From: owner-mad-mission-digest@smoe.org (mad-mission-digest) To: mad-mission-digest@smoe.org Subject: mad-mission-digest V9 #37 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/PattyInConcertDB.php * 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 V8 #___ gives readers no clue * as to what your message is about. * Also, PLEASE do not quote an entire digest when you reply to the * list. Edit out anything you are not referring to. mad-mission-digest Friday, February 11 2005 Volume 09 : Number 037 Today's Subjects: ----------------- MM: Folkwax CD of the Year... ["Luca, Joseph (EHS)" Subject: MM: Folkwax CD of the Year... (This time, I'll try to send it without the graphic...) Howdy--- Well, while Steve Earle copped the artist of the year award, Patty snared CD of the year for "ID." Here's the blurb from "Folkwax": FolkWax Album of the Year: Patty Griffin's Impossible Dream FolkWax Album of the Year Patty Griffin's Impossible Dream Click Cover For More Info As with the Artist of the Year Award, the nominating process for FolkWax Album of the Year 2004 began back in the beginning of December when our readers began making nominations. The nominating process created the final ballot of: Impossible Dream - Patty Griffin Land of Milk and Honey - Eliza Gilkyson The Red Thread - Lucy Kaplansky The Revolution Starts...Now - Steve Earle Tambourine - Tift Merritt Vuelta - Richard Shindell These were all great nominations and it was nice to see that you recognized artists from across the spectrum of singer-songwriters. The staff of FolkWax congratulates each and every nominee for the recognition that our readers have made of your fine work. But in the final voting, again, with record returns and a very close race, you selected Patty Griffin's Impossible Dream as FolkWax Album of the Year. Here is a reprise of Founding Editor Arthur Wood's review of the FolkWax Album of the Year, Impossible Dream by Patty Griffin: Griffin Scores Another Classic (04/22/04) Tantamount to two years ago, in the process of reviewing Patty Griffin's 1000 Kisses, I marked that recording out as a work of art and potentially my selection for album of the year. While a couple of fine releases surfaced later in 2002, none of them topped Griffin's tour de force. In the fall of last year she released the CD/DVD live retrospective A Kiss In Time. While the shadow of Griffin's unreleased Y2K album Silver Bell didn't fall across the latter disc, it had informed 1000 Kisses in the shape of the magnificent biographical reflection "Making Pies," and does the same for this new collection in the form of "Top of The World" and "Mother Of God." In the process of preparing the way for Silver Bell, A&M issued a number of promotional discs and one of them included Patty's bluesy "Standing," produced by Craig Ross, who is at the helm for Impossible Dream. At the time A&M listed the song as "brand spanking new" and as best as I can tell by comparing both recordings they're the same [See Note #1]. First up is the soulful, up-tempo "Love Throws A Line," which opens lyrically with a series of flash card images predicting doom and disaster - "Let's write a story of earth tidal wave, we run out of luck, we run out of days" and "There's a war and a plague, smoke and disaster." All in all, the theme is an urgent reveille call to mankind to wise up, start listening and paying more attention, to one another "just before the flood runs into the valley." When it seems like it's too late for mankind, Griffin adds the necessary (and longed for) cure-all "love throws a line to you and me." "To the end of the earth I'll search for your face, For the one who laid all of our beauty to waste, Threw our hope into hell and our children to the fire, I am the one who crawled through the wire" sets the scene in "Cold As It Gets." Portraying a different facet of the condition explored in the opening cut, it amounts to its political twin. Later on (in the second cut), Griffin reflects on "a million sad stories on the side of the road," then tellingly censures the developed world's 21st Century with "I couldn't care less, I come first" attitude/voyeurism with "strange how we all just got used to the blood, millions of stories that'll never be told, Silent and froze in the mud." Having painted these bleak images Griffin goes deeper "I know a darkness that's darker than cold, A wind that blows as cold as it gets, Blew out the light of my soul," yet by the close she dreams of "Some sunny street not so far away," and closes with the authoritative "I only live to see you live to regret everything that you've done." Do we really have to wonder who "you" is? The slightest flicker of light at the end of this - so far - unremittingly dark tunnel, arrives in the form of track three, "Kite." Beautiful melancholy is one description for what Griffin consistently achieves in word and melody, and from "Kite" onwards wave upon wave of that particular emotion permeates the fabric of Impossible Dream. Supporting herself on piano, played hesitatingly as suits the atmosphere, in "Kite" Patty relates early on "All the trouble went away, And it wasn't just a dream." So what are these "Kites" that "In the middle of night we try and try with all our might, To light a little light down here" and "In the middle of night we dream of a million kites flying high above the sadness and the fear"? Are they earnest prayers, hopeful wishes or life goals yet to be fulfilled? The image-filled lines "Little sister just remember as you wander through the blue, The little kite that you sent flying on a Sunday afternoon, Made of something, light as nothing, Made of joy, that matters too, How the little dreams we dream, are all we can really do" - particularly the fragility and hope encapsulated in the