Tag: craig ross

Patty Griffin Regains Her Voice After Cancer Battle

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Reflecting the fortitude shown by the characters she’s written about for the last two decades, Patty Griffin made the decision to keep on working when her singing voice disappeared, the result of a battle with breast cancer in 2016. With encouragement from close friends and her own determination to carry on, Griffin spent a year writing and recording at home in Austin, Texas, ultimately regaining the strength to create her new, self-titled album, perhaps her most stripped-down work since her stunning 1996 debut, Living With Ghosts.

Speaking by phone in the middle of her American tour, Griffin offered insight into new songs like “River” and “Had a Good Reason,” and shared her love for her dogs, her guitar, and her dedicated fans.

BGS: On your new record, I keep going back to the song “River.” What was on your mind when you wrote that?

Griffin: I had been spending time with Donny Hathaway’s version of Leon Russell’s song, “A Song for You.” I actually covered that song for a little gig where I decided to do all covers. The song just kind of kicked my butt. Leon Russell is writing about something with this super sharp honesty, it’s almost like confessional, and it’s sort of healing for him and for whoever he’s singing that to.

And then Donny Hathaway picked it up and ran with it. It’s so true that it moved right over to Donny Hathaway’s voice and became his song. Just the feeling of that made me want to try to write “River.” Like, what’s down in there that I want to say, and that makes me want to sing this song? What do I have of my own to say that feels like that?

I noticed the lyric in there: “She’s been left for dead a million times / And keeps coming home, arms open wide.” That lyric seems like it might be emblematic of this record – that notion of mortality and making it through. Is that fair to say?

I think that’s fair to say, but in my mind it goes between me, as a part of nature, and what nature does. We’re beating up on this planet as fast as we can, tearing down trees. Forgetting all about the rivers, but the rivers are going to be here long after we’re gone. The rivers just keep going. There’s something in us that no matter how far away we get from understanding how we’re a part of this big incredible magical thing — this existence that no one really understands — we still are! It’s always there to go to, and in us, too.

Is this a new perspective for you? Did it hit you within the last couple of years to write about that broader scope?

I think I’ve tried to do that. But I think honestly as you get older, you do learn more about the broader scope, you know? I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like the more I go along, the less I know, too. (laughs) So I don’t know. That’s a question mark from me.

I had read that you had lost your speaking voice and your singing voice in the last few years.

Yeah.

What happened?

I believe leading into being diagnosed with cancer, I may have had it for a while. So, your immune system’s working pretty hard. Your body’s amazing. It works pretty hard at trying to eliminate it. So I was out on the road a lot, which is a good place to get sick, even on a good day. I was just getting cold after cold after cold after cold. Like one long, non-stop respiratory illness. It depleted the strength of my voice quite substantially, and then you know, you’ve got the diagnosis. There’s the surgery that’s not so hot for singing. And then there’s the treatment, there are the drugs… it was sort of this cocktail of things that finally depleted it to something I didn’t know how to use at all, and couldn’t use at all.

So, there were a few months there where it was pretty bad. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew I wanted to keep playing, so I just kept writing. And I thought, people do this. People’s voices change all the time and they keep going. You know, my old friend Robert Plant talked to me a little bit about that, just how he doesn’t sing those high notes anymore. (laughs) He doesn’t like to sing those high notes, but he’s discovered this other part of his voice that, to me, is so much more beautiful. So, things like that, and other moments like that that I thought about as I was going along. You know, [thinking] I’ll just have to figure this out — keep writing and figure this out as I go, what I can do next.

Where did you record this album?

Most of it was done in my house in Austin, Texas, with Craig Ross. [Recording engineer] Mike Poole came down from Nashville, and we set up the gear in my house. We did that with Mike a couple of times, and then the rest of the time throughout the year — it took about a year to do it — Craig and I worked on it, in the house mostly.

So, when you’re talking about your house, is that a home studio? Or more of a living room set-up?

Yeah, the dining room table, the living room, and the kitchen.

Do you think that environment affected the warmth of this record, and the vibe of this record?

