Speaker 1: Pushkin. When Patty Griffin released a Crown of Roses earlier
Speaker 1: this year, she delivered something both timeless and urgent. It's
Speaker 1: an album that draws on gospel, folk and soul to
Speaker 1: explore themes of faith, doubt, and resilience. It's a return
Speaker 1: to the stripped down intimacy of her earliest work, but
Speaker 1: with the wisdom and craft of an artist who spent
Speaker 1: nearly three decades refining her voice. That voice first emerged
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six with Living with Ghosts, recorded on
Speaker 1: a simple four track in her Bosson apartment. The album
Speaker 1: introduced a songwriter who could turn personal pain into something universal.
Speaker 1: Over the years that followed, Griffin's songs have been covered
Speaker 1: by everyone from The Chicks to Solomon Burke, while her
Speaker 1: own recordings have earned her multiple Grammy nominations and a
Speaker 1: reputation as a songwriter songwriter. On today's episode, Bruce Sedlam
Speaker 1: talks to pay Patty Griffin about the inspiration behind Crown
Speaker 1: of Roses and how grit has shaped her songwriting throughout
Speaker 1: her career. They also discussed her early days in Boston's
Speaker 1: folks Seeing and the stories behind some of her most
Speaker 1: well known songs. She also reflects on how finally getting
Speaker 1: to know her mother at the end of her life
Speaker 1: inspired her to see her mother's story in a whole
Speaker 1: new light. This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations.
Speaker 1: Here's Bruce Headlam with Patty Griffin.
Speaker 2: So, Patty Griffin, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: I was looking this up. Your first album came out
Speaker 2: twenty nine years ago.
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 2: Twenty nine years ago? And I, well, I can't think
Speaker 2: of a better songwriter over that period of time. Thank you. Wow,
Speaker 2: maybe somebody else did.
Speaker 3: Thank you?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well I can't so go over your list later.
Speaker 2: But my list starts with you. And you've got a
Speaker 2: new album called Crown of Roses.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit about what you were
Speaker 2: thinking going into this album? What led up to you
Speaker 2: doing this album?
Speaker 3: This album, there's a lot going on in my life
Speaker 3: for the last ten years. It just sort of tumultuous years,
Speaker 3: and tumultuous in the way that everything just kind of
Speaker 3: turned upside down. But it doesn't look very exciting from
Speaker 3: the outside. You know, this is all kinds of stuff
Speaker 3: you've got to work with that's new and different and harder.
Speaker 3: And my mom is passing away in this period of time,
Speaker 3: and so she's in there. I think I'm probably hitting
Speaker 3: a lot of my old themes with this record, but
Speaker 3: it's just my older person's take on it.
Speaker 2: You know, how's your take changed.
Speaker 3: I don't need hope to be hopeful. Does that make
Speaker 3: any sense at all? I feel like just the opposite
Speaker 3: of that set up and makes me feel like like
Speaker 3: knowing that you're going to struggle, things are going to
Speaker 3: be hard, and that that's just part of being human
Speaker 3: and you're not going to escape that, and you know,
Speaker 3: sort of just getting that in my bones has been
Speaker 3: a really great part of my life because I think
Speaker 3: it's you get to be a little more free, you
Speaker 3: stop striving for certain things that are you know, you
Speaker 3: sort of automatically strive for if you're born in the West.
Speaker 2: So it's a little apocalyptic this album, is it? Yeah,
Speaker 2: You've got well in the sense that the apocalypse is
Speaker 2: also kind of a new beginning. And the first song
Speaker 2: is yeah back at the start, you have birds disappearing,
Speaker 2: you have songs called the end. It's really a I'll
Speaker 2: be mixing my metaphors to say it's a baptism by fire,
Speaker 2: but there is a sense of a lot of things
Speaker 2: ending and things starting in this record.
Speaker 3: I think that's sort of the world is in a
Speaker 3: phase like that, So it makes a lot of sense
Speaker 3: that I would be personally in a phase like that,
Speaker 3: just being a person that somebody lives on the world,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. I think that we're all
Speaker 3: experiencing that kind of change right now. The animals in
Speaker 3: the bottom of the sea of the plants are under siege,
Speaker 3: and it makes sense that I would also be experiencing
Speaker 3: things that way.
Speaker 2: You sent a note to Ken Weinstein, whom you work with,
Speaker 2: something to the effect that so much of your work
Speaker 2: has been focused on men and trying to understand them, right,
Speaker 2: and this is the first time on record you've spent
Speaker 2: a lot of time telling women's stories. Yeah, what do
Speaker 2: you think prompted that?
Speaker 3: I got a lot more interested in women's stories through
Speaker 3: hanging out with my mom? I think that just sort
Speaker 3: of naturally happened. And getting to know my mother was
Speaker 3: like discovering the amazing creature that had been there all
Speaker 3: along that didn't know how to come out because she
Speaker 3: you know, women, especially from her generation, they just kind
Speaker 3: of got passed over for their own understanding of how
Speaker 3: of their contributions and their power was really you know,
Speaker 3: just undervalued, I would say, And getting to know my mom,
Speaker 3: I realized she's a badass. She was a badass, and
Speaker 3: she was so smart and funny and tough as shit,
Speaker 3: you know, and stronger than anybody had ever really met.
