TICK TOCK - LIVE "CLOCK" (Nanci Griffith - Live)

Member Name: lynn_bex

Product:	Nanci Griffith - Live
Date:	11/11/01 (611 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: WE LOVE NANCI, WHO IS A POWER FOR GOOD, and we really like story songs

Disadvantages: None, Except she's not English, And we want her for ourselves

NANCI GRIFFITH – FAIRFIELD HALLS, CROYDON : 2 OCTOBER 2001

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(That’s the kiss I’m blowing to Jo for finally getting this category on screen for me…)

I have held out for over a month against posting this opinion under a “general” category, Nanci Griffith being head and shoulders above even “the best of the rest”. Now, HERE SHE IS. With her own “live/tour category” (Thanks, Jo)

This opening show for Nanci’s month-long UK tour was at Croydon’s Fairfield Halls on 2 October 2001, and had been a late but welcome addition to the originally advertised “Clock Without Hands” tour schedule. During the show, Nanci herself expressed delight to be back in Croydon, having last played the Fairfield eighteen months ago, when touring to showcase her magnificent “Dustbowl Symphony” project… [I am, with some difficulty, resisting an inclination to launch into a review of the Dustbowl at this point!]

I too love the Fairfield, which is a quality venue with great acoustics and what I would describe as an “inclusive atmosphere”, quite unlike many of the larger venues...

So, just as soon as this tour date was announced, I booked seats for myself and Rocky, (the daughter is a Geology Student), – and we were treated to a fabulous show.

The “Support Act” proved to be a real bonus when Tom Russell walked onto the stage, accompanied by his regular co-performer [they effectively became a duo when Russell’s band broke up some years back], guitar virtuoso Andrew Hardin.

Tom Russell is an American country singer/songwriter and something of a legendary figure (well, he is to the likes of me) and, having never before seen Tom on stage, I was agog, - and would have gladly paid extra, just to be in the audience when this particular hero played live! As I have said before,
I’m really into lyrics and story songs and Tom Russell is a tremendous storyteller.

After his first couple of songs Tom called his good friend [and, it seems, one-time near protégée] Nanci Griffith onto the stage, and they performed together for much of the first half of the show. – A turn of events that had Rocky and lynn_bex beside themselves with glee at the realisation that the very rude and late-coming portion of the audience (those people who habitually turn up late, to see only the headliner and/or second half of a show) had missed a considerable portion of the star’s performance!

As Tom Russell told the tale, he first met Nanci Griffith “a couple of years ago” [this might be a fib!] when she was a 16-year-old, who came to play her songs at a Texan songwriters’ circle, and he, after all the other established songwriters had played their compositions, invited the young girl to play one of her songs. As Tom told it, he was blown away… and recorded her song… [Nanci confirmed this story, in general terms, - and if there’s a question mark over the “couple of years” since Nanci was 16… Who’s counting?]

Together, Nanci and Tom Russell – with Andrew Hardin on guitar - performed several of the songs I have mentioned elsewhere. In particular, they sang Richard Thompson’s “Wall of Death” (with Nanci paying tribute to the unmistakable voice and guitar playing of the writer), and Tom Russell’s own song, “Canadian Whisky” – which Tom said was “…a song about a lady who thought she could drink whisky like wine. …A tragic mistake.” [Both of these songs are on Nanci’s “Other Voices Too” album, which I reviewed under the heading “LOUDER”]

“Outbound Plane” was another terrific duet, as we might have expected, the song having been written by Nan
ci Griffith “…with additional words by Tom Russell”.

Nanci also sang along to any number of Tom Russell’s songs, including the thought provoking “St Olav’s Gate,” “The Angel of Lyon,” and “Manzanar,” [all of which can be found on Tom Russell’s 1997 release “The Long Way Around” – which I recommend to anyone seeking an introduction to Tom Russell and his music] but a real show stopper was one of Russell’s latest songs, “The Next Thing Smokin’” from his current “Borderland” album, with Andrew Hardin playing up a storm…

“Albert Lee,” Nanci told us, “says that Andrew Hardin is the second best guitar player in the world…” [Albert Lee is the Guitar Player’s player and “picker of choice” – not just in country circles but also for the likes of… um… Eric Clapton.]

