Patty Griffin

AllMusic Zine, 1999

I’m not quite sure, but I think I first heard of Patty Griffin from the celebrated writer Dave Marsh, who at the time was a contributor to my place of employment, AllMusic.com. She had just released her second album, Flaming Red, which inspired plaudits from Dave that definitely got my attention.

Once I spun the CD, I was equally impressed. Something in her voice drew me in. It wasn’t a matter of pyrotechnics, by which Patty was apparently unmoved. Her range was a bit more limited than those of most vocalists. She also tended to grab quick bursts of air even in the midst of a phrase or a sentence, which formally schooled singers might tut-tut derisively.

Not me, though. Her gulps in the song “Christina” were, to my ears, idiosyncratic and disarming. It invested her performance with what felt like an urgency to get the melody out — and with it, the story that it carried. I loved her timbre — richly musical but also conversational. The songs she wrote were perfect vehicles for her sound and style. This didn’t escape the notice of producer Jay Joyce, who framed Griffin’s performance in vivid colors, each one a perfect fit for her distinctive performance.

After listening to Flaming Red, I wasted no time tracking down her people, who set up an interview with her at some venue not far from Ann Arbor. I obtained a copy of her 1996 debut album, Living with Ghosts, on which Griffin channeled her recent difficulties into music. Only recently had she emerged from a dispiriting server gig at Pizzeria Uno and a crumbling marriage. From a wreckage of anchovies and unwanted entanglements, the flower of her artistry began to show through songs whose elemental presentation — just acoustic guitar and vocals — provided incongruous accompaniment to tales of faked orgasms, being raised in poverty by parents whose insanity would “kill your heart,” and the “mad mission” of loving someone for whom “it don’t mean a thing.”

One night in May 1999, right before our interview, I saw Griffin onstage in Pontiac, Michigan. In her blue floral-patterned dress, her red hair tumbling to her shoulders, she seemed more an apparition from the Forties than a child of the Nineties. On up-tempo songs, she moved awkwardly, her long arms writhing, boa-like, to the beat, but her feet rooted in place. All the while, she kept an oddly detached expression on her face; only once, as the band locked onto a groove on “Blue Sky,” did a brilliant smile escape. All she needed was her singing to win over the audience — and the executives who kept her career alive amidst the collapse of her label.

(This transcription includes two brief excerpts from another interview I conducted with Griffin for the February/March 2007 issue of Relix Magazine.

****

You got into music initially as a singer; the songwriting came later.

Yeah. Linda Ronstadt’s Greatest Hits, Volume One: I’d let it rip and sing along really loud. That’s how I started, even though I don’t really have the kind of body to sing like that. But I do have my own way of doing it.

What was the first successful song you ever wrote?

It was something I wrote when I was in Boston. I read a story about a homeless woman, and I wrote a song about it. This was when homelessness was coming into the spotlight. I realized that I had something to say. Something just came out of me and went, “bleaghI” And I was like, “Wow! That’s a real song!” I had toyed around with songs before, trying to piece things together and write from a more crafty point of view. But this one sort of shot through me. I no longer play that song; the time for me to sing it is way past. But as I’ve gotten older, those moments have become more strung together. There’s a lot more of those moments.

There are songwriters who specialize in churning out material on demand. Your approach involves more of a surrender to something mysterious. What’s the secret of working with your process so that you’re not completely at the mercy of inspiration?

You should always be doing what you are meant to be doing, what you are drawn to and love doing. You should know yourself well enough to know what that is, and then stick to that and try to do that. Try to make enough space around your sense of self. It’s really difficult when you’re in this career, because there are so many things that people want you to do that put you in these positions where you’re tired and you don’t feel like doing them. You can’t be yourself in a lot of situations where you’re trying to sell a record. That’s the kiss of death for your art, at least temporarily. It’s very difficult to get back in touch with your emotions after you’ve been through six months of meeting people and shaking hands and talking to people who are rude to you and things like that. It’s really hard, you know?

That sounds too distracting for you to concentrate on writing while on the road.