I feel like I can hear my house in it, for sure, and I like that. But also it took the heat off me. It was Craig’s idea to do it this way, just sort of explore, without the pressure, what we had and what we could do. He was very positive about it, just hearing a few songs that I had from the get-go. He’s a dear friend of mine and I think he was huge part of this. I love his production style anyway, but beyond that, he really guided me with it and was just a friend. He said, “You can do this. Let’s start and see what we got.”

The guitar playing on this album is exquisite. How did you come to pick up the guitar and develop that talent?

I just thought it would be a great tool to write with. I thought, when I was a teenager, ‘How do these people come up with these songs? And how do you make a song happen and not depend on somebody else?’ (laughs) I got a Hohner guitar for $55, which was really the entirety of my savings account when I was about 14 years old. The strings were probably a half-inch off the neck, you know? It really hurt your fingers to play, and I started taking guitar lessons with that.

And I hated the guitar, honestly, until I was probably in my 20s. It was just really a tool. Then I started understanding that it’s also a percussive instrument, and when I saw the “Bluegrass” word next to who I was going to be talking to today, I said, “Ohhhh!” (laughs) That’s some serious playing going on there! I’m just more of a “feel” person. I experiment more than I used to on guitar. I really started to love it and it’s more of a comfort to me, like singing. So, I’ve made friends with it. I even have to say I love it. We’re like an old couple now.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the cute dogs on your album cover.

Awwww, those are my boys. Sal is the brown guy and Zeke is the blond guy. Zeke was actually in the original photo at my feet. You can see in his eyes that he was protecting me from Michael Rosen, the photographer. (laughs)

You have a way of bringing your family stories into your music. How has your relationship with them affected your musical direction?

They shape who you are, whether you are close to them or not. I think everybody’s been shaped by where they come from. They’re in your DNA and their stories are in your DNA. I’ve just been sort of piecing the puzzle together with them, and it’s been good for me to do that.

“Had a Good Reason” is about a mother-daughter relationship but I don’t know that it’s necessarily about the relationship that you have.

No, it’s more based on a combination of stories that I had heard about Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf. Two of those beautiful singers from the last century with these tears in their voices, and they were rock stars, really almost at the same time in their day. The sadness in those voices — both of them at a certain point had that sort of [tumultuous] relationship with their mother. I believe they both ended up living in whorehouses and being taken care of by prostitutes, and they both were not able to be with their mothers as young girls. I think for a woman, there’s some deep, deep, deep, deep sadness that would happen from that. That was just me making a guess and the song came out around that.

To me, “Luminous Places” sounds like a love letter to your fans. What is it about heading out on the road, and having that audience, that compels you to keep coming back, year after year?

That’s what is so mysterious to me. I feel like it’s mutual generosity between humans, you know? I work really hard to bring them something, but they also bring themselves and give a lot. That seems to be how the relationship works. And the older I get, the more I am grateful for that, and in awe of that. It’s really wonderful.

Is touring going well for you now? Do you feel like you’re back in the game?

I’m having a blast! I’m getting stronger every day out here and I’m working with the greatest people on earth. I’m having a really good time and I’m really lucky.

Photo credit: Michael Wilson

Patty Griffin and the Pursuit of Goodness

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“Diamonds, roses, I need Moses to cross this sea of loneliness, part this Red River of pain.” Those were the pleading and plaintive first words that most of us heard from singer/songwriter Patty Griffin's debut album, Living with Ghosts. It was a sparse and heartbreaking introduction to an artist who has gone on to become one of the most respected and beloved in her generation.

In the two decades since, Griffin has blown her music wide open, time and again. From the fierceness of Flaming Red to the poignancy of 1,000 Kisses to the spirit of Downtown Church, she has never failed to surprise and delight fans, critics, and colleagues, alike. This year, she brought all of her influences and inspirations to bear in Servant of Love, a masterful and mesmerizing work that searches for meaning in a world that so often feels void of it.

When last we spoke in 2002, you had an awful lot to say about the music business. How are you feeling about that side of things these days, now that you have your own label? Complete control must feel pretty good, yeah?

