We bonded over many things including our crazy love of animals, Emmylou Harris on late Nanci Griffith and new album
“WE bonded over many things,” says Emmylou Harris of her friend, the late Nanci Griffith.
Among them were their “crazy love of animals” and the very un-American habit of sharing a piping-hot pot of tea.
They also shared a burning desire to make a difference to people’s lives — including tirelessly campaigning for a landmine-free world.
It’s just over two years since Nanci died aged 68, and now it is time for reflection and celebration.
Emmylou, 76, has contributed a heartfelt cover of one of her favourite Griffith compositions, Love Wore A Halo, to a new tribute album, More Than A Whisper, and it has helped the memories come flooding back.
This month also sees the release of a lovingly curated box set, Working In Corners, gathering up Nanci’s first four studio albums, including her breakthrough third, Once In A Very Blue Moon.
Speaking from her home in Nashville, Emmylou tells me: “To those who knew Nanci, she will always be very dear to us.
“People need to hear her body of work. They need to be touched by her lyrics and her voice.”
Emmylou has “big regrets” that she lost touch with Nanci before her death in August, 2021.
“It was such a shock,” she says. “I didn’t know she had gone to a dark place and I kick myself sometimes when I think I should have reached out more.
“You always believe there’s more time, that time is infinite but, for each of us, it is not.
“Pre-pandemic, she had a birthday gathering at her house which was the last time I saw her.”
Emerging in the Seventies, Emmylou and Nanci gatecrashed the American roots music scene with grace, style, passion and vision.
Drawing on folk, country and blues, their crystal-clear voices helped pave the way for that vast and loose genre we now call Americana.
A close look at their histories reveals that they had so much else in common.
They were born in the Deep South — Emmylou in Birmingham, Alabama, and Nanci 70 years ago in Seguin, Texas.
Both pitched up in Tennessee’s Music City, Nashville, to further their ambitions, and both had similar influences, including an iconic folkie and a kickass country queen.
Calling her music “folkabilly”, Nanci once said: “You take a whole lot of Woody Guthrie and a whole lot of Loretta Lynn and you swoosh it around and it comes out as Nanci Griffith.”
When she was 14 and already a coffee shop singer, a pivotal moment arrived when her father took her to see fellow Texan troubadour, Townes Van Zandt.
Here was a songwriting genius, albeit a troubled soul with alcohol and drug issues, who joined the dots between folk and country on Pancho And Lefty, To Live Is To Fly and If I Needed You.
Emmylou, who got her big break singing harmonies with the mercurial alt-country pioneer Gram Parsons, was also smitten by the power of Townes, who, she says, “had a very dark side”.
“I had a similar experience to Nanci,” she says.
“When I was a struggling folk singer in New York, I was opening for just about everybody at Gerde’s Folk City.
“I arrived there in early ’68 and was a complete junkie for the old blues players as well as the whole folk world — Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Buffy Sainte-Marie and, of course, Pete Seeger.
“That’s where and when I first saw Townes and he wasn’t like anyone I had ever seen. Nanci and I led parallel lives for a while!”
But it wasn’t until the early Eighties that Emmylou properly crossed paths with her musical soulmate.
She recalls: “We lived in Nashville and we obviously knew about each other — I was very aware of Nanci’s work.”
Then, independently of each other, both joined the campaign to rid the world of landmines, headed by inspirational Bobby Muller, an ex-US Army officer who had launched the Vietnam Veterans Of America Foundation.
“Bobby had taken a bullet,” says Emmylou. “He was paralysed and in a wheelchair but is to this day one of the most dynamic and charismatic people you could meet.
“He saw the devastation caused by landmines and he felt that the bullet he took gave him his purpose in life.”
Emmylou remembers the unflinching response to the campaign from the like-minded singer she finally got to meet properly.
“Nanci became a warrior for that cause,” she says. “Though she may have seemed little and frail, she was not — she was very strong in her convictions and her energy.
“So we did a lot of shows together as singer-songwriters in the round. We were travelling all over the world, raising money and awareness.
“Countless lives were being devastated in areas where there were thousands of landmines.
“The war was still going on for those people. Nanci is to be highly commended for her commitment to them.”
When they were back home in the Nashville area, Emmylou’s friendship with Nanci blossomed.
“We saw each other all the time,” she says. “I used to go to a therapist in the place where she lived, about 20 miles outside of town, and I’d always stop by. We’d have a cup of tea.”
Not for them the sweetened iced variety consumed by 85 per cent of their fellow countrymen, but a good old British-style cuppa.
Emmylou turns her attention from hot beverages to food: “I’m also thinking about Nanci as a cook — she had diet restrictions.