Speaker 3: She grew up in poverty, she put herself through college,
Speaker 3: She got married in the fifties and went straight into
Speaker 3: having seven babies in seven years and stayed pregnant for
Speaker 3: seven years, and then was just overwhelmed with that for
Speaker 3: a long time. And I think, you know that the
Speaker 3: fine tuning motherhood thing never happened with me because I
Speaker 3: was number seven, you know what I mean. So just
Speaker 3: was easy for me to sort of drift off and
Speaker 3: do my thing and not really worry about my mother
Speaker 3: at the end, because I feel like the bond is
Speaker 3: not what other people have necessary with their mothers, And so,
Speaker 3: you know, getting to know her in the last few years,
Speaker 3: it really kind of just I think I grew as
Speaker 3: a woman. I just understood how great it was to
Speaker 3: be a woman.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It was just something about connecting with her, and I
Speaker 3: don't even know what that is exactly, I can't pinpoint it.
Speaker 2: But she had a tough she had kids, she wanted
Speaker 2: to go on in school.
Speaker 3: Was that right, Well, I guess when she met my
Speaker 3: dad she had been working on a master's degree. And
Speaker 3: I only bring that up because we never heard that
Speaker 3: at all until the last few years, Like, she never
Speaker 3: even brought it up.
Speaker 2: So what was home like for you growing up?
Speaker 3: It was very crowded. It sat on the floor a lot.
Speaker 3: We had to crawl under the dinner table to get
Speaker 3: to our seats if you were one of the smaller
Speaker 3: kids in the family. Not a lot of money. But
Speaker 3: we grew up like right next to the woods. And
Speaker 3: my mom grew up her father worked in the woods,
Speaker 3: and that was like you know, many many, many, many
Speaker 3: generations of French settlers that worked in the woods. So
Speaker 3: you just mentioned right, yes, And she's very connected to nature.
Speaker 3: So like we just learned all the birds songs, and
Speaker 3: learned all the names of the flowers, and learned all
Speaker 3: the trees, and you know, we were just really it
Speaker 3: was just part of how we lived. I didn't really
Speaker 3: think of it as anything particularly special until I got
Speaker 3: older and I realized that a lot of that stuff's
Speaker 3: gone away.
Speaker 2: For a lot of people and also gave you ideas
Speaker 2: for thirty years of songs, I think because there's so
Speaker 2: much nature in your yeah, yeah writing, yeah, including and
Speaker 2: we'll get to the new album as well. So when
Speaker 2: did music enter your life when you were a kid?
Speaker 3: Well, my mother's voice. She comes from a family of
Speaker 3: people that knew how to sing, and my father they
Speaker 3: didn't have a particularly musical trained, formal musical life. My
Speaker 3: father's the son of like Irish people, and so there's
Speaker 3: definitely that thing in there for him too. But she
Speaker 3: always had a voice that was just buttery and beautiful.
Speaker 3: I remember, like some of my earliest memories are her
Speaker 3: standing in a doorway where there are four bunk beds in.
Speaker 3: My sisters and I were all in them, and she
Speaker 3: was singing, and it was like magical.
Speaker 2: Would she sing you to sleep?
Speaker 3: Yeah? She sang, you know, hymns and like in French.
Speaker 3: She that was her first language. So we heard those
Speaker 3: old things that she got when she was a kid.
Speaker 2: And did you have music through the Catholic church as
Speaker 2: well or.
Speaker 3: Is that not a Well yeah, that wasn't as interesting
Speaker 3: to me at the time as my mom. I didn't
Speaker 3: recognize like I remember realizing at one point that not
Speaker 3: everybody's mom sang like that. You know, I was a
Speaker 3: lot older. Oh wow, you know what, I wouldn't be
Speaker 3: singing if it weren't for hearing her voice.
Speaker 2: Did she ever teach you songs?
Speaker 3: Uh? Yeah, well we would make up songs together when
Speaker 3: I was really little.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so when did you start? What was your first instrument?
Speaker 3: My first instrument was the flute because it was the
Speaker 3: one the instrument that was available in the elementary school band.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was good old days where they would just
Speaker 2: send students into a room and say, just pick up something.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: My sister had one. It's so accusing, that's what it was.
Speaker 3: She actually wanted to play the flute, and she had
Speaker 3: borrowed one or something from the high school. And so
Speaker 3: I decided to try my hand at it. And I
Speaker 3: could make it sing, you know, but it just didn't
Speaker 3: have enough variety of sound to a flute.
Speaker 2: So when did the guitar start?
Speaker 3: When I was a teenager, I bought a Honer guitar
Speaker 3: for like half of my savings account, which was probably
Speaker 3: one hundred dollars and uh.
Speaker 2: Was it at a local music store mail order Yeah.
Speaker 3: It was a local music store the next town over
Speaker 3: from where I grew up in Bangor, Maine, and I
Speaker 3: met a guitar teacher there and started taking lessons, and
Speaker 3: I just wanted to I knew I wanted to sing.
Speaker 3: That was really where I went to after the flute
Speaker 3: I couldn't get. I wanted a saxophone. It was not
Speaker 3: going to happen. They were none available, too expensive, and
Speaker 3: so because I thought that had the kind of tones
Speaker 3: that it would feel really good. So I just tried
Speaker 3: to train my voice to have more of those tones,
Speaker 3: you know, starting at a pretty young age, started just
Speaker 3: sitting inside my closet and singing.
Speaker 2: You know, but you want to He wanted to have
Speaker 2: an instrument, but.
Speaker 3: I needed an instrument to write songs too with it.
Speaker 3: And so I practiced the guitar as much as I could,
Speaker 3: you know, as one of those guitars where the strings
Speaker 3: are about an inch off of the neck, you know.
Speaker 2: It really hurt your fingers, get really strong hands. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we listening to radio at this point. Was there any
Speaker 2: what music was coming in that sort of fed that
Speaker 2: got it?
