JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Love at the five and dime...Nanci Griffith

Hey All,

I spent 8 hours today getting my wife to & from a concert of one her musical heroes...4 years ago, I spent a whole week renting a hotel room in Cleveland to see him....Two years after that, I spent a four day weekend to see him near Washington DC...

Tonight? It only took 8 hours....And it was actually the first time her "hero" actually gave a decent concert...I actually enjoyed it:-)....Usually he, to me, came off as a whiny
dimpweed....But tonight, he actually rocked and gave his fans a very good concert.

But enough about him....:-)

This is my time, before I go to bed, to give thanks to an artist who never acted like a dimpweed while singing to folks who had paid good hard-earned money to hear them sing...

Nanci Griffith....:-)...:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GK462XnRjQ

Midnite

Hey All,

Getting really personal here...:-)

I was living in Chicago, and working in Detroit...

...And just getting back into songwriting after a 20 year break.

I would drive out of Chicago around midnight on Sunday to show up at the office in Detroit on Monday morning...

One night, on the freeway, a tire blew out....A State Trooper and a tow-truck hauled me to a "service station" that would open at 7:00 a.m., when I could get my tire fixed....

I spent 5 hours, huddled up in a sleeping bag and turning on the Ford 150's engine just long enough to give me some heat, and then turned it off again, because I had a limmitted amount of gas in the engine...

And a song came floating in....The last thing I was expecting while trying not to literally freeze to death somewhere between Chicago & Detroit in the middle of a February night!~!~!~

...But a "voice" sang that song as it was floating in as I was scrambling for pieces of paper and a pen that wasn't frozen and when that failed, scribbling the lyrics with my fingernail on the front of a frozen windshield ....To me, the "Voice", who kept me alive that night, with the song, was Nanci Griffith's.

Several years later, without bothering Ms. Griffith, I heard the "voice" again...Not the same....But I didn't freeze to death and lived to tell the tale about the singers and the voices...

The song is called "East Texas"....Here's a link, and I hope it works....It was one cold-a$$~ February night, and the song, and the "Voices" are the only things that got me through it:

The link is to my Midnitebob Soundclick page...

The song is "East Texas"......Scroll down and you'll find it:-)

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1085431

Thank you, Anne and Michelle and Nanci Griffith....

I'm still alive to tell the tale:-)

Midnite

A BEAUTIFUL ANGEL !


Calvin


http://www.soundclick.com/bands/0/calvinstewart

Love those Texan songwriters. Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, Guy Clark, Stephen Fromholtz, Townes Van Zant, Lucinda Williams, and of course Nancy Griffith. They really paint mind movies as I call them.

Stevie

Well midnite,
You will be happy to know Jim Reeves was from East Texas! Carthage if i'm not mistaken. For those not in the know it is sometimes called the Big Thicket.

Hi Bob:

She reminds me a little of Emmy Lou Harris.

Thanks for sharing,

Dave

Hey Dave!

Nanci and Emmy Lou are good real good friends from way back.

They were sitting in a bar together one night, and started talking about other songwriters they admired.

A year or so later, Nanci actually put it together...The album/cassette/CD is called "Other Voices Other Rooms".

One of my most favorite, ever!!

Nanci and Arlo Guthrie do Townes' "Tecumsee Valley".
She and John Prine do one of his songs..."Faster than the sound of loneliness".
She and Emmy Lu do a Gordon Lightfoot song.
She does a duet with Bob Dylan of his "Boots of Spanish Leather", and had the good sense not to let Mr. Dylan actually sing...He just plays harmonica...:-)

I could go on and list every song, but the bathroom sink drain exploded a coupla days ago, and I'm finally getting around to fixing it....Half way done and needed a break...Diving back under the sink now:-)

Midnite

P.S...Regarding the bathroom sink drain exploding....I found an $800 diamond earring in the mess that my wife had lost two years ago...$20 dollars at Home Depot for parts...A coupla hours to try and put them together properly...And if I fail, I can bring in a plumber and still be $400 ahead after the earring recovery:-)

Cool tune

The Prine song Nanci did was "Speed of the sound of Loneliness"

Cheers
Paul

Yes! That's the right title! Thanks Paul. It goes something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2e9wWFg-pI

I actually saw them on a tour together a year or so later :-)

Midnite

I am still wondering who the whiny dimpweed your wife loves is (I'm pretty sure dimpweed is not politically correct these days). Nancy sang Boots of Spanish Leather at Bob Dylan's 30th Anniversary Show (required watching). She did a great job. Not on YouTube apparently.

