Word: griffith
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...recordings are populated by such stylistically disparate collaborators as Lyle Lovett, Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton of U2 and even the Chieftains. In the rigidly structured formats of FM radio, though, Griffith has never found a fit: Is she folk, country or what? Now, with the release this month of her 12th album, the magnificently tuneful and frankly autobiographical Flyer, Griffith's relative lack of celebrity is a bygone thing...
That she is not better known is partly by choice. "I'm an extremely reclusive person," says Griffith, 40, in a high, clear, Texas-twanged schoolgirl voice. "As far as career goes, I've probably shot myself in the foot more than anyone I know, because I've protected my privacy and my life and the cocoon that I have to weave myself into in order to be the writer that...
Gentle and artless but with a strong social bite, Griffith's best songs conjure up a series of four-minute worlds, miniature but universal brushes with blind fate, transient love and life's harsh realities. In Trouble in the Fields, struggling Okie farmers battle the farm depression of the early '80s, "when the bankers swarm like locusts out there, turning away our yield." Lookin' for the Time tells of a forlorn streetwalker who dreams of the day when she can afford to let the cruising "limos just slide...
...past," Griffith explains, "I wrote mostly fiction, or things I observed, without being part of them. Flyer has been totally different: it is very personal -- real experience, walking into life instead of walking around...
Music: Nanci Griffith may be folk's best messenger...