Speaker 3: The music was great all the way through growing up.
Speaker 3: I mean we I just looked at who was out
Speaker 3: there singing, and I can't believe how lucky I was,
Speaker 3: just starting with like motown on the radio, and I
Speaker 3: was a really little you know, Smokey Robinson, and you know,
Speaker 3: that was what I was really into. And I was
Speaker 3: small and music with voices, with beautiful voices and interesting lyrics.
Speaker 3: And then I sort of moved on to the Beatles,
Speaker 3: and you know, after they broke up and Ricky Lee
Speaker 3: Jones made her way into that mix. You know, at
Speaker 3: some point when I was a teenager, and there's a
Speaker 3: list of them, you know, it would take me a
Speaker 3: long time to name them all.
Speaker 2: Now, did you think this would be a career for you?
Speaker 2: Did you? Was there part of you that thought, no,
Speaker 2: music's going to be my life.
Speaker 3: I remember being really little and thinking, having a very
Speaker 3: direct thought, what I love to do more than anything
Speaker 3: is sing and also write poems. I wrote poetry when
Speaker 3: I was really little, and I thought, maybe there's something there,
Speaker 3: you know, And I went after the singing. Because I
Speaker 3: don't have a naturally powerful voice. I have to exercise it,
Speaker 3: you know, train like an athlete with my voice to
Speaker 3: get it to work.
Speaker 2: I always think of you as like sort of being
Speaker 2: a powerhouse. I think particularly your first album.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was just being in really good. It was
Speaker 3: just tuned up, you know. I built it that way.
Speaker 2: So you had what people consider a late start. You
Speaker 2: were in your thirties. I think, Yeah, your first album
Speaker 2: came that is late start. How long had you been
Speaker 2: singing before your first album came out.
Speaker 3: I'd been working on singing all through my life, you know,
Speaker 3: and taking time to sing with certain singers on records.
Speaker 3: And I was in love with Whitney Houston because she
Speaker 3: was like, she's like my age. I got to see
Speaker 3: her when she was twenty one years old in Boston
Speaker 3: Common and it was like magic, you know, the voice
Speaker 3: coming out of her. And there's just so many great
Speaker 3: singers to study and learn different things from, and Aretha
Speaker 3: Franklin and Edna James and you know, the great singers
Speaker 3: like that. I studied a lot when I was younger
Speaker 3: and Patsy Kline. I just wanted to strengthen my voice
Speaker 3: and just nothing made me feel better than that in
Speaker 3: my whole life. So the stronger it got, the more
Speaker 3: it flowed, the more I could do with it, the
Speaker 3: better I felt in the world.
Speaker 2: When was the first time you went out on stage.
Speaker 3: The first time I was still in high school. I
Speaker 3: think my guitar teacher. He was playing at a ramata
Speaker 3: inn in Bangor, Maine, and I got up and I
Speaker 3: did chuck, he's in love with him?
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh huh so okay, yeah? And then when did
Speaker 2: you start doing it solo?
Speaker 3: Not until my later twenties. It was really hard for
Speaker 3: me to do that, you know good. I went to
Speaker 3: an open mic night and because I was just so
Speaker 3: afraid of saying it.
Speaker 2: What was this in Boston?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: What did you tell yourself to be able to get
Speaker 2: up there and do that?
Speaker 3: Well? I had a guitar teacher that another guitar teacher
Speaker 3: that I would show up at, you know, a guitar lesson.
Speaker 3: I'd play him a new song. You go, that's really great,
Speaker 3: you should get gigs, and then I go. But I
Speaker 3: really wanted him to come with me, and so I
Speaker 3: finally wore him down and he did so he kind
Speaker 3: of launched the duo with me with a duo, and
Speaker 3: then I just started doing it on my own after
Speaker 3: a while. John Curtis was his name.
Speaker 2: You must have been doing something right. You got scouted
Speaker 2: fair soon after you were you started playing, yeah, and
Speaker 2: signed a record deal.
Speaker 3: Well, I had been playing, and then at a certain point,
Speaker 3: I feel like the songwriting kind of kicked in. Like,
Speaker 3: you know, you're just sort of practicing, practicing, practicing, you're
Speaker 3: you know, like you go to art school and you
Speaker 3: learn how to paint. You do these things over and
Speaker 3: over and over and over again, and suddenly something comes
Speaker 3: into the painting. You know. It's sort of like that's
Speaker 3: how it was with the music. I felt like I
Speaker 3: wasn't I was starting to understand how these songs that
Speaker 3: I really loved might have occurred.
Speaker 2: You mean other people's songs.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I always go back to Tears of a Clown. It's
Speaker 3: like a miraculous song, which was co written with Stevie
Speaker 3: Wonder actually and Smoke Your RUMs and but there's like
Speaker 3: such a way that that flows melodically and then lyrically
Speaker 3: it's magical as well. I mean, it's a painting, it's
Speaker 3: a beautiful painting. Like how the hell do people do that?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? And I don't really know
Speaker 3: how you do that, but I understand how something can
Speaker 3: just kind of come out of you, right, you know,
Speaker 3: and it just for me, it just took years and
Speaker 3: years and years of going through the motions of and
Speaker 3: you know, trying and you know, trying and trying and trying,
Speaker 3: and then it just kind of started they started showing up.
Speaker 2: Now, well you I'm fascinated by this. Would you try
Speaker 2: and break down that song? Like, what does the melody
Speaker 2: do here? Wasn't anything formal like that?
Speaker 3: No, No, I do a little bit of that now.