“If my hands moved that fast,” continued Nanci, praising Andrew Hardin, “I’d be dealing cards in Vegas.” [I cannot argue with this – and my guitar-playing Rocky was really, really impressed by Andrew Hardin]

Opening the second half, Nanci walked onto the stage with her brilliant Blue Moon Orchestra (which, as I have explained elsewhere, is actually a band) and “bang” went some item of electrical equipment.

“It exploded!” exclaimed a laughing band member.

“Just like Madonna, ain’t we?” quipped Nanci, in a humorous reference to the other lady’s high tech show, before adding, “Actually, I love Madonna”.

The exploding item cannot have been a vital piece of equipment as the show proceeded without further hitches and proved to be one of the best performances by Nanci Griffith that I have ever seen.

For starters, I thought she looked really classy and
very beautiful. She is so slight and small-boned that often Nanci Griffith looks, at least to me, like a child who has been down somebody’s dressing up box but on this occasion she was wearing a long white tunic over a dark skirt, accessorised with high black boots and a scarf draped round her neck. I thought she looked wonderfully elegant, but when I mentioned this to Rocky, (herself in the usual scruffy student garb,) she merely sniffed, so perhaps you have to be of a certain age to appreciate elegance!



Nanci opened her set with John Prine’s “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness,” then on we went, through “Trouble in the Fields” and any number of old favourites as well as a good selection of current songs from Nanci’s album, the wonderful “Clock Without Hands”.

If you have never seen Nanci Griffith play live, you have missed a real treat. She’s undeniably quirky, but a terrific singer, whose live performances are as good or better than her recordings. She is also charismatic and very, very funny on stage.

More importantly, as I never tire of saying, I truly believe that Nanci Griffith is a power for good in this troubled world. As I said in my very first dooyoo opinion, she is one of those wonderful, but all too rare, outward-looking Americans… [See my “Steely Elf” opinion, the original of which remains –as a terrible example to new dooyoo-ers– but was expanded after I read the dooyoo rules]

It is slightly embarrassing to continually hark back to earlier opinions, but my two “Clock Without Hands” opinions cannot help but be (ahem) inter-related, given that this is Nanci Griffith’s “Clock Without Hands” tour and her album title came from a Carson McCullers book title…

Unsurprisingly, Nanci introduced the title song with a little background information, including reference to the li
ke-titled and inspirational book by Carson McCullers, which features a terminally-ill character who rediscovers the joys of life - and how to live what remains of his life to the full.

“Life is dangerous,” Nanci told us in relation to “Clock Without Hands”, and the whole audience was aware that this show was taking place three weeks after 11 September 2001… -I cannot remember her exact words, (though you will get the general drift from my earlier ops) but she continued in the vein that “…we have to take chances and LIVE, otherwise we are not truly living”.

Of course, Nanci sang “From a Distance” - and I don’t think there can have been a dry eye in the house…

Again, I am repeating myself from earlier opinions, but Nanci’s recording of what she calls “Julie Gold’s World Anthem” was the first and definitive recording of what I view as basically a protest song…

Julie Gold lives in New York and, as Nanci told us, Julie called her friend on 11 September 2001 and said, “Nance, I am standing on my balcony and watching the icons of my city fall…”

“Each of those 6,000,” said Nanci, in reference to that terrible day [and the number of deaths then being quoted], “WAS ONE [person]” and she held up a single digit to emphasise this point before dedicating “From a Distance” to all of those affected…
From our seats in the stalls, Rocky and I thought that Nanci cried her way through this song and we too were quietly snivelling. [Nanci Griffith frequently connects emotionally with her songs and on many of her recordings you can hear a genuine catch in her voice. – Notably in some of the recordings for her “Other Voices” project]

Another track from “Clock Without Hands”, to which Nanci made particular reference, was Paul Carrack&
#8217;s “Where Would I Be?”

She told us that her drummer, Englishman Patrick McInerney, rushed to her house, three sheets to the wind, to bring her this new song that he’d just heard. – Being Nanci, she made a longer story of this, explaining “…because I live in town these days, so now people can pass my door…”

In any event, she told us that this song gave her the same feeling as when she first heard, “From a Distance”. She sent it out, with great love and thanks, to Paul Carrack and then dedicated it to us, sitting before her in the Fairfield Halls, saying, “Because where would I be, without all of you?” - Needless to say, there was more blinking back of tears at this point because Nanci is one of those performers with whom you truly connect and, trite as it might sound, LOVE.

