Nanci Griffith

Nanci Caroline Griffith, born July 6, 1953, in Seguin, Texas, and raised in Rollingwood, a suburb of Austin, was an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter who worked across country, folk, and what she described as "folkabilly" music. She died on August 13, 2021. Her father, Marlin Griffith, worked as a printer, publisher, graphic artist, and barbershop quartet singer, and her mother, Ruelene, was a real estate agent and amateur actress. Griffith was the youngest of three siblings. She began performing at age 12 in a local coffeehouse, and at 14 gave her first professional performance at the Red Lion Cabaret in downtown Austin. As a teenager, her father brought her to see Townes Van Zandt. She later attended the University of Texas at Austin, earning a degree in education, and spent several years teaching kindergarten and first grade before committing fully to music.

Griffith released her debut album, There's a Light Beyond These Woods, in 1978, with cover art designed by her father, followed by Poet in My Window in 1982. Both were folk-oriented recordings issued on small labels. Her third album, Once in a Very Blue Moon, was recorded in Nashville in 1984 with producer Jimmy Rooney and musicians including Béla Fleck, Mark O'Connor, and Lloyd Green. That same year she appeared on the PBS program Austin City Limits. The follow-up album, The Last of the True Believers, earned her first Grammy nomination and included "Love at the Five and Dime" and "Goin' Gone," both of which became hits for Kathy Mattea. The title track of Once in a Very Blue Moon reached number 85 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in 1986, the same year Griffith showcased material from her Lone Star State of Mind album on The Nashville Network program New Country.

After signing with MCA Records and relocating to Nashville, Griffith released the country-oriented Lone Star State of Mind, which featured "Trouble in the Fields," co-written by Griffith, and "From a Distance," a song written by Julie Gold that went on to be covered widely. The album Little Love Affairs followed and included "Outbound Plane," which later became a hit for Suzy Bogguss. In 1988, she released One Fair Summer Evening, a live album recorded at Anderson Fair in Houston. Her subsequent MCA recording, Storms, included "It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go," a song Griffith identified as among the most important she had written, addressing conflict in Northern Ireland and racism in the United States. In 1990, she appeared on the Channel 4 program Town & Country with John Prine in a segment called "White Pants," filmed at the Bluebird Café in Nashville alongside Buddy Mondlock, Barry "Byrd" Burton, and Robert Earl Keen. She released Late Night Grande Hotel in 1991 before departing MCA Records.

In 1993, Griffith released Other Voices, Other Rooms, an album of songs by folk and country songwriters featuring a large roster of musicians ranging from Bob Dylan to Odetta. The recording won her the 1994 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album and was certified gold by the RIAA in 2005. Her 1994 album Flyer received an additional Grammy nomination. That same year, she collaborated with Jimmy Webb on the song "If These Old Walls Could Speak" for the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country, produced by the Red Hot Organization. Also in 1994, Griffith appeared on Broadway in Nanci Griffith on Broadway. In 1996, she performed four songs with Hootie & the Blowfish during their MTV Unplugged taping in Columbia, South Carolina, a performance staged to raise awareness for the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund. Griffith was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996 and thyroid cancer in 1998.

Following a period of severe writer's block that lasted from 2004 until 2009, Griffith released The Loving Kind, an album comprising nine songs she had written or co-written. In 2011, her bandmates Pete and Maura Kennedy relocated their Manhattan recording studio to Nashville and installed it in Griffith's home, where she co-produced the album Intersection with the Kennedys and drummer Pat McInerney. The album, which included new original songs, was released in April 2012 on Proper Records. Griffith called her backing band the Blue Moon Orchestra, a name the musicians drew from her third album. She toured with artists including the Crickets, John Prine, Iris DeMent, Suzy Bogguss, Judy Collins, and the Everly Brothers, and recorded duets with Prine, Emmylou Harris, Mary Black, Don McLean, Jimmy Buffett, Dolores Keane, Willie Nelson, Adam Duritz, the Chieftains, John Stewart, and Darius Rucker.

Among the honors Griffith received were induction into the Austin Music Hall of Fame in 1995, the Kate Wolf Memorial Award from the World Folk Music Association in 1995, the Americana Music Association's Lifetime Americana Trailblazer Award in 2008, and a Lifetime Achievement Award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2010. She was posthumously inducted into the Texas Heritage Songwriters Association's Hall of Fame in February 2022 at the Paramount Theatre in Austin.