Speaker 3: I mean now I listened to Tears of the Clown
Speaker 3: for example, probably one of my favorite songs. I'm blown
Speaker 3: away by the structure. You just can't believe how incredible
Speaker 3: the choices are for melody, and and it just kind
Speaker 3: of probably came out of them like that. You know,
Speaker 3: they just probably now it goes here, and now it
Speaker 3: goes here, and now the words say this, and you know,
Speaker 3: it's just I would love to know how that was
Speaker 3: when they wrote that song.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more from Patty Griffin after the break.
Speaker 2: Now, thinking about your first album, your first song is
Speaker 2: on that album as Moses, And immediately when people hear that,
Speaker 2: you start on a suspended chord? Did you study theory?
Speaker 2: Did you know that? But it's got a it's got
Speaker 2: a very particular I mean, it showcases your voice, but
Speaker 2: you're not starting on a chord tone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's a lot. Probably one of the
Speaker 3: good things is that I don't know a lot of
Speaker 3: what I'm doing, so I end up doing things Buddy
Speaker 3: Miller once said to me. Great. Buddy Miller said, Patty,
Speaker 3: I love watching you play guitar because everything you do
Speaker 3: is so wrong and it gives me all kinds of
Speaker 3: great idea. And I'm like, Okay, that's that's that's a compliment.
Speaker 3: I think it's a high compliment. Actually, okay, I.
Speaker 2: Think I think you know a little more than you're
Speaker 2: letting on.
Speaker 3: I think I really don't. I really don't. I can
Speaker 3: find a G, I can find an E, I can
Speaker 3: find an F and an A, and you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. I just but as far as the theory goes,
Speaker 3: I'm just always like hunt and peck on that stuff.
Speaker 2: But you're often finding those those tones, those notes that
Speaker 2: aren't in the chord, that like really color the chord.
Speaker 2: And it's literally the first note you sang on that
Speaker 2: on that record. It's just so powerful. I didn't know
Speaker 2: that you didn't.
Speaker 3: No, I think it's neat you. Well, I mean my mother.
Speaker 3: Actually back to my mom explained to me that when
Speaker 3: I was younger and she would be singing, that I
Speaker 3: would automatically find harmonies to her voice when I would
Speaker 3: sing with her, which I didn't know I was doing,
Speaker 3: but apparently apparently I did. So I love to dig around.
Speaker 3: I love to fish around and find my own harmonies.
Speaker 3: I'm not too crazy about doing like classic harmonies because
Speaker 3: you know, you have to stick to stick to one
Speaker 3: little line and you know you're over here and you
Speaker 3: stay there on the fourth, you know the fifth, And
Speaker 3: I'm not as good at that. I don't enjoy it
Speaker 3: as much. And it's also studied and you have to
Speaker 3: be able to I really don't have an understanding of
Speaker 3: how one would even go about learning that.
Speaker 2: Okay, what was it like for you? And I'm going
Speaker 2: to jump ahead, because you sang with Emilu Harris, you
Speaker 2: sing Trapez what was because she is the gold standard
Speaker 2: for duet singing. What was that like?
Speaker 3: Well, I know by then I'd known Emmy for a
Speaker 3: really long time and we'd already sung on a bunch
Speaker 3: of the others things, So it was just like having
Speaker 3: my buddy come to the studio.
Speaker 2: And sing so as natural.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you just like, you know, just let her go.
Speaker 3: She does her thing and just let her roll back
Speaker 3: when she wants to roll back and do things over.
Speaker 3: You know, just let her do her thing. She really
Speaker 3: she has an idea of what she wants to wants
Speaker 3: it to be. I think she's feeling her way through it.
Speaker 2: You just let her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, stay out of her way.
Speaker 2: That first album, you did a whole produced album, and
Speaker 2: I think with Nile Rogers, the producer.
Speaker 3: No. Well, I did a project with Nile Rogers here
Speaker 3: in the nineties which went absolutely nowhere. He had a
Speaker 3: record label for like two minutes called ear Candy. He
Speaker 3: wanted me to make records for that label, and I
Speaker 3: was just in way over my head and I was
Speaker 3: not prepared to work with someone of his kind of
Speaker 3: technical caliber, and I didn't we didn't know how to
Speaker 3: communicate in the studio with each other, and so that
Speaker 3: didn't go very well. But then I made a record
Speaker 3: with Malcolm Burn, who is you know from that whole
Speaker 3: New Orleans Danny Lenwill Mark Howard Camp and that was,
Speaker 3: you know, trial by fire. That was really like I
Speaker 3: don't know what I'm doing either, and I'm like living
Speaker 3: in a studio in New Orleans for a month with
Speaker 3: all these people, and by the time that record was
Speaker 3: finished and mixed, my record company had had it. They
Speaker 3: didn't like any of the things that he did. And
Speaker 3: that wasn't really crazy about it either, because I had
Speaker 3: been so tired and confused making the record the whole time.
Speaker 3: They just didn't hear me on it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: David Anderley was the head of A and R at
Speaker 3: A and M Records, and I got called out to
Speaker 3: California quite a few times in those early days. Here's
Speaker 3: how this, here's how we see this. You know, they
Speaker 3: really were great at trying to help you get there,
Speaker 3: because I think a lot of people would have went, well,
Speaker 3: that record's final, just put it out and then nobody's
Speaker 3: going to care about it, and then we'll just drop
Speaker 3: her and then we'll be on our way. But he
Speaker 3: actually wanted to help me get my feet on the
Speaker 3: ground as a working artist, and he knew it was
Speaker 3: new for me, I think, and he really I think
Speaker 3: he did me favor when he rejected that record, because
Speaker 3: it made me go out as vulnerable as it possibly could.