“I would have a New Year’s Day Potluck (where all the guests contribute a dish) and she would always bring something that was gluten-free with no salt.
“We also shared a crazy love of animals,” continues Emmylou, who keeps a dog rescue sanctuary in her back yard named Bonaparte’s Retreat after a beloved mutt.
“Nanci had a cat called Etta James and I wish I could remember the names of her other pets — usually small dogs.”
So, what was it like singing with her, both in the studio and on stage?
“The word I always use is loveliness,’ Emmylou replies. “Nanci was physically lovely, the Ivory Soap girl.
“She could be tough, she was a real professional and she told great stories on stage but mostly it was lovely singing with her because her songs were so great.
“I also remember being in a session in New York for her Other Voices, Other Rooms album.
“This was when my mother was alive and she travelled with me a lot. She made a fresh apple cake and brought it to the studio. There was a great feeling of camaraderie.”
‘Folk and country are about telling stories’
Released in 1993, Other Voices, Other Rooms was the first of two acclaimed covers albums released by Nanci.
The opening track, Across The Great Divide, is her sublime duet with Emmylou.
It was written by a gifted, lesser known folk singer called Kate Wolf, who died tragically young from leukaemia a few years earlier.
Emmylou says: “Nanci and I both came from folk music. I always had more of a folk voice but I brought my love of country into it.
“Even though I’m considered Americana now, being considered a country artist because of my history with Gram (Parsons) was very important to me.”
Putting Nanci in perspective, she adds: “She was a champion for folk artists like Kate Wolf and, of course, her own writing was just extraordinary.”
I ask Emmylou to talk about her favourite Griffith songs and what made them so special.
“Folk and country are really about telling stories,” she says. “I was aware of her first record, There’s A Light Beyond These Woods.
“It was nice, but when I heard Gulf Coast Highway (from her sixth album), on the radio, it was a ‘pull over to the side of the road’ moment.
“It’s one of those songs you have to listen to, one that goes straight to your heart. It reminded me of my parents who were devoted to each other.
“It rang so true for me that I ended up recording it with Willie Nelson years later.”
Next, Emmylou explains why she chose Love Wore A Halo (Back Before The War) for the tribute album. “Nanci understood the human condition and Love Wore A Halo absolutely delighted me.
“Once again, it reminded me of my parents, who met during World War Two. They didn’t know a thing about each other but it was love at first sight.
“They had this wonderful, happy marriage for over 50 years and it felt as if Nanci had a peek into my own life.
“Though she was aware of the darkness in those places we go, she refused to let it take over, at least for most of her life.
“She was a force for joy, for the sweetness which keeps us all going.”
Another admirer of Nanci is Mary Gauthier who sings the tribute album’s title track.
She says: “As a massive, lifelong fan, I am thrilled to see her work honoured by other songwriters (including the late John Prine, Lyle Lovett, Sarah Jarosz and Shawn Colvin).
“It was my delight to record More Than A Whisper, a brilliant song that captures the “folkabilly” sound Nanci introduced to the world.”
If that song is tender and lovelorn, Nanci could also get very fired up.
Take It’s A Hard Life Wherever You Go which visits the streets of Belfast during the Troubles and says: “If we poison our children with hatred/Then the hard life is all that they’ll know.”
Steve Earle has delivered a rousing cover of it as his homage to its writer.
“Nanci and I knew each other since we were teenage folkies in Texas,” he says.
“Later, as we began to make records and tour, we shared a deep connection to Ireland so this seemed like a natural choice for my contribution.”
Emmylou is also a huge fan of the song and singles out its other theme of race hate in America.
“I ended up recording It’s A Hard Life Wherever You Go for a live record.
“That’s where Nanci got a little angry,” she says. “It goes, ‘The fat man in front of me is calling black people trash to his children.’
“She’s saying we can’t live this way, it’s not acceptable, that the hate will be carried on from parent to child if we don’t do something about it.
“That is a brilliant piece of writing. She really carried on the tradition of Woody Guthrie.”
But Emmylou concludes: “Then there was a certain sweetness, a tenderness on Gulf Coast Highway.
“Nanci was an all-round songwriter who changed the world for the better.”
VARIOUS ARTISTS
More Than A Whisper: Celebrating The Music Of Nanci Griffith
★★★★★
Also out now: Working In Corners (Craft Recordings), a 4CD/4LP box set of early Nanci Griffith albums.
There’s A Light Beyond These Woods (1978), Poet In My Window (1982), Once In A Very Blue Moon (1984) and The Last Of The True Believers (1986).