Nanci Griffith - R.I.P.

 

Growing up in the mid 1980s, I have stated in previous posts and poetry, I didn't have a good time at my second Secondary School, Lostock with bullying and abuse over my disabilities which nowadays would have resulted a number of children getting expelled certainly, but back then left me a very lonely child frequently.

In some ways this was down to a lot of my unusual music taste where instead of growing up listening to the usual 80s fodder, I grew up loving 50s and 60s folk music, Scottish bag-pipe music  and Rock N Roll / Country from the 70s all via my Dad which although helped me grow up with a very wide taste in music which went way over my so called class mates heads.

Over time and through listening to a lot of country music programmes on the 80s, I gained a love of the new country movement in the late 80s including most famous Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle being two of them, both of which I had the pleasure of seeing. 

Perhaps best of them was a little figure, who came on stage by herself who I thought for a few seconds was going to be way too shy to sing, at Manchester Apollo in November 1989, Nanci Griffith. I first came across Nanci through her ‘Lone Star State of Mind’ album after hearing the title track and then Trouble in the fields, I was hooked even more with the next album ‘Little Love affairs’ which to this day is one of my favourite albums of all time. 

I don’t remember the exact set-list she played, but she left me spellbound that night and I don’t dare the full of the audience that night and although I never saw her again after that night, and my music taste moved on as it did at that time, those three albums ‘Lone Star State of Mind’, ‘Little Love Affairs’ and ‘Storms’ all hold a place in my heart even now.

I drifted away from her releases after ‘Late Night, Grand Hotel’ but those three albums pulled me through some difficult times in the 90s which made it even sadder for me as I had recently purchased her first three albums ‘There’s a light beyond the woods’, ‘Poet in my Window’ and ‘Heart of a Miner’ that charmed me as much as back when I was 16 or 17 which made it even sadder when I read before she had passed away before. 

Cheers Nanci.

R.I.P.