Speaker 3: You know, it was kind of experiencing a big depression
Speaker 3: at the end of that thing, and I just said,
Speaker 3: I don't know how I'm going to make another record.
Speaker 3: It's going to cost me like another you know whatever
Speaker 3: to do it. And you love these demos, Why we
Speaker 3: not just put demos out? You know, put these demos
Speaker 3: that you love so much, these things that you know
Speaker 3: they play him on the radio on small radio. Why
Speaker 3: can't you just So he did what nobody was doing,
Speaker 3: and he put a record out of new artists just
Speaker 3: doing guitar and voice. And it really was the most
Speaker 3: honest way to put me out there. And it was
Speaker 3: really great for me to have to tour solo for
Speaker 3: years and I got my legs on stage doing that.
Speaker 3: It's a great way to you really have to get
Speaker 3: your shit together unless you want people to throw things
Speaker 3: at you, you know. So it was one of the
Speaker 3: best things that ever happened to me.
Speaker 2: But it must have been terrifying at the time.
Speaker 3: It was weird. Yeah, it was weird to be And now,
Speaker 3: you know, I know musician friends who listen to the
Speaker 3: first record and I go, oh, I totally get what
Speaker 3: you should have done with that. Where were you back then?
Speaker 2: You know you should have done with it. I mean
Speaker 2: that's an incredible first record. Though the songs on it are.
Speaker 3: They were definitely meant to be produced. They're written to
Speaker 3: be arranged, but I didn't know how to do that
Speaker 3: at the time.
Speaker 2: Did you want to learn how to arrange after that?
Speaker 3: I did, and I and I do, and I think
Speaker 3: I have really good ideas, but I think there are
Speaker 3: when it comes to my own stuff, I need someone
Speaker 3: from the outside to come and help me, because you know,
Speaker 3: I can't hold that perspective you know that you need.
Speaker 2: And there are I mean, there are great songs on it.
Speaker 2: There's let Them Fly, which a lot of people have covered.
Speaker 2: Time Will Do the Talking, which I love, and then
Speaker 2: there's a couple songs. There's one about your mother, Sweet Lorraine. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I don't know if poor Man's House is about
Speaker 2: you growing up particularly, but it's it's an amazing song.
Speaker 2: Tell me about those songs.
Speaker 3: Poor Man's House. That one was written. I was living
Speaker 3: in Jamaica Plane in Boston, and that was just about
Speaker 3: about a mile away from where my grandparents. My Irish
Speaker 3: grandparents were servants on an estate. I think they worked
Speaker 3: for the Roebucks, like the series of Robuts family and yeah,
Speaker 3: and I realized, like so much of the way I was,
Speaker 3: I was now working in Boston serving people, and I
Speaker 3: just thought, that's funny. I wonder if they knew that
Speaker 3: was going to happen. I was going to be a
Speaker 3: mile away. Their granddaughter would be a mile away from
Speaker 3: where they had lived and died. And I realized that,
Speaker 3: you know, when the object is to sort of survive
Speaker 3: and get your family to survives that you have, there
Speaker 3: are people whose entire lives are that bare minimum. I
Speaker 3: was sort of born into this very rare moment. I
Speaker 3: think where I could start and place where I could
Speaker 3: really think about what I really wanted to do and
Speaker 3: try to do it and maybe managed to do it.
Speaker 3: And I realized what a contrast that was. And there
Speaker 3: was also this thing in me that didn't feel like
Speaker 3: I felt like I was just spending a lot of
Speaker 3: time with fluff because of that, and I wasn't really
Speaker 3: out there trying to make a family and you know,
Speaker 3: trying to do all the things that they had lived
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 2: Oh, you thought you were just doing fluff.
Speaker 3: I noticed that we weren't allowed in our you know,
Speaker 3: if you're from that background, you're not necessarily you don't
Speaker 3: feel like you're necessarily allowed into this world of the
Speaker 3: arts and this world of entertainment especially. It's something that
Speaker 3: other people do that have maybe more advantages than you,
Speaker 3: and you know, don't have to worry so much about money,
Speaker 3: and you know what I mean, and you are your
Speaker 3: job is to be the person that serves them, you know.
Speaker 3: I realized that that my family's mindset was that through
Speaker 3: the experiences that they'd had for so many generations on
Speaker 3: both sides of my family, of being really poor. So
Speaker 3: that was what poor Man's House grew out. It was
Speaker 3: a sudden you know. I went to see the estate
Speaker 3: where they had worked, and that just haunted me for
Speaker 3: weeks and weeks and being there, just the experience of
Speaker 3: being there and seeing the servants quarters, and it was
Speaker 3: just the sadness that haunted me.
Speaker 2: So when you say you had trouble getting up on stage,
Speaker 2: was some of that feeling.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I would inform that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you should, you should. Your job is to go
Speaker 3: and hand people things and that they need. And then
Speaker 3: by then I'd been waiting on people for quite a while.
Speaker 3: And I love service, by the way, I love it.
Speaker 3: The only thing I don't love about service is the
Speaker 3: way that you are vulnerable to being treated by others
Speaker 3: because people don't recognize it as a really wonderful thing
Speaker 3: to do and know how to do well.
Speaker 2: I'll bet you you're a good tipper to this day.
Speaker 3: I am.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you got to really really mess up for me
Speaker 3: to get you down to twenty percent.
Speaker 2: And then tell me about sweet Lorraine.
