Okay then, take your partner by the hand (unless they have a restraining order against you, in which case don't push it) and let's do this thing!
I: Nickel Dreams: From Austin to Nashville - The Light Beyond the Woods
Though born in Seguin, it was in the much larger city of Austin, to which her parents moved when she was young, that first gave a young Nanci Griffith her first real experience of country and folk music. Her father, known for singing in a barbershop quartet, took her to see the legendary Townes Van Zandt, and folk singer Carolyn Hester, who recognised talent in the young girl and encouraged her to consider music as a career. Her parents split when she was only seven, but Nanci was already performing in coffee houses with material she had written herself at twelve years of age. However at this time, the early sixties, there weren’t many women making it in country music, and those who were had been long established, so after graduating from Austin University of Texas with a degree in education, Nanci became a kindergarten teacher, and though she would never have children of her own, her love of them would come through strongly in many of her songs.
Teaching was her job and brought in the money, a steadier - and some might say, more respectable for a woman - job than being a singer, but she did not give up her dream of one day being a musician, playing bars and coffee houses after school in the evenings. Through these sessions she met other rising stars such as Lyle Lovett and Lucinda Williams, as well as Eric Taylor, whom she married in 1976. Two years later all her hard work paid off when she won the Kerrville Folk Festival’s New Folk Competition, which allowed her to give up her teaching job and pursue music as a fulltime career. It also brought her to the attention of Philo Records, for whom she would record her first two albums.
There’s a Light Beyond These Woods (1978)
It’s fair to say Nanci didn’t exactly blow the worlds of country or folk away with this initial offering. In fact, it wouldn’t be till her third album that she would make her proper commercial breakthrough, and it would take another two before she would have a bona fide hit, ironically not a song written by her. This debut album shows more of the folk than the country about her, but then Nanci had apparently always referred to her music as “folkabilly”, which, while it sounds a rather rude reference to bestiality, is a way I guess of fusing her love of folk and "hillbilly", or country music, the former mostly giving way to the latter as her career progressed and developed.
It’s a soft acoustic opener as “I Remember Joe” introduces us to her first self-penned song with the strong, powerful yet gentle vocal we would come to recognise and love. Sounds like Jew’s harp, though none is credited. Good fiddle from, well, it doesn’t say, but the mandolin from Rick West is really nice. Plenty of backing vocals, and it’s a decent start before she tones things down with “Alabama Soft Spoken Blues”, which reminds me of her later “Ghost in the Music”, to an extent. The piano from Richard Cooper adds a lovely sort of sighing little backdrop to the melody here. The contrast, or if you like, versatility in her songwriting is shown here, as she moves from a basic toe-tapper to a reflective ballad with ease. This is the only track on the album where she shares songwriting credit, here with Maggie Graham (is this the Mary-Margaret mentioned in the title track? Not sure but in that song she does call her Maggie, so maybe).
Upping the tempo slightly then for “Michael’s Song”, nice soft breezy feel to it with a cool little bit of dobro I think, but you’d have to be honest and say that this far nothing has really stood out, and “Song for Remembered Heroes”, with its picked guitar intro rising into the vocal is another reflective composition which really showcases her young voice, clear and confident even at only age twenty-five, but I think it’s possible that a failing of these songs is that they’re all sort of low-key and it’s hard to really grab a hold of anything in any of them. There’s nothing that really stands out, not to me. The cello here is really nice too, and they’re not by any means bad songs, but even so, it’s not hard to see why this album failed to catch anyone’s interest. It’s having problems keeping mine, and I’m a big fan of hers.
“West Texas Sun” is another that sort of sighs or shimmers into the tune, Nanci’s voice not rising too much above it, and it certainly suits the acoustic nature of most of the music here, but I would like to hear her kick it up a little, as I know from experience she can do. It might be unfair and unkind to say so, but the overall impression this album is giving me so far is of a record to fall gently asleep to, and that’s not how I see her music, but I guess she was learning her trade, maybe testing the waters. Not every debut can set the world on fire, and she is relatively young here. The title is the only one that really gives me any hope, with its autobiographical style, looking back through her life (even though she’s, as I say, only really beginning it here), talking about her old boyfriend who died when she was at high school and then tracing her own life after that tragedy. If any song on the album points the way to her future fame, I think this is it. It’s of course like every other song here a bittersweet ballad style, though with a bit more punch about it, and definitely the standout, but there’s just something a little different about it for me; it sounds a little more mature, and rising into the country genre more than the folk.
Speaking of country, “Dollar Matinee” is another which begins to head more in that direction, with a honky-tonk piano but annoyingly it’s sung by her husband, Eric Taylor, also written by him, so I couldn’t count it as one of her songs. I don’t even hear her contributing backing vocals here, she doesn’t duet with him, so you have to ask what the hell is it doing here? Let Taylor put it on one of his own albums. Meh. It’s also, to be fair, a pretty poor country song and for me a black mark against this album, which really couldn’t afford too many more. Not very encouraging either that the next one, the penultimate track, is a cover too, this of Bruce Carlson’s “Montana Backroads”, and even at that it’s so different to the previous track that it only brings into sharp relief the disparity between it and the rest of the album. I wonder if Taylor had demanded he have a song on her debut? If so, pretty selfish, and a bad idea if it was hers.
There’s not a lot to recover from, but Taylor has really pissed me off and I can’t see this ending any better than I had expected it to, and that wasn’t much. The banjo is nice and lively, but the song itself is not much to get excited about, and we end on “John Philip Griffith”, which seems to reference her late boyfriend again, and it seems he would crop up a lot in future songs, though I have to admit I don’t remember this being the case.
TRACK LISTING
I Remember Joe
Alabama Soft Spoken Blues
Michael’s Song
Song for Remembered Heroes
West Texas Sun
There’s a Light Beyond These Woods (Mary Margaret)
Dollar Matinee
Montana Backroads
John Philip Griffith
I suppose you can’t be too hard on her when this is her first outing, but I have to admit this is quite poor. I’m disappointed, and even though I’m pretty sure I must have heard this before (I certainly know the title track) I don’t remember any of it. I wonder did I hear it? Surely I would not have been so surprised/annoyed by Eric Taylor’s song if I had? Perhaps that title track appears on another album later in her career… ah! There we go. It’s the closing track on
Lone Star State of Mind. No wonder I remember it, but not this album. Well, sadly I have to say I don’t seem to have missed much. Nevertheless, for Nanci I’m sure it was a big deal: her first proper album, and a few years and two albums later she would be on her way. Can’t see anyone spinning this though, or even owning it, unless they’re a real completist. Not a good place to start your exploration of her music.