From: owner-mad-mission-digest@smoe.org (mad-mission-digest) To: mad-mission-digest@smoe.org Subject: mad-mission-digest V6 #412 Reply-To: mad-mission@smoe.org Sender: owner-mad-mission-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-mad-mission-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk * If you ever wish to unsubscribe, send an email to * mad-mission-digest-request@smoe.org * with ONLY the word unsubscribe in the body of the email * . * For the latest information on Patty's tour dates, go to: * http://www.pattygriffin.net/PattyInConcert.html * OR * go to http://www.atorecords.com * . * PLEASE :) when you reply to this digest to send a post TO the list, * change the subject to reflect what your post is about. A subject * of Re: mad-mission-digest V6 #___ gives readers no clue * as to what your message is about. mad-mission-digest Sunday, December 8 2002 Volume 06 : Number 412 Today's Subjects: ----------------- MM: Fw: [singer-songwriters] Time Out: Face to face w/Patty Griffin ["Don] MM: Fw: [singer-songwriters] Review: Patty Griffin @ Bush Hall, London ["] MM: London photos ["Sarah Fennell" ] MM: whoops! ["Sarah Stanley" ] MM: Fw: [singer-songwriters] Review: Patty Griffin @ Bush Hall, London ["] MM: Fw: [singer-songwriters] Time Out: Face to face w/Patty Griffin ["Sar] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2002 05:54:27 -0500 From: "Don Henn" Subject: MM: Fw: [singer-songwriters] Time Out: Face to face w/Patty Griffin Face to face Patty Griffin Time Out Why does everyone love Patty Griffin? Is it all the hard knocks she's survived? Is it down to her sweet nature, her vitality, her palpable passion for music? Oris it simply that she possesses one of the best voices of her generation? 'For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard.' James Baldwin ('Sonny's Blues') 'Patty Griffin breaks my heart when she sings.' Julie Miller The look that sparked in Emmylou Harris's eyes was tangible and haunting. The sun had dipped behind the stage and Harris - flanked by Buddy and Julie Miller - eased gently into the next song. Stage right, Patty Griffin ghosted slowly from the shadows. Julie Miller saw and knew and jigged a swift and silent dance of glee - like a child in on a secret. 'We drink our fill and still we thirst for more, ' sang Harris, and then visibly started as her chorus - 'And we sing Allelujah, Allelujah' - was joined by an extra voice. Glancing round she glimpsed Patty for the first time, and the look on her face, the glow in her eyes - echoed in her voice and captured in the melt of a quick, half smile - spoke more than words could ever capture or convey. It was just oneof those moments, and it passed in an instant, but somehow said it all. Patty Griffin is loved for a reason. There is just something about her. It is inher voice - filled and flowing with the ache of loss and kick of joy. And it is in her songs - such plangent visions of deftly wrought and deeply moving craft. And it is in her way - so quiet and tender, honest, gentle, thoughtful and alive. A couple of weeks after that first annual Austin City Limits festival - where Emmy and Patty both played, and touched and won the hearts of many gathered thousands - Patty Griffin opens the door to her pretty Austin home ('up on the trashier side of 45th'), makes tea for two and smiles at the memory. 'Yeah, Emmydidn't know I was going to be there, ' she grins. 'We kind of cooked it up without her knowing. But I love singing with her. She is so amazing. And she's just been such a really great, great supporter and friend.' Griffin is enjoying a rare break. Since her third album '1,000 Kisses' was released in the spring, she has finally achieved a taste of the success and acclaim her previous two albums had each suggested, but never quite delivered. It is just reward. If struggle is nothing new in music, still Griffin knows wellits grip and grasp. Born to an Irish-American father and French-Canadian mother, she was brought up - the youngest of three sisters and three brothers - in Old Town, Maine - 'in between the lake regions and the ocean, just before you hit the tree-line going to Canada.' She bought her first guitar at 16, left high school, sang with a covers band - all the usual stuff - and harboured quiet ambitions of making something of herself in music. It was, however, to be some 15 years before she would release her first album. From Old Town she moved to Florida, then back north to Cambridge, Massachusetts.'It took me a quite a few years of sitting in my bedroom, singing and writing songs, ' she explains. 