Speaker 3: Well, that came out of a conversation that I had
Speaker 3: with my mom. I was getting divorced around that time,
Speaker 3: and she talked to me for the first time about
Speaker 3: her wedding day. The day before. She had her father,
Speaker 3: who was this woodsman. He came in from the woods
Speaker 3: every so often and kind of turned everybody's world upside
Speaker 3: down and then went back to the woods, very heavy
Speaker 3: drinker and a wild kind of guy. And she met
Speaker 3: my dad and then started seeing my dad and then
Speaker 3: very quickly got married. And he made some comment to
Speaker 3: her at their sort of rehearsal dinner, I guess that
Speaker 3: she must be pregnant, and then he went into calling
Speaker 3: her some really bad names and they should never say
Speaker 3: to your daughter. And the day of the wedding, my
Speaker 3: dad tried to get out of it because he was
Speaker 3: terrified getting married. So she's like, I mean, it's funny
Speaker 3: now because I wasn't there. It wasn't me. But like,
Speaker 3: she's gone through, she's made her wedding dress, she's gone
Speaker 3: through all of this stuff. Should do this thing that
Speaker 3: she wasn't even sure she wanted to do because she
Speaker 3: was really doing all right on her own. And then
Speaker 3: the next thing, you know, this guy who says really
Speaker 3: horrible things to her is the guy that gives her
Speaker 3: away to this guy who wants to get out of it,
Speaker 3: you know. So it's like she just went there's no
Speaker 3: way we're not doing this now because she just had it.
Speaker 3: You know, with men, we're definitely getting married. You're gonna
Speaker 3: marry me, and that's too bad, you know. So you
Speaker 3: know my mom now looking back now, especially because I
Speaker 3: know her in a different way, I know her as
Speaker 3: a force of nature. Now, that was quite something for
Speaker 3: a force of nature to be given away by a
Speaker 3: drunk guy to somebody who was too scared to even
Speaker 3: do what he'd asked her to do in the first place.
Speaker 3: And she'd gone all to this great trouble of bringing herself.
Speaker 2: To Was she telling you this because in some way
Speaker 2: she admired you for being forgetting a divorce.
Speaker 3: No, she didn't. She was. She's Catholic. My parents were
Speaker 3: Catholic and they really she was against the divorce. I
Speaker 3: was not Catholic at this point, so I didn't have
Speaker 3: any problem getting divorced. But she really thought you stay
Speaker 3: in your marriage.
Speaker 2: So the next few albums you did Flaming Red, A
Speaker 2: Thousand Kisses, Impossible Dream, you know, those albums to me,
Speaker 2: captured that alternative country sound. Did you hear in so
Speaker 2: many you know? You hear in the Robert Plant that
Speaker 2: kind of t bone Burnett, you know, the kind of
Speaker 2: softer percussion, a lot of feedback. Those are the records
Speaker 2: to me that really solidified that sound. That's rights where
Speaker 2: that sound? Is that something you wanted? Is that? How
Speaker 2: involved were you with that production?
Speaker 3: I was very involved with all of those productions. Jay
Speaker 3: Joyce did Flaming Red, then I did A Thousand Kisses
Speaker 3: with Doug Lancio and that by a Thousand Kisses, I
Speaker 3: was off record labels, so I was I had to
Speaker 3: make something on the cheap, which is why we shrunk
Speaker 3: everything down to the bare minimum. We got an ensemble,
Speaker 3: you know, and did a classic kind of ensemble kind
Speaker 3: of record like they would have done in the fifties,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, our forties. We're just everybody's
Speaker 3: you know, we have a xylophone, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And we're going to use this through the whole record
Speaker 3: because we had a very very tight budget. I haven't
Speaker 3: ever set out to do anything that I've done. I
Speaker 3: do set out to try to do things. I never
Speaker 3: feel like I'm my authentic me, you know.
Speaker 2: Really it's got to come to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Was it a lot of live playing in the studio? Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then were you was doing the singing on top
Speaker 2: later or No.
Speaker 3: We did a lot of stuff, especially A thousand kisses.
Speaker 3: We did everything, guitar voice, you know. I did it
Speaker 3: in like a couple of days. You know, it's it's
Speaker 3: not a big long record, and I had lots of
Speaker 3: time to get ready for it because I wasn't on
Speaker 3: a label anymore. So it was just I just had
Speaker 3: myself together because I knew we need to not spend
Speaker 3: a lot of money. I went in there and just
Speaker 3: kind of put the basics down and then Doug painted
Speaker 3: over that. But Jay Joyce, that was a whole other
Speaker 3: can of worms. The way he works, but it also
Speaker 3: very quickly recorded.
Speaker 2: You had been playing for so long solo or maybe
Speaker 2: with one other guitarist to sing with a band, as
Speaker 2: you started with on Flaming Red, what was that like?
Speaker 3: I honestly felt like I was more powerful by myself,
Speaker 3: Like you have to sing differently with the band because
Speaker 3: they're doing the passion, so you have to step back.
Speaker 3: To me, my mind always went, oh, that vocal now
Speaker 3: has to step back a little bit, and they take
Speaker 3: the emotional thing and they play it. So if we're
Speaker 3: all doing that, it's going to be it'lbeit shit show,
Speaker 3: you know. So I always felt like I had more
Speaker 3: less control over how it was going to go on
Speaker 3: stage until very recently. Yeah, I've been working with and
Speaker 3: that's that's not anything on the bands that I worked
Speaker 3: with had. I worked with this great guitar player, Doug Lancey,
Speaker 3: who was my band leader for years, and he would
Speaker 3: just chase me around like if I wasn't in tune,
Speaker 3: he'd get out of tune and find, you know, and
Speaker 3: just follow me everywhere. But I still didn't really get
Speaker 3: into learning how to be play with people until the
Speaker 3: last probably ten or fifteen years with David Polkingham. He's
Speaker 3: really been the guy that has been just patiently helped
Speaker 3: me figure out how to ask for what I want
Speaker 3: and try to achieve it.