No. Usually at the beginning of a tour, from being off, I’m in my writing mode, so I carry the guitar into the room and I have my tape recorder running and I’m writing a lot more. By the end of the tour, I’m usually pretty burned out on everything, so the thought of lugging a big, heavy guitar into the room … [laughs]. I know how to keep it going when I’m off the road, but it’s a lot harder to actually have a career as a songwriter and have it run concurrently with everything else I’m doing. I have to break it up. I know this now very well about myself: I’m not one of these people who likes to be on the road for six months or a year solid. I really like to have my time off so I can write, because I need to write. I mean, I need to tour and write. It flips me out, but I have to find the balance.

How did you discover that you could sing?

That came when I started singing for other people. I was in high school and I started to let myself out of the closet and sing for other people in my school. Their response is what gave me the idea that I could sing. It was sort of like “Wow!” as opposed to my family: My family were so used to hearing me sing in my bedroom that they were like, “Shut up!” I thought I was terrible.

Did your brothers and sisters also sing?

Yeah. There were a lot of people at home who could sing well. I’m the only one who really pursued it.

You make frequent use of Christian imagery in your lyrics. That suggests you had a religious upbringing.

I was raised Catholic. My mother and my father are Catholics today. I have three brothers and three sisters, and I don’t think any of us is Catholic. We were brought up that way, but it wasn’t the right way for us. But it’s definitely in me. It’s not something that I’m conscious of, but when I’m writing songs I’m always finding those words.

Solo Gigs & Perfect Guitars

When did you start playing guitar?

I didn’t really play guitar until I moved to Boston. Was in my twenties. I had a guitar [earlier] but it hurt my fingers and I was really trying to be a singer. I was in a cover band.

You’ve cited Bruce Springsteen as an influence in those days. In what way?

Well, just as an example, “The River” has a lot of images. I remember listening to “The River” when I was a teenager and thinking, “This is my world.” Bruce Springsteen was talking about my world. I could feel what he was feeling. He’s sort of from my background, so I related to him. Also, he’s a very emotional singer, and rather than clever party songs, I like the “woe is me” type of singer a lot better.

Since you were tuning into artists like Springsteen and Rickie Lee Jones, working in a cover band must have been a little confining sometimes.

Yes, it was. We were good, though.

What do you remember about that band?

We did high school dances. We were very young; the youngest guy was sixteen and the oldest guy was twenty-one. We thought he was really old because he drank in bars [laughs]. I thought, because I  was really young, that I would have a lot more longevity in the cover band world, but it was boring after a while. It was pretty bad.

What kind of stuff did you sing with them?

Well, it took me a really, really long time to become comfortable on the guitar. I did gigs where I didn’t consider myself comfortable on the guitar at all, [like] solo gigs in coffeehouses in Boston, where I’d get up and do one song, then go away. I ended up actually getting help from John Curtis, who was my guitar teacher. I met him at a guitar store, Cambridge Music, in Boston; he might still be working there. He ended up booking us together at a gig next door, because I just couldn’t get myself out there. As soon as I stood up in front of an audience by myself with a guitar, I couldn’t sing anymore, so I kind of needed somebody to help me do that. At some point or another, after working with him for a year, I realized that because I was working with another person, I was having a lot of trouble controlling what was going out. I wanted more control, so I ended up doing it myself. It seemed very lonely at first, but it wasn’t as hard.

What kind of guitar do you play for your acoustic pieces?

My main guitar, the one that’s in the standard tuning, is a C. Fox. they’re a new company in northern California that makes really small and fine guitars. Unfortunately, I don’t bring my favorite guitar on the road because it has a porcelain bridge and it snaps strings like crazy. And it’s old: It’s a Gibson J-50 from 1965. It has a beautiful tone.

How did you find out about the C. Fox guitar?

I was in Nashville when the NAMM [National Association of Music Merchants] show was going on. Somebody saw me standing outside a club and said, “Patty! I know you! You need to play my guitar!” He handed me the guitar. They let me have it for a month and I couldn’t give it back. That’s how I found my guitar.

Does having a new instrument that you really like affect your writing?

Each guitar gives you something different to say. They definitely have songs in them. They have their own voices.

What about the piano?