'I never had a great capacity for selling myself and thatscene in Boston was really tough, plus I had kind of a shyness issue.' Years were spent writing, occasionally performing, but mostly working as a telephone operator or waiting tables in a Harvard Square pizza restaurant. 'At the pizza place, ' she winces, 'we had to wear two watches, one with the correcttime and one set 20 minutes later, so we'd be able to tell the customers when their pizzas would be ready. . . Aaargh!' She laughs. 'Harvard is one of the topschools in the world, and you're waiting on the sons of Congressmen and oil sheiks. Y'know, it's very humbling to be so low on the totem pole. It taught me a lot of things.' Scraping together enough money to record a set of demos, she attracted the attention of A&M Records, signed a deal and recorded an album with producer NileRodgers. It was never released. 'It felt like I didn't play too much part in it,' she says now. 'And the record label hated it. They kept saying: "But those demos, they're so beautiful and vibrant. . ." In the end I just said to them: "If you love them so much why don't you put them out? !" And they did! Bless their hearts.' 'Living With Ghosts' came out in 1986, a lone voice and an acoustic guitar, in rhythm and concord, a raw and stark work of bared and powerful song. If it set her up as some kind of folkie, though, she exploded such misconceptions with hernext album, the tough and tender, wild and blue 'Flaming Red', recorded with rock band Iodine. 'I just love their really melodic, really beautiful punk rock,' she grins (as her dog Bean - a tiny bundle of energy and joy - comes skittering in from the other room, skidding to a halt with a yap at her feet). Following a couple of years in Nashville - 'I just felt like the business was all around me, so I got out' - she relocated to Austin, where it seems she has truly found herself. Just as things were starting to go right, however, they started to go wrong. A&Mwas bought by Polygram, who were sold to Universal, who are owned by Seagrams, who then merged with Vivendi. Griffin was caught in the middle, then pushed to one side. Her new album, 'Silver Bell' lay unreleased. 'There was a period of time, ' she admits, 'when I was just trying so hard to work out how to get a fuckin' record out that I lost sight of what I was doing or why I was doing it. I had a whole year trying to figure out what someone elsewanted. That's a miserable place to be.' She finally escaped from the deal, but 'Silver Bell' remains on the shelf. Revelling in her new found freedom, the current album, '1,000 Kisses', is her best to date. 'It's very simple and focused, ' she says. 'And it only took a week to record. There's an Orson Welles quote about how you do better if you don't have much money or much time, so you just focus really quickly.' She pauses. 'Not having the opportunity, or pressure, to make something massive was actually a relief. With that out of the picture I felt little glimmers of how I was when I was 16. It put me back in touch with why I do it. . . which is simplyfor the love of it.' After all the fetching around, the push and pull and crash and mend, Patty Griffin has emerged happier, wiser, humble and strong. Emmylou Harris, Bette Midler, Reba McEntire and the Dixie Chicks have all recorded her songs. But no one sings Patty Griffin like Patty Griffin. That voice! So sad, exquisite and beautifully keening. She cites Aretha Franklin and Patsy Cline as influences, but is very much her own woman; a natural songbird, America's Piaf. dot Patty Griffin headlines at Bush Hall on Mon. She also plays (as support to Billy Bragg) at the Shepherds Bush Empire on Sun.'1,000 Kisses' is out now on Sanctuary. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2002 05:55:03 -0500 From: "Don Henn" Subject: MM: Fw: [singer-songwriters] Review: Patty Griffin @ Bush Hall, London Reviews: Pop: Patty Griffin: Bush Hall, London 3/5 Adam Sweeting, The Guardian (London) After completing a dozen dates supporting Billy Bragg, who played his last gig of the tour at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, Patty Griffin moved around the corner to the Bush Hall to do a show of her own. The Bush is not well-known as a venue, but with its 300-odd capacity it ought to have a future as a showcase for intimate performances like this. Griffin kept telling us what a great time she had been having in England; maybe the hall's wedding-cake decor, dangling glass chandeliers