It helps me to ignore it. I feel like I just want to ignore the music business as much as I possibly can and just stick to doing what I do. So that helps me to not have to worry about that at all. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Fewer cooks in the kitchen, I guess.

I think so.

To me, the new album feels like a coming together of all the things you've done on records past. Then I read that it was partially inspired by some of the things you did on Silver Bell, plus Nina Simone's Nina Sings the Blues, Leonard Cohen’s 10 Songs from a Room, and Morphine’s A Cure for the Pain. Connect all those dots for me.

I'm not sure I can connect those dots! [Laughs] Or do it in that way. I was writing the record and I wasn't listening to a lot of music, anything specifically. But there were ideas for things that I had in my head. So I just kept my listening habits moving. I didn't stick to anybody in particular. I realized that Silver Bell … I had to listen to old material — which I never do — and I realized that I needed to get out of the three-chord world a little bit and sort of go back to where I'm from, musically, a little bit more. I grew up listening to a lot of different kinds of music, not just three-chord music. I just needed to venture out a little bit.

Those records and artists that you mentioned, they're just reference points that I talked to Craig Ross about because I thought that they represented very little instrumentation. Just simplicity. And straight up power. Good material being presented with real simplicity … concisely. So we used those sort of like that.

So you're saying simplicity and one review I read called it a “simple album,” but I would beg to differ on that. I find it to be wonderfully aloof and challenging. You have to really want it and, if you do, then you are rewarded handsomely for really digging into this thing. There's a lot going on.

[Laughs] I don't think it's that hard. It's just music. When you say it, it makes it sound like it's hard to listen to or something. [Laughs]

No. No. [Laughs]

I think it's beautiful.

Absolutely. I would just say it's more complex than a lot of stuff that's out there.

Well, okay.

Servant of love, as an idea — not a title — brings to my mind the Sufi poetry of Rumi and Hafiz … guys absolutely dedicated to the pursuit of capital “l” Love because that's how they defined God or the truth or whatever we want to call it. Do you think it's all a matter of degrees from there on down to the more mundane aspects of serving love in our everyday lives?

I don't think the suggestion … in that song, for me, it's not mundane. There's nothing mundane about life, really. [Laughs] There's pain in life. And I do believe that there's something inside of us. To me, it feels fierce and dedicated to love. I can't really find another name for that thing inside of me that keeps me going and looking and trying to figure out what to do next. Nothing else really makes sense to me, as far as the living of life goes.

I don't think there's any sense in war. I don't think there's any sense in rage, as a habit. I think there's sense in creativity and the pursuit of goodness. And I think that, when I get down to the root of why that is, I feel that it goes back to that word that everybody's saying.

The opposite of love — in my mind and belief system — would be ego, greed, and fear which is what drives a whole lot of people. That side of it is captured in “Good and Gone,” which you've said was inspired, at least partially, by the shooting of John Crawford. But it ends up being much wider and deeper than that, of course. To me, it's about the idea of people who want to make others smaller so that they can feel big.

I think the root of suffering is suffering. If you create it, it's created in others. And it goes on and on and on that way. I don't think I painted a flattering picture of the gentleman who made the phone call and the policemen who shot the young man, but … Martin Luther King talked about that in that speech in Montgomery — the powerful few disorganizing those who have less and are disempowered by their greed by distracting them into hating each other. I think that does happen.

Look at the gun control laws in this country. It's absolutely insane to me. The root of it is greed. There's some really crazy stuff happening in our world right now, as far as greed's concerned. I think the world goes through these … in different cultures in different places, there will be times when there's upheaval and so much greed and such a huge disparity between those who have enough and those who don't have enough. The gap's widening and, as that happens, there's a lot less education and self-respect going on in all communities.

If you could solve one broad issue, would that be it — economic justice? I've long felt that is the first thing because people can't care about the environment or equal rights or anything else if they are worried about how they are going to feed themselves and their children.