third and fourth, must surely be the most touching that Griffin has committed to paper, and in closing she shifts the overview from earthbound to universal, "The world turns with all its might, the little diamond coloured blue" and then adds "I keep sending little kites until a little light gets through." While the radio friendly "Love Throws A Line" is the first single to be drawn from this recording, "Kites" is one of a handful of Da Vincis on Impossible Dream. As I noted earlier, "Standing" is a soulful number and though short on words, it's the sort of song that you might hear emitting from the open door of a Muscle Shoals, Alabama studio. On the cut, a heavenly choir of voices - is that you Emmylou? - supports Griffin. A medium-paced shuffle "Useless Desires," is a goodbye song wherein the narrator reflects, "I can't make you stay, I can't spend another ten years wishing you would anyway" and adds later, "Every day I take a bitter pill, It gets me on my way, For the little aches and pains, The ones I have from day to day, To help me think a little less about the things I miss, To help me not to wonder how I ended up like this." In "Top Of The World" Griffin's lyric employs the voice of a man, now passed - "One night they called me for supper, But I never got up" - who goes on to express some, now eternal, regret that "I wish I had known you, Wish I had shown you, All of the things I was on the inside." By way of emphasising his frustration having reflected upon the "might have been," as "Top Of The World" fades Patty's parents perform a verse of the Mitch Leigh/Joe Darion song "Impossible Dream," from the musical The Man Of La Mancha. The narrator in Griffin's lyrically repetitive "Rowing Song" has left home and as time and distance take that person further and further away, the narrator recounts how "letters from home never arrive, And I'm alone all of the way, All of the way alone and alive." Irrespective of the latter, you have the feeling that it's a place where the narrator wants to be. The semi-spoken opening lines "The lights are flashing on the highway, I wonder if we're going to ever get home tonight" imbue "Don't Come Easy" with a Springsteen-ish feel. Of course, on 1000 Kisses Patty covered his "Stolen Car." At the heart of Patty's effort lies the sentiment "If you break down, I'll drive out and find you, If you forget my love, I'll try to remind you, I'll stay by you when it don't come easy, When it don't come easy." "Don't Come Easy" once more finds Griffin at the piano, and this track and "Rowing Song" feature some fine understated brass work from Michael Ramos [See Note #2]. I wonder to what extent "Florida" is biographical in terms of Griffin's life, since the Mainer lived there for a period, two decades back? At the outset the story line features two innocent young girls who went "sailing down A1A into the arms of Florida," and is retold in retrospective by one of them - now a wiser, and worldly wearier traveller, who is still resident in the sunshine state - "Isn't it hard sometimes, Isn't it lonely, How I still hang around here, There's nothing to hold me." At the piano, once more, Patty's seven-minute plus melancholic symphony "Mother Of God" immediately follows, and shares a connection to the foregoing cut in the verse, "When I was eighteen I moved to Florida, Like everyone sick of the cold does, And I waited on old people waiting to die, I waited on them until I was." As for references to (The Virgin) Mary, they appear initially in "When I was little I'd stare at her picture, And talk to the mother of God, I swear sometimes I'd see her lips move, Like she was trying to say something to me" and later in "I live too many miles from the ocean, And I'm getting older and odd, I get up every morning with my cup of coffee, And I talk to the mother of God." Winding down gently the acoustic guitar led "Icicles" is the closing cut on Mission Impossible. Mission impossible be damned, this eleven-song masterpiece finds Griffin gazing at us from the top of the mountain, so trumpet it loud and clear "mission accomplished and then some." Notes: Note #1: Both tracks are four-minutes four seconds long. Craig Ross and Jay Joyce were the co-producers of Silver Bell. Note #2: Ramos was instrumental in the inclusion of "Mil Besos" on 1000 Kisses. Arthur Wood is a founding editor of FolkWax The staff of FolkWax congratulates Steve Earle and Patty Griffin on their awards. Me again, with a question. I've heard that plans for a CD featuring performances of last year's songwriter tour with Patty, Dar, Shawn, and MCC have been shelved because Patty wouldn't release the material. Has anyone heard this? Any idea, if it's true, why that would be so? Patty was clearly the star of the series (and this is coming from a Dar fanatic), so it seems odd that she would put the kibosh on something that would seemingly be so wonderful. Thanks! Joe ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 16:37:45 -0600 From: jclanc@rice.edu Subject: Re: MM: RE: Patty/Eliza article The link's missing a couple of letters - http://www.austin360.com/search/content/music/statesman/2005/11grammys.html It is a very nicely written article about 2 of my favorites. Jim Lancaster Here's the text, if you don't want to track it down - Sisters of the sad song Austin's Eliza Gilkyson and Patty Griffin are singer-songwriters joined at the soul. And they're up for the same Grammy By Brad Buchholz American-Statesman Staff Feb. 11, 2005 Eliza Gilkyson and Patty Griffin are good friends, sisters in song. They have toured together, recorded together, shared a creative kinship through their music. Both released landmark albums in 2004 -- Gilkyson's "Land of Milk and Honey" and Griffin's "Impossible Dream." And as fate would have