and giant Christmas tree were having a hypnotic seasonal effect on her. Solo, and armed only with a couple of acoustic guitars that kept going out of tune, the chestnut-haired Griffin turned in a performance that increased in resonance as the evening developed. It would be easy to pigeonhole her as a folk singer, but there is a slightly more complicated mix of influences in her work. She was born in Maine, in north-eastern America, but there is a strong French- Canadian strain in her family and she feels an affinity with the south and New Orleans. You can hear that in her voice, which has a ragged edge and primitive force when she chooses to let rip. The simple configuration of voice and guitar can cut both ways: it can enhance the properties of the stronger songs, while reducing weaker ones to humdrum busker's fare. The latter fate befell one of her encores, a rather twee ode to her Irish grandmother called Mary. And a thing called My Dear Old Friend, a tremulous wail of horror at the ominous state of the world, was crying out for some cunning tricks of arrangement. Griffin fared much better with Flaming Red, with its transition from a slow, bluesy minor key to an urgent up-tempo section. The percussive strum of Change hinted that she may have a rockier side fighting to get out, but she can also take the measure of a number as slow and spooky as Springsteen's Stolen Car, in which she caught the existential bleakness of the original. The biggest surprise was her treatment of Tomorrow Night, a venerable pop stalwart once sung by Elvis Presley. Griffin was suddenly the torch singer par excellence, her voice hovering tremulously between blossoming romance and the fear of losing it. The version on her recent album, 1,000 Kisses, features some small-hours trumpet, but she didn't need it tonight. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 08 Dec 2002 17:04:00 +0000 From: "Sarah Fennell" Subject: MM: London photos Hi everyone, I finally got the chance to scan in a few of my photos from the London Bush Hall concert - www.geocities.com/celinesband/patty/londonphotos.html *reads link carefully ;o)* Hope you like them :) Sarah _________________________________________________________________ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2002 12:06:31 -0500 From: "Sarah Stanley" Subject: MM: whoops! sorry y'all! i didn't realize Don had already sent those reviews (hadn't gotten that far in my mail yet!) Peace, Sarah ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ "way up North I took my day all in all was a pretty nice day and I put the Hood right back where You could taste heaven perfectly Feel out the summer breeze didn't know when we'd be back And I, I don't didn't think We'd end up like...like this -- Tori Amos ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2002 12:03:49 -0500 From: "Sarah Stanley" Subject: MM: Fw: [singer-songwriters] Review: Patty Griffin @ Bush Hall, London a review of Patty in london i got in email.... thought y'all might want to see.... Peace, Sarah ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ "way up North I took my day all in all was a pretty nice day and I put the Hood right back where You could taste heaven perfectly Feel out the summer breeze didn't know when we'd be back And I, I don't didn't think We'd end up like...like this -- Tori Amos - ----- Original Message ----- From: SHOWDATES To: singer-songwriters@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2002 12:23 AM Subject: [singer-songwriters] Review: Patty Griffin @ Bush Hall, London Reviews: Pop: Patty Griffin: Bush Hall, London 3/5 Adam Sweeting, The Guardian (London) After completing a dozen dates supporting Billy Bragg, who played his last gig of the tour at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, Patty Griffin moved around the corner to the Bush Hall to do a show of her own. The Bush is not well-known as a venue, but with its 300-odd capacity it ought to have a future as a showcase for intimate performances like this. Griffin kept telling us what a great time she had been having in England; maybe the hall's wedding-cake decor, dangling glass chandeliers and giant Christmas tree were having a hypnotic seasonal effect on her. Solo, and armed only with a couple of acoustic guitars that kept going out of tune, the chestnut-haired Griffin turned in a performance that increased in resonance as the evening developed. It would be easy to pigeonhole her as a folk singer, but there is a slightly more complicated mix of influences in her work. She