I started playing piano in my grownup life. I bought a piano when I moved to Austin, so I’ve had it permanently in my life since 1999, I think. I’m fairly new to it. It’s a difficult instrument anyway, and it’s an incredibly difficult instrument to learn to play while I’m singing, because the position of your body is so different from when you’re playing guitar. So I have this huge learning curve with it. I’ve been wanting to play; I’m more inspired by the piano, by far, than I am with the guitar. I always have been because the guitar is just very available. So I’ve spent a lot of time teaching myself to play different things at the piano; that way, the songs just pop out. I don’t have any technique whatsoever, but I really want to play the piano.

Bloodbath at A&M

You were an A&M artist …

It’s A&M/Interscope now.

Right.

It was pretty frustrating. I went from being, I was told, the number three priority record of the year to being pretty much wiped off the map, as far as working at radio and things like that go. Everything got hurt. All the budgets were cut. It’s par for the course with having a major record deal because it’s a common story. You hear this sort of thing all the time. But I was really bummed out. I was told I would be lucky even if I got picked up by Universal – if they would work my record again. It turns out that Interscope is working my record.

Why do you think you survived while other A&M artists were dropped?

I cannot figure out this business to save my life. I keep hearing all these things that are really shocking to me, like, “Well, your record hasn’t been out for a year, and we’ve already worked it at radio.” My gut is that there’s so much music that [record] labels are dealing with right now, so many artists they sign — they sign everything — that they’re looking for a quick brush-off for a lot of things. We were just talking today about how Bruce Springsteen might have been dropped after Darkness on the Edge of Town because it didn’t sell any records. Or Tom Waits! Or U2! All these major money-making artists for these labels would probably be dropped today, even with these records that everybody loves.

Back then, I guess it was hard for certain artists to develop a strategy for building longevity in their label deals. Has that changed a bit for artists like Springsteen or Tom Waits?

It has for major labels. But I can't speak against Interscope right now because they’ve kept me even though, with the evidence going on, they shouldn’t have. So I’m really grateful that somebody …

By “evidence,” do you mean sales?

Yeah, and with what happens to a lot of other people in my position. A lot of people would have been dropped. But they didn’t just look at the numbers at Interscope, so I definitely have to credit them for that.

Photo © Michael Wilson

One of the Guys

Some of the songs you used to perform in intimate coffeehouse settings have turned up again on your set lists for larger venues. Has this affected your approach to that material?

Working with a band definitely does that. When I’m playing solo, it doesn’t really matter if there are five people there or, honestly, five hundred people. I did an Earth Day solo concert in Boston, where there were one hundred thousand people. I was really playing for the first twelve rows.

So you maintain that intimate approach rather than alter your presentation with big gestures for the entire crowd.

Yeah.

In fact, you still do a few gigs in smaller venues along with the arena shows. Why is that important to you?

They’re technically challenging if you’re used to the bigger stages with the nice equipment. They’re more fun. You’re right next to the audience and it tends to be a blast. We thought we’d have a little fun and get ourselves together that way, rather than put a lot of pressure on ourselves.

Do you divide your list into songs that work better solo and songs that work best with your band?

That’s what I’m feeling so far. A lot of things that I played solo before I made Flaming Red, that are on Flaming Red, I don’t bother with them anymore when I’m playing solo. They really are band songs now. At least one of the songs on Flaming Red even predates everything on Living with Ghosts.

Which one was that?

“Christina.”

Do you stick pretty close to the album arrangements at your shows?

I think we do, but we’ve been getting a little more experimental and loose as we’re getting to know each other. We’ve been together for a year, which I don’t think is a lot of time. It’s a great band, and it’s inspiring. It really is inspiring to play with great musicians. They give me … notes. All kinds of things come out of me now that are a direct result of working with these guys.

What kinds of things?

Different things I can feel because I don’t feel my body as I’m singing. I don’t have to think about playing the guitar. I’m depending on their movements and their feel of things for my performance. That’s the ideal of having a band, with all the musicians working together that way. They should all fit well enough together.

How do you find the right musicians when you’re putting a band together?

I had a wish list of some people, and I managed to get those guys. Some personnel has changed since then, but it’s still great, although tonight we had a pretty rough gig.