Of course she sang “Travelling Through this Part of You” the song written of and for her former husband, a veteran of the Vietnam war, and told again of her related work for the Campaign for a Landmine Free World (also mentioning the work of Princess Diana, Heather Mills and others in this regard).

Having already reviewed the songs on my earlier opinion, I won’t repeat myself here but she gave us John Stewart’s “Armstrong” (about the first man on the moon) and “Lost Him in the Sun”.

Naturally, her own wonderful song “It’s a Hard Life Wherever You Go” was included – as was familiar message. On a recording I have mentioned elsewhere, Nanci starts with a spoken plea before singing this song and I make no apology whatsoever for repeating it YET AGAIN, her words were different in Croydon, but the message remains the same, and it is important:-

“Doctor Martin Luther King Junior taught us that there are no bad babies born upon the face of this earth. All babies are born good. ItR
17;s what we give them in love, what we teach them in education and what we lend to them in trust that they will return to us in that dream of the future.
Whatever bitterness and hatred you harbour in your heart, let the cycle stop with you, and don’t pass it on to your children, because it is the greatest disease that you could ever expose them to. `Cause it’s a hard life, wherever you go.”

Tom Russell and Andrew Hardin were back on stage for many of Nanci’s numbers and this really was a wonderful show, though there were two slight misjudgements:

Tom Russell’s set included “Gallo del Cielo” which is a great story song set to music of a Mexican persuasion but unfortunately features cock fighting. –There is a strong storyline, that is about much more than cock fighting, but it’s still cock fighting and, although the performance by Tom and Andrew Hardin was terrific, the applause at the end was, ahem… shall we say “polite”? Cock fighting is not big, with a London audience! - Sorry, Tom!

Nanci also made a bad choice of song to close the show, with a sing-along song that we were all supposed to have known from childhood; indeed, it was the tune to which she learned to play guitar.

Unfortunately, this must be an American song that does not travel well as I had never heard it before in my life (and still don’t know what it’s called, something about “Freedom”, I think). From the embarrassing lack of audience participation I don’t think anyone else had ever heard it either and although we WANTED to join in, it was all rather shambolic. – Sorry, Nanci!

Actually, that song did not REALLY close the show. Nanci came back onto the stage alone, with what appeared to be a pint of beer in her hand (we were toasted with this at regular intervals) and sang, totally unaccompanied, a beautiful song, which I think was c
alled “On The Road to Aberdeen”. Having described her family background earlier in the show (one grandmother was from Welsh stock, the other Scottish) this song told how we are ONE people and how Nanci had recognised family features in strangers from the other side of the world. She went on to sing of the features of her parents’ that have been inherited by her brother and sister… And of course by herself, “I have my father’s voice. And legs” (lifting one to demonstrate!)

This was a virtuoso performance and Rocky and I have decided that we want a Nanci Griffith of our own! As a matter of fact, Rocky would not mind an Andrew Hardin of her own and lynn_bex, true to form, bought a couple of Tom Russell CDs, which the great man autographed once she had hunted him down.
Meanwhile, Rocky was looking out for Andrew Hardin, whilst chanting, “Where’s him with the guitar?” Naturally, Andrew was standing immediately beside her so, to cover her confusion, she bought a Nanci Griffith T-Shirt and shuffled away… (It takes a mature woman, like lynn_bex, to carry off the over-age-and-not-coming-up-with-the-goods Groupie Act… -Not a word to Him Indoors, please!)

In writing this, my umpteenth opinion on Nanci Griffith, I have decided two things:

1 - Nanci was not my favourite all time artist when I began dooyoo-ing but I think she probably is now, because I seem to have talked myself into it.

2 - If and when I finally reach £50-worth of dooyoo (or whatever it takes to get £50 these days – it’s all a bit hypothetical in my case, my opinions taking so long to write!) I intend to donate it to Nanci’s “Concerts for a Landmine Free World” charity (part of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.) – Let’s face it, most of my dooyoo miles are courtesy of Nanci Griffith and whereas £50.00 is not going to change my life
, it might just save somebody else’s.

Lynn

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