I don't really know how to go about doing it. I think it's a consciousness-raising time, more than anything. I think you can't move any of it until there's an awareness that it's happening. And I think people aren't necessarily aware of that happening. We've got a lot of fake news programs out there to sort of back up that it isn't happening. So I think it's a difficult issue. It's not going to be solved in my lifetime even. I really don't believe that. It's a consciousness-raising issue and it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of work. It's very slow moving. It's not a quick fix.

Do you ever wish you were one of those people who could just stick your head in the sand and go about your business without worrying about the rest of the world?

Ummm … No. [Laughs] I'm not. I feel glad to be who I am. I feel like I've had an amazing life, from start til now. All the way through, there have been totally amazing things I've gotten to experience from day one. And I don't think that I'd pick anybody else's life for any reason.

Well, you would certainly miss a whole lot of stories which feed what you do. What is it about the outsiders and outliers in our society that's so appealing to you? The people that most folks look through — what's your kinship with that clan?

I come from low income people. My mother's family was struck really hard by the Depression. She was born in the Depression and they were very, very, very poor. My father's parents were Irish immigrants. They were very intelligent people. They worked as servants on an estate in Boston, MA. On both sides of my family, I was probably one of the first people to be college-educated. Really through the kindness, and a lot of hard work, but it was because of the kindness that they even got that opportunity in their lives. And I think that I was raised with an awareness that you might have a bed and a meal, but not everybody's got that.

I was also raised in the '70s when there was a lot of urban decay — downtown decay — going on. I wasn't raised in a community of wealth. I was raised in a community where a lot of people didn't have any money. And I think that, by contrast to watching television and watching ads about how you're supposed to look and what you're supposed to want … it's not hard to have an awareness that there's a difference between the haves and have-nots. [Laughs] In this country, that's an important difference. Opportunities don't exist for you, if you don't have.

I've always been very surprised that that isn't a broad, conscious thing in our country. I think it has been, from the time of my entering into adulthood, it's really been ignored since, I would say, from '80 on. The growing accumulation of homelessness … on and on and on it goes. Groups get larger. And there's very little focus on free education in this country, so when you try to get something like that passed in Congress or any kind of improvements, financially, to the people who are teaching our children, they cry “bleeding-heart Liberal.” That's absolutely the most insane thing, to be living in a time when that's how that's discussed. [Laughs] I think it's taken me until now to realize that it's a huge, huge, huge issue. But it can be addressed if you can look at it as something that can be addressed on a consciousness level … for me, with my work … and it's a very small ripple in the pool, but it's the one I have, so that's what I'm trying to do now.

Yeah. I was thinking today, as I was driving through Nashville, about our desensitization. The bad stuff is so all around us now, a lot of people don't notice it anymore. So it can keep getting worse and worse, and we don't see it.

I think there's a lot of fear out there, on all levels — especially at the top, there must be a lot of fear. I call it “The Big Grab.” There's a Big Grab going on. Just looking at all of the cities that are getting grabbed up by tech money. Austin, TX, is one of them. San Francisco. People who have lived there their whole lives are no longer able to live where they were born because they don't make the kinds of income that have driven the real estate prices up. I think people are willing to punch through … if they have the money now, they're willing to punch through, get what they can get, grab what they can grab now. Because I think there's a sense that it's going away. I think that sense is probably spot on. At what point? I have no idea. And how, I have no idea.

The last bubble burst, so why won't this one?

It's probably going to burst, at some point. There's a lot of pressure on it with the environment and everything else. The displaced persons in the world. There's a lot that will change our planet really drastically in the next … 10 years even. I think we don't know what that is, so everybody's trying to get as much as they possibly can to hold on to right now. But what if we didn't do that? What if we paused and looked around and just started doing better for our planet? For our neighbors? And what if we didn't grab? What would happen if we didn't grab? What would happen if we watched what we consumed more carefully? What would happen if common sense stepped in? When you get down to the core of yourself and the core of what's important, to me, it's love and caring for others as best you can. Admitting failures, apologizing … all that good stuff goes in there. And starting over again, trying to do better. Because we can do better. I believe.

Photos courtesy of David McClister and Thirty Tigers