Rick Clark's Music I Love Blog - Artist: Nanci Griffith / Album: Other Voices, Other Rooms
By 1993, Nanci Griffith had already released nine great albums largely featuring her own original music. Two of those albums are personal favorites, Once In A Very Blue Moon and The Last Of The True Believers, which included the lovely “More Than A Whisper.”
Griffith’s tenth album, Other Voices, Other Rooms, was a well-curated collection of songs by singer/songwriters who influenced her. The album, which was produced by Jim Rooney, deservedly won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1994.
The album features a who’s who list of great artists and musicians, including Chet Atkins, Guy Clark, Iris DeMent, Bob Dylan, Béla Fleck, Arlo Guthrie, Emmylou Harris, John Hartford, Leo Kottke, Alison Krauss, Edgar Meyer, Odetta, John Gorka, John Prine, and many others. That said, Nanci Griffith’s vision and artistry are the focal points and she delivers masterfully.
Nanci Griffith with Emmylou Harris - “Across The Great Divide” from Other Voices, Other Rooms
Kate Wolf’s meditative “Across The Great Divide” sets the tone of this visit into Griffith's musical scrapbook of cherished songs with the lyric:
“I've been walkin' in my sleep
Countin' troubles 'stead of countin' sheep
Where the years went I can't say
I just turned around and they've gone away
I've been siftin' through the layers
Of dusty books and faded papers
They tell a story I used to know
And it was one that happened so long ago
It's gone away in yesterday
Now I find myself on the mountainside
Where the rivers change direction
Across the Great Divide”
(“Across The Great Divide” written by Kate Wolf, Another Sundown Publishing, BMI)
Emmylou Harris’s harmonies are perfect with the tone of this stand-out track.
Arlo Guthrie duets with Griffith on Townes Van Zandt’s “Tecumseh Valley,” a hard-luck story of a woman’s tenacious journey in a world that offered her little dignity. Guthrie’s presence adds another emotional layer to this hard-luck American folk tale.
Nanci Griffith with Arlo Guthrie singing Townes Van Zandt’s “Tecumseh Valley” from the album Other Voices, Other Rooms.
Her versions of Bob Dylan’s “Boots of Spanish Leather” dovetailed next to John Prine’s “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness” are especially effective. Dylan and Prine appear on these songs respectively.
Nanci Griffith with John Prine - “Speed of Sound of Loneliness” from the album Other Voices, Other Rooms.
I always had a soft spot Tom Paxton’s ramblin’ fantasy “Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound.” It is one of those songs I’ve come close to placing a few times in TV and film productions I music supervised. Griffith’s version here with Carolyn Hester on harmony vocal is especially nice.
There are so many wonderful moments on this Other Voices, Other Rooms and clearly many fans agreed. In response, Griffith released the equally impressive follow-up Other Voices, Too (A Trip Back to Bountiful) in 1998.
If you haven’t heard Nanci Griffith and you like this, she has many intelligently soulful albums you should explore. Besides Once In A Very Blue Moon and The Last Of The True Believers, other rewarding albums of hers include Flyer, Lone Star State of Mind, One Fair Summer Evening, and Storms. Thanks for listening.
Artist: Nanci Griffith / Album: Once in a Very Blue Moon
Artist: Nanci Griffith / Album: The Last of the True Believers