was born in Maine, in north-eastern America, but there is a strong French- Canadian strain in her family and she feels an affinity with the south and New Orleans. You can hear that in her voice, which has a ragged edge and primitive force when she chooses to let rip. The simple configuration of voice and guitar can cut both ways: it can enhance the properties of the stronger songs, while reducing weaker ones to humdrum busker's fare. The latter fate befell one of her encores, a rather twee ode to her Irish grandmother called Mary. And a thing called My Dear Old Friend, a tremulous wail of horror at the ominous state of the world, was crying out for some cunning tricks of arrangement. Griffin fared much better with Flaming Red, with its transition from a slow, bluesy minor key to an urgent up-tempo section. The percussive strum of Change hinted that she may have a rockier side fighting to get out, but she can also take the measure of a number as slow and spooky as Springsteen's Stolen Car, in which she caught the existential bleakness of the original. The biggest surprise was her treatment of Tomorrow Night, a venerable pop stalwart once sung by Elvis Presley. Griffin was suddenly the torch singer par excellence, her voice hovering tremulously between blossoming romance and the fear of losing it. The version on her recent album, 1,000 Kisses, features some small-hours trumpet, but she didn't need it tonight. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2002 12:04:23 -0500 From: "Sarah Stanley" Subject: MM: Fw: [singer-songwriters] Time Out: Face to face w/Patty Griffin ....and another! Peace, Sarah ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ "way up North I took my day all in all was a pretty nice day and I put the Hood right back where You could taste heaven perfectly Feel out the summer breeze didn't know when we'd be back And I, I don't didn't think We'd end up like...like this -- Tori Amos - ----- Original Message ----- From: SHOWDATES To: singer-songwriters@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2002 12:25 AM Subject: [singer-songwriters] Time Out: Face to face w/Patty Griffin Face to face Patty Griffin Time Out Why does everyone love Patty Griffin? Is it all the hard knocks she's survived? Is it down to her sweet nature, her vitality, her palpable passion for music? Oris it simply that she possesses one of the best voices of her generation? 'For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard.' James Baldwin ('Sonny's Blues') 'Patty Griffin breaks my heart when she sings.' Julie Miller The look that sparked in Emmylou Harris's eyes was tangible and haunting. The sun had dipped behind the stage and Harris - flanked by Buddy and Julie Miller - eased gently into the next song. Stage right, Patty Griffin ghosted slowly from the shadows. Julie Miller saw and knew and jigged a swift and silent dance of glee - like a child in on a secret. 'We drink our fill and still we thirst for more, ' sang Harris, and then visibly started as her chorus - 'And we sing Allelujah, Allelujah' - was joined by an extra voice. Glancing round she glimpsed Patty for the first time, and the look on her face, the glow in her eyes - echoed in her voice and captured in the melt of a quick, half smile - spoke more than words could ever capture or convey. It was just oneof those moments, and it passed in an instant, but somehow said it all. Patty Griffin is loved for a reason. There is just something about her. It is inher voice - filled and flowing with the ache of loss and kick of joy. And it is in her songs - such plangent visions of deftly wrought and deeply moving craft. And it is in her way - so quiet and tender, honest, gentle, thoughtful and alive. A couple of weeks after that first annual Austin City Limits festival - where Emmy and Patty both played, and touched and won the hearts of many gathered thousands - Patty Griffin opens the door to her pretty Austin home ('up on the trashier side of 45th'), makes tea for two and smiles at the memory. 'Yeah, Emmydidn't know I was going to be there, ' she grins. 