1940s. Ten years after they banned it, the majority of the people were still saying, "We need the death penalty." But today, it would be unheard of to even mention the death penalty in Europe or in the UK. So I hope I see something like that in my lifetime, with all of the issues that are covered on this record.
Tavis: Well, until such time as we arrive at that place, I'm glad you're here.
Griffith: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: And I'm glad the record is out. Nanci Griffith's new project is called "The Loving Kind," and up next she'll perform a track from the new disk. Nanci, nice to have you on.
Griffith: Oh, it's a pleasure.
Tavis: Stay with us for this live performance. We're back in just a moment.
From her critically acclaimed new CD, here is Nanci Griffith performing the album's title track, "The Loving Kind." Enjoy.
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