Ya know I have a Nanci Griffith CD around here someplace -- I gotta dig it out. That Love at the Five and Dime is a very special song!!! First time hearing that tune (I think). Just super.

Well,
Somebody, maybe from the 1930's recorded a song, I FOUND A MILLION DOLLAR BABY AT A FIVE AND DIME OR SOMETHING. I guess I better be careful here, those Five and Dime Stores may be coming back! Listened to some Hank Locklin yesterday. A LP that has 24 short versions of a lot of good songs. Write a Hit!

Hi Midnite,

Whiny...who could it be? Well Brian Wilson played in NYC that night, but no way did you drive there and back to NC and see a concert in 8 hours, so I'm stumped..Neil Young isn't touring..plus my bet is you like those guys..maybe Morrisey played an unannounced show!

I chose the same Nanci Griffith song for my sister to hear last week, cuz she likes Iris Dement and Emmylou Harris, but didn't know of Nanci Griffith, and her first job was at a Woolworth's in the sixties.

Griffith would occasionally shop at the Tower Records I worked at in Nashville. Such a class act and a very giving performer. Love her.

Now on to your song!

Mike

Well Midnite,Dylan may not have the voice of an angel but i really dig this version although some of the live ones are a little hard to listen to.Mike
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ7CDzwcHX8

East Texas is a beautiful song Bob
(loved it a lot more than my 12 years in Texas)

had to have a listen to Nanci Griffith too
must say I had never heard her version of that song
I guess we're often partial to the first version we hear of a song....and I am guilty of that here...in preferring Kathy Mattea's version...(doesn't hurt that she's one of my very favorite singers) but always good to hear how the writer sings their songs...very nice...

Hi again Midnite,

It's easier to imagine Nanci tackling "East Texas" with aplomb or two. Very nice song!

Let's not forget Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock, Terry Allen, Joe Ely, and of course the great Buddy Holly. West Texas is the musical soul of the known universe, in my humble opinion.

Mike

And let's not forget about a couple guys named Willie & Waylon:-)

Midnite

Doh!

"East Texas" reminds me a little of Guy Clark's "She Ain't Goin' Nowhere (She's Just Leavin')" in tone and content, though your song is packed with details and is like a short story, whereas Clark's is more like a snapshot in time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nHnEK2ECMM

Ok,

I don't wanna sidetrack my Nanci thread...

And I won't name names, because that would be unkind.

But I also don't need any of you losing any more sleep or grey-cells trying to answer the dimpweed speculation.

Let's just say that the first two times I saw him, he played "I don't wanna work, I just wanna bang on the drum all day", on a ukelele, because he whined about having to play the same song the same way regardless of what peoe wanted to hear.....

He whined a lot about things like that for several years, and basically began boring even his most die-hard fans to tears and very few concerts sold out.

Apparently, someone "wised" him up....They brought a two-kit drum set out, just for that song, and he banged the crap outta it as if he had just written the song that morning....

He was never "whiny" in voice, only in attitude... But not on this tour:-)

Hope that settles the dimpweed question:-)

Now, back to The Five and Dime and all things Texas!

Midnite

Todd...i never saw him but i like a lot of his stuff.

M. LeBlanc wins the "Name That Dimpweed" trophy:-)

Yeah, I liked his songs too, until I married a ToddHead". Like a "DeadHead", only different:-)......but just as annoying when you're stuck in a concert line with them...

But as to Todd's songs... Lotta good ones..

But the other night was the first time I'd heard him sing them again as if he meant it...Not a bad night, and my ToddHead wife said it was the best concert of his that she'd ever seen... And she's seen at least 30...

Back to Texas:-)

Midnite

Thank you, Harriet..and everyone else!!!! for your kind words about "East Texas":-)

But yes...Re: Kathy Mattea's version of Ms. Griffith's song...