'We kind of cooked it up without her knowing. But I love singing with her. She is so amazing. And she's just been such a really great, great supporter and friend.' Griffin is enjoying a rare break. Since her third album '1,000 Kisses' was released in the spring, she has finally achieved a taste of the success and acclaim her previous two albums had each suggested, but never quite delivered. It is just reward. If struggle is nothing new in music, still Griffin knows wellits grip and grasp. Born to an Irish-American father and French-Canadian mother, she was brought up - the youngest of three sisters and three brothers - in Old Town, Maine - 'in between the lake regions and the ocean, just before you hit the tree-line going to Canada.' She bought her first guitar at 16, left high school, sang with a covers band - all the usual stuff - and harboured quiet ambitions of making something of herself in music. It was, however, to be some 15 years before she would release her first album. From Old Town she moved to Florida, then back north to Cambridge, Massachusetts.'It took me a quite a few years of sitting in my bedroom, singing and writing songs, ' she explains. 'I never had a great capacity for selling myself and thatscene in Boston was really tough, plus I had kind of a shyness issue.' Years were spent writing, occasionally performing, but mostly working as a telephone operator or waiting tables in a Harvard Square pizza restaurant. 'At the pizza place, ' she winces, 'we had to wear two watches, one with the correcttime and one set 20 minutes later, so we'd be able to tell the customers when their pizzas would be ready. . . Aaargh!' She laughs. 'Harvard is one of the topschools in the world, and you're waiting on the sons of Congressmen and oil sheiks. Y'know, it's very humbling to be so low on the totem pole. It taught me a lot of things.' Scraping together enough money to record a set of demos, she attracted the attention of A&M Records, signed a deal and recorded an album with producer NileRodgers. It was never released. 'It felt like I didn't play too much part in it,' she says now. 'And the record label hated it. They kept saying: "But those demos, they're so beautiful and vibrant. . ." In the end I just said to them: "If you love them so much why don't you put them out? !" And they did! Bless their hearts.' 'Living With Ghosts' came out in 1986, a lone voice and an acoustic guitar, in rhythm and concord, a raw and stark work of bared and powerful song. If it set her up as some kind of folkie, though, she exploded such misconceptions with hernext album, the tough and tender, wild and blue 'Flaming Red', recorded with rock band Iodine. 'I just love their really melodic, really beautiful punk rock,' she grins (as her dog Bean - a tiny bundle of energy and joy - comes skittering in from the other room, skidding to a halt with a yap at her feet). Following a couple of years in Nashville - 'I just felt like the business was all around me, so I got out' - she relocated to Austin, where it seems she has truly found herself. Just as things were starting to go right, however, they started to go wrong. A&Mwas bought by Polygram, who were sold to Universal, who are owned by Seagrams, who then merged with Vivendi. Griffin was caught in the middle, then pushed to one side. Her new album, 'Silver Bell' lay unreleased. 'There was a period of time, ' she admits, 'when I was just trying so hard to work out how to get a fuckin' record out that I lost sight of what I was doing or why I was doing it. I had a whole year trying to figure out what someone elsewanted. That's a miserable place to be.' She finally escaped from the deal, but 'Silver Bell' remains on the shelf. Revelling in her new found freedom, the current album, '1,000 Kisses', is her best to date. 'It's very simple and focused, ' she says. 'And it only took a week to record. There's an Orson Welles quote about how you do better if you don't have much money or much time, so you just focus really quickly.' She pauses. 'Not having the opportunity, or pressure, to make something massive was actually a relief. With that out of the picture I felt little glimmers of how I was when I was 16. It put me back in touch with why I do it. . . which is simplyfor the love of it.' After all the fetching around, the push and pull and crash and mend, Patty Griffin has emerged happier, wiser, humble and strong. Emmylou Harris, Bette Midler, Reba McEntire and the Dixie Chicks have all recorded her songs. But no one sings Patty Griffin like Patty Griffin. That voice! So sad, exquisite and beautifully keening. She cites Aretha Franklin and Patsy Cline as influences, but is very much her own woman; a natural songbird, America's Piaf. dot Patty Griffin headlines at Bush Hall on Mon. She also plays (as support to Billy Bragg) at the Shepherds Bush Empire on Sun.'1,000 Kisses' is out now on Sanctuary. ------------------------------ End of mad-mission-digest V6 #412 *********************************