Speaker 2: You know, that's interesting. So when you some of those songs,
Speaker 2: if you went out by yourself, it was almost a
Speaker 2: relief to sing them. Yeah, when you're doing solo yeah.
Speaker 3: And now it's the other way around.
Speaker 2: I really want to want to hide behind those guys.
Speaker 1: After this last break, we'll be back with Patty Griffin.
Speaker 2: You know what I mentioned at people I was talking
Speaker 2: to you, everybody said, please ask her about, Please ask
Speaker 2: her about. So I do have some greatest hits. I
Speaker 2: have to ask you about long Ride Home. I always
Speaker 2: thought that was from a man's point of view. It is,
Speaker 2: it is. You're very good at singing from a man's
Speaker 2: point of view.
Speaker 3: I know something wrong with me.
Speaker 2: No, No, like like your cover of the Springsteen song
Speaker 2: Stolen Cars is perfect.
Speaker 3: Well there, you know, And there's a whole world of
Speaker 3: gender fluid out there which has a whole other take
Speaker 3: on that too, I'm sure, but I never felt like
Speaker 3: there should be it should be limited to your gender
Speaker 3: as as far as characters go. You know, you don't
Speaker 3: ask writers you're writing fiction, to only write if they're man,
Speaker 3: only write about man at the women to write you
Speaker 3: know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Oh recently, yes, they have asked that, but general.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe that's a good idea.
Speaker 2: Actually, was that was any of that taken from an experience?
Speaker 2: Or that was that was just a story you imagined.
Speaker 3: I bought a guitar from Groom's Guitar store in Nashville.
Speaker 3: It was still my main guitar. It's Gibson nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: five J fifty and I just bought it, went sat
Speaker 3: down at a kitchen table in Nashville and wrote that song.
Speaker 3: It just kind of came out of the guitar. And
Speaker 3: it's definitely based on you know, people that some people
Speaker 3: I know, and what was happening in my life at
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 2: Are you the kind that works every day, like you
Speaker 2: sit down every day with no, no.
Speaker 3: No, Not anymore. I used to. I used to be
Speaker 3: like kind of obsessive about that, and I needed a
Speaker 3: break from that. And I haven't really resumed the work level.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure I will. I mean, I'm older now too,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot I want to do.
Speaker 2: In the world besides songwriting.
Speaker 3: Beside songwriting and it's very you know, it does take
Speaker 3: up a lot of space when you do it. I
Speaker 3: really enjoyed writing these last songs for this record because
Speaker 3: I took a lot of songs that are on this
Speaker 3: record or things that I had written and chucked out
Speaker 3: and I just thought, oh, that's terrible, it's terrible, and
Speaker 3: checked another one out. And then I kind of went
Speaker 3: through the voice memos at a certain point and went,
Speaker 3: that's not why to throw that out, Like I'd want
Speaker 3: to hear how this turns out, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: So so I didn't. When I finished writing this record,
Speaker 3: it was really just sort of almost like facing myself.
Speaker 3: Everybody gets stuck in things, and sometimes you know you're
Speaker 3: stuck in something and you're willing to stay stuck.
Speaker 2: Damn it. You know, we're definitely was it in your
Speaker 2: writing you felt stuck?
Speaker 3: Yeah. I didn't want to write cleverly. I wanted things
Speaker 3: to be really basic and straight from my gut.
Speaker 2: You're writing reminds me a lot of Leonard Cohen's right, Wow,
Speaker 2: have you heard that?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: Thank you? Okay, and you're a Canadian, so thank you.
Speaker 3: That's really absolutely I'm an honor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like saying you Wow, stick handle, like Wayne
Speaker 2: Gretzky's can I Ask You about? A couple more songs
Speaker 2: to get to the new album Okay, Useless Desires, which
Speaker 2: I think is just a fabulous song.
Speaker 3: That was me experimenting with. I was working a lot
Speaker 3: in Nashville. I was hearing all kinds of music that
Speaker 3: I'd never heard before, and I was working with Emilu
Speaker 3: Harris and she's amazing, but I didn't grow up listening
Speaker 3: to Emulu, So I was like she. I was getting
Speaker 3: exposed to this kind of music that I'd never really
Speaker 3: listened to before and enjoying it. And I was actually
Speaker 3: just trying to find a spot in my voice to
Speaker 3: see what would feel like to sing, And that's the
Speaker 3: song that kind of rolled out on me. It was
Speaker 3: really more about a feeling I wanted to have in
Speaker 3: my voice.
Speaker 2: When you're writing, the melodies come first before the chords before.
Speaker 3: The most of the time, I would say most of
Speaker 3: the time, but not all the time.
Speaker 2: We should mention you did Band of Joy, which was
Speaker 2: step which is stepping back a little bit and being
Speaker 2: part of an ensemble. What was was that a good experience?
Speaker 2: What was that like?
Speaker 3: It was really good. I really he just wanted to
Speaker 3: not have pressure on me of running the show and
Speaker 3: just be part of the band, and I think that's
Speaker 3: really where my personality is best suited as being on
Speaker 3: a team. I met a movie director once and I said,
Speaker 3: can I come and hang out and watch the guts
Speaker 3: of a film? I just want to see what was
Speaker 3: like back and he let me do that. I love
Speaker 3: behind the scenes. I like being part of something that
Speaker 3: supports I'm a better service person, more naturally suited to
Speaker 3: it personality wise, I think. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: I have my own stories that I want to tell.