Really?

Well, that’s what they said: “We're a rock band tonight!” We totally fell apart in several places, but that happens.

I’ve read that after your first solo album, A&M reportedly asked you to take one of those solo songs and arrange it for your band.

What happened was, they wanted to get it on the radio, so they hired people in Nashville to play around with the actual song. They put it through all kinds of Pro Tools [music software] so that it lined up neatly and they could try to get it on the radio. I was actually against them doing that. What inspired me to have a band on Flaming Red was just my musical tastes. I had a band for Living with Ghosts. I made a record with that band, but the people at the record label at that time completely disapproved of it. They didn’t want to put it out, and I was too bummed out to make another record, so they said, “Hey, if you like these demos so much, why don’t you put those out?” I said okay. That’s how Living with Ghosts came out solo. Some people seem to think that means I’m a folk purist. But that’s so bizarre [laughs]. Really, most of my musical taste has been a lot more rock ’n’ roll band oriented.

Epiphanies in Austin

Have you started work on a third album?

I’m getting little glimmers of light here and there [laughs].

Living with Ghosts seems to have a very personal focus, where Flaming Red offers stories that aren’t necessarily about you. Does the third album seem to be leaning toward one or the other of these directions?

I don’t know. I could never tell you that. I’m never, ever gonna commit to a mold of anything.

Well, am I onto something when I suggest that the relationship between you and your songs differs on your first two albums?

Not that I’m aware of. I just think that different things flow out at different times.

You’ve moved a lot over the past few years, from Boston to Nashville and now to Austin. How does that affect your work?

Well, first of all, I’d just like to get settled someplace long enough to calm down [laughs]. But Austin is one of the most comfortable places I’ve lived as a musician. There are so many people around who are really talented, but nobody in the rest of the country knows who they are. They’re bigwigs in Austin, they're truly, truly talented. It kicks my ass: When you’re out touring a record for a major label, you start thinking in all these bizarre terms about success, and I’m learning from people in Austin that success is what you want it to be. There are so many people there who are great and they’re not into business; they’re not in it for the money.

Quite a contrast from Nashville.

Yeah, it’s completely different.

How long did you live in Nashville?

Just for a year. I went there because Jay Joyce [guitarist with Iodine and producer of Flaming Red] and the possibility of getting to make a record without a lot of people watching from my label — and getting to go home after making that record. I was really, really tired from touring when I started working on Flaming Red.

You’ve recorded with a number of artists, including as a backup vocalist. Has that changed how you think about your own lead vocals?

The interesting thing about being a backup singer is that it really is a way to hear yourself as a stranger. I’m a lot more pleased with how my backup singing sounds than how my lead vocals sound [laughs] because I can usually get off my own back when I sing backup.

What is the challenge of singing on someone else’s session? They want you because of how you sound, but you also have to fit into what they’re doing.

The thing to do is to find a part that becomes a central part of their arrangement. I went on that Sweet Harmony tour, when it had Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. When they rehearse together, they’re probably three inches off each other’s faces, trying to get those harmonies to wrap tight together. They can feel the vibrations, doing that. That’s what a harmony should do: It should be one piece. They do it extremely well, at another level from anything I do. But that’s fundamentally it: You should find a part that isn’t distracting and is really important. If it weren’t there, you would really wish that it was.

When you have somebody else’s lyrics, the issue of interpretation is different than when you’re singing your own words. You want to feel it, but in a way that fits their vision.

Yeah, it’s very challenging. I love being the backup singer. I hope I get to do a lot more.

Are there other collaborations you’d like to do?

I have a long, long list. It’s funny, because somebody at my management company asked me to make a wish list of people that I wanted to open for. I had Paul Westerberg, and Dusty Springfield was number two. Then a week later, she was gone.

There’s a previously unpublished Dusty Springfield interview in the AllMusic Zine where she reveals that she always really disliked Dusty in Memphis.

Wow. See, there are tortured artists all over the place. That’s sad.

Do you ever eat at Pizzeria Uno?

No. I can’t go in there.

I drop in now and then, but I always treat the servers well.

I guess that means your pizzas are probably coming out pretty clean [laughs].

###