Kathy Mattea also sang the living daylights out of a song about a "Ford E-Conoline" van.....Ms. Griffith wrote that song too:-)

Can't find Kathy's version....But here is Ms. Griffith's version of her song:-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OBSo3G8LCg

Please toss in other links here...

Whoops, beat ya to it Harriet:-)....was "Listen to the Radio" also a Nanci song that Kathy covered:-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx6BnpoRgCo

just wonderin'.....:-)

Midnite

Hi Midnite,

Thank you for sharing your wonderful story about how you came to write "East Texas.". It's great when an aural muse presents itself. This happens to me in various degrees when I write, but never under the conditions under which Nanci came to you.

A basic truth I'm hearing in your story is that creativity can come when we least expect it, and when it does, we should respect it! I'm glad you had paper and pen in there.

John Lilly would claim it was the isolation that gave you a "mirror" to your inner workings, and there's probably some truth to that. But there seems to be a lot more going on with the creative process than we'll ever know or want or need to know. In fact knowing how it works would probably make us even more self-conscious beings and just muck things up.

Maybe our muses are some kind of angel. Nanci Griffith might agree with that--when I found out in interviews she loved the movie "Wings Of Desire" --I loved her even more. Her 2005 cover of Tom and Jennifer Kimball's "Angels" is just wonderful, btw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5z2tibbdrw

Griffith has known hardship (survived both breast and thyroid cancer) and has overcome a five year writer's block to come back recently with some great new songs.

I think what I love most about her is that she really loves this stuff--is such an avid listener and supporter of others' work. I remember her waxing so enthusiastically about Townes Van Zandt at a live concert--like she really wanted us to stop off at the record store and pick up "At My Window" on our way home!

Her enthusiasm was very catching in my case..

Mike

EVERYTHING YOU JUST SAID, Michael Z!...:-)

Midnite

P.S...Regarding "East Texas", that so many of you have been kind enough to track down and listen to...Sincere thanks for that!!!!

So I will offer up a little more history, in all humility, one last time for posterity's sake...because I can:-), here on JPFolks...

Someone once asked Keith Richards...

"How do you create your songs?"

Keith answered:

"I don't create. I leave creating to God. I just try to capture what is already out there".....

With that in mind....:-)

RAMBLE ALERT!!!!

Sometimes, The Muses just offer us something....

....Go back to my soundclick link, if you wish...The first song is "About Mermaids".......'nough said:-)

But back to "East Texas"....And I hope I'm not sounding like a dimpweed here while I try to piece together some things and giving the songwriting Muses their due...

In 1987, after living in Chicago and driving cab while trying to make it as a playwright, with a wife and two kids in tow...

We decided that we could all be a lot warmer in L.A. while I worked on being a screen-writer...

The car broke down in Weatherford, Oklahoma....We had no choice but to stay a while and try to find jobs...

...I ended up cutting my hair(oh, the horrors:-)))) and found a job as the "Biscuit Maker" at a Hardees....Woke up at 4:00 a.m., walked half an hour to the Hardee's, and baked those biscuits!!!

The Hardee's was on Weatherford's Main Street...

The "cars on the freeway" could be seen from where I was baking the biscuits....It was just a "visual" that stuck in my head while baking biscuits while other, "local" young folks came in to work and try to pay their bills...Two of those "locals" were young mothers...They worked their shifts...They "snuck" some aluminum foil and wrapped up scraps to feed the kids...

As for me??...

I saw the freeway out the window, way before dawn.

I saw two young mothers...One a widow, the other had married a "bad boy"....

That was in Oklahoma...

Me and mine eventually finished our treck to L.A., and drove through Texas's panhandle to get there...BTW, if you're ever driving on I-40 through the Texas Panhandle...The "Welcome Center" is 90 miles away, whether you're going east to west or west to east:-)

...But I baked the biscuits at 5:00 a.m...I saw cars passing by on the freeway...

10 years later...While trying not to freeze....

"East Texas" came floating in....

Hope that makes sense in an effort to identify with Michael Z's musings...:-)

Midnite

I love NG - always have -