Speaker 3: So I didn't know where to go next musically, and
Speaker 3: I really knew I wanted to make a change, and
Speaker 3: I didn't know how to get there. And band a
Speaker 3: joy without realizing it. Looking back, I think it was
Speaker 3: me kind of just trying to shake myself up a
Speaker 3: little bit and start moving into other directions, looking for
Speaker 3: other things to do. And it was really really fun
Speaker 3: and the band was amazing.
Speaker 2: So I do want to talk about the new album,
Speaker 2: which a lot is about your mother, as you've written,
Speaker 2: and when I was listening to it, I kept thinking
Speaker 2: about I think my favorite song of yours, which is Mary,
Speaker 2: thank you, and I'm going to start up? Can you
Speaker 2: actually finish the chorus for me? I couldn't stay another day.
Speaker 3: I couldn't stay another day longer. He flies right by
Speaker 3: and leaves a kiss upon her face while the angels
Speaker 3: were I can't see that crazy seeing his praises in
Speaker 3: a blaze of glory. Mary stayed behind and started cleaning up,
Speaker 3: cleaning up the place. Yeah, that's definitely a theme.
Speaker 2: But that is so I remember hearing that song for
Speaker 2: the first time just being so.
Speaker 3: Like, who's gonna, you know, who's sticking around to really
Speaker 3: put life back together?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, And when I when I mentioned Leonard Cohen,
Speaker 2: that's had he ever actually cleaned up, he might have
Speaker 2: written yeah, but it is. It is such a great,
Speaker 2: beautiful sort of encapsulation of that that role.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a tricky spot for women too. That since
Speaker 3: I've written it, I've thought about this a few times,
Speaker 3: like if you put women like in this quiet kind
Speaker 3: of stoic you know, we're just going to clean up
Speaker 3: after you kind of stuff, you know. And I guess
Speaker 3: when I wrote it, it was sort of like why why,
Speaker 3: over and over again? Is this the pattern? I question it.
Speaker 3: I think it just because things have always been the
Speaker 3: way they've always been doesn't mean they have to stay
Speaker 3: their destructive way, you.
Speaker 2: Know, right. But you look back on your mother in
Speaker 2: this record, in All the Way Home, which has a
Speaker 2: line not the Life my Mother chose, Well.
Speaker 3: That song is not about my mom?
Speaker 2: Oh was that not?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, that's like made up story, that's it?
Speaker 2: Was that, right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I just assumed it was about your mother. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: do want to ask you. I think they're all beautiful songs.
Speaker 2: Back at the start at the end, she said, sort
Speaker 2: of slightly apocalyptic. Born in a Cage is a beautiful song.
Speaker 2: And you were talking about birds in your youth.
Speaker 3: That grew the lyrics grew out of talking to my mom.
Speaker 3: My mom noticed that she grew up in Maine, and
Speaker 3: I remember there were like, you know, a bird feeder
Speaker 3: would be out in the wintertime and there would just
Speaker 3: be hundreds of little beautiful birds. And they have really
Speaker 3: kind of their populations have really really diminished. She's just
Speaker 3: not seeing some of the birds that she was used
Speaker 3: to seeing twenty years before were just not coming back around.
Speaker 3: And the Earth's taking a beating from us, and I
Speaker 3: kind of put that in my mind with yet another
Speaker 3: one of those moments that women are aware of and
Speaker 3: kind of just accepting on a regular basis, But we
Speaker 3: probably need to not be accepting it that the amount
Speaker 3: of women disappearing on a regular basis daily in the world,
Speaker 3: just disappearing, it's really similar. It's connected to the birds disappearing.
Speaker 3: It's the same disease to me.
Speaker 2: So the last song on the album A word. How
Speaker 2: about the last line on the album, which is but
Speaker 2: I Will never stop loving you, which is a is
Speaker 2: a surprise in the song because it doesn't start as
Speaker 2: a love song. So who's that about everybody?
Speaker 3: Life? It really isn't about anybody in particular. It's really
Speaker 3: about why I'm here. Just really done a lot of
Speaker 3: thinking about why I'm here on earth, you know, in
Speaker 3: the last few years, spending time with my mom. You know,
Speaker 3: it's real honored to be with somebody when they're dying,
Speaker 3: because they you end up kind of thinking about your
Speaker 3: own stuff. And I just want to not be an asshole.
Speaker 3: I want to support love. And sometimes I can go
Speaker 3: through a day and really see how beautiful just about
Speaker 3: everybody is and everything is. You know, some days sometimes
Speaker 3: I can't do that at all. But that's my goal,
Speaker 3: is to understand how precious it is and connected we
Speaker 3: all are and everything is. And I know it sounds
Speaker 3: awful woo woo, I'm sure, but it's really is actually
Speaker 3: this thing that I try to.
Speaker 2: Do that seems like a perfect place to start. Okay,
Speaker 2: that was wonderful. Thank you so much, Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: That was really wonderful.
Speaker 3: Nice to talk to you.
Speaker 1: And the episode description you'll find a link to Patti
Speaker 1: Griffin's new album, Crown of Roses, as well as the
Speaker 1: collection of songs over the course of her career. Be
Speaker 1: sure to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record
Speaker 1: Podcast to see all of our video interviews, and be
Speaker 1: sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record Pod.
Speaker 1: You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Record. Broken
Speaker 1: Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing
Speaker 1: help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is
Speaker 1: Ben Holliday. Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries. If
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Speaker 1: by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.