it, both have been nominated for a Grammy Award ... in the same category. So let us take a moment to acknowledge this happy little story -- the kind of Grammy story that has nothing to do with winners and losers, or celebrity, or what Alicia Keys intends to wear to the Sunday night award ceremony. Let us celebrate good Austin music and good Austin friends. Let us focus on Eliza and Patty's shared affinity for sad songs and social consciousness. Eliza is the earthy sister, tall and bold, a daughter of the American West. Her best songs have dirt and grit and spines in them -- and if they were any softer, they wouldn't be true. Eliza sees God in nature. She says exactly what she means. On stage, she's quick to crack a joke about her own vanity. Then she'll sing a song that will break your heart. Patty is the ethereal sister, tiny and demure, a daughter of rural Maine. Her best songs have a misty, visceral quality -- and to step inside her CDs is to enter an envelope of rare emotional climates. Patty sees hope and humanity in a kite's tail. She speaks in the language of metaphor. On stage, she'll introduce a song with a whisper. Then she'll sing a song that will break your heart. Both women live quiet, simple lives in Austin -- Eliza in South Austin, Patty near Hyde Park. Both lavish their attention on tiny dogs. And both share a certain artistic courage, the ability to lay themselves naked, to show all manner of vulnerabilities, to express sorrow and doubt and anguish and regret and defiance, in the name of connection. At the Grammys, Eliza Gilkyson and Patty Griffin are "competing" for Best Contemporary Folk Album. It is not a prime-time, call-the-winner-to-the-stage Grammy category. All the same, it is one of great integrity, a category that consistently honors music that thinks and feels, music that honors a writerly voice. Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris have all won this Grammy. So, too, have Shawn Colvin, Nanci Griffith and Lucinda Williams -- singer-songwriters with deep Austin connections. Eliza makes it very clear that she has no expectation of winning the prize. ("I'm the long shot," she says. "This will be Patty's win." ) Yet Eliza plans to attend the ceremony. It is her first nomination, and it's a sweet one, too, for it brings a measure of national attention and respect to an artist who first began performing and recording in Austin more than 20 years ago. "This may be the only time this will happen to me," says Eliza, who grew up in Southern California, the daughter of the late folk songwriter Terry Gilkyson. "I owe it to myself to go and enjoy it." Patty Griffin, above, and Eliza Gilkyson have both been affected by the war in Iraq. Griffin's songs are more upfront; Gilkyson disguises her messages with allusions to kites and coliseums. Patty? She will not be in L.A. for the ceremony, as it is her conviction that there's too much hype in the culture of awards. Patty didn't go two years ago, either, when she was nominated for "1,000 Kisses." Better for the industry, she suggests, to spend time and money on music education for children. Patty even declined to talk about Eliza, and the craft of song, on the occasion of the Grammys. Nothing personal, she says. It's just her policy not to "do media" for awards shows. These sisters of song are very different people. Eliza is as open as Patty is intensely private. But this difference is actually what makes their musical story more compelling, as we know these two women see a bit of themselves in each other. "I think our friendship came about through mutual appreciation that we were both really pushing our envelope as individuals," says Eliza. "Kind of self-discovery. Kind of like, 'I see you over there. You're on a very similar path as me, and you have your own way of expressing it.' That's why it's amusing, really, that we're both nominated at the same time." Griffin is a great writer -- and not just of words and couplets. Her command of tone and imagery gives her music its ethereal depth. Sometimes her songs are like expressionist paintings, where texture and mood, more than a literal image, tell the story of the work. You may not always "get" the meaning of a Patty Griffin song, all the while realizing you're deeply moved by it. "Patty is the queen of that, really in the way she taps into the mystery, that kind of awesome other-ness," says Eliza. "She may be using a vehicle that might be about a relationship, or a person in her life. But you sense that you're standing on the brink of the great unconscious. I don't know anyone who goes there more fearlessly than Patty. "Her music just keeps unfolding for you. It will meet you as deep as you want to go. And that's a beautiful and rare thing." Eliza had long admired Patty's albums. But traveling on the road with Griffin -- opening the show, for a time, during the "1,000 Kisses" album tour of 2003 -- gave Eliza a heightened appreciation of Patty's artistic command. "I'd go out (into the audience) after every show and just sit there and allow myself to go on that trip," says Eliza. "And it amazed me, the way the music would draw me back night after night. She takes you to a place -- and she holds you there. "It's not for the faint of heart, you know, to go riding around in there. But I do feel it's the artist's job to make you feel safe in a land of danger. It's like, 'How do you find your way into this place where anything could happen?' But at the same time, it's safe to expose the nerve." Eliza and Patty have a deep affinity for the sad song; it's part of their emotional makeup. At the start of her singing career, Griffin once failed an audition for a Downy fabric-softener jingle because her voice sounded "too sad." No one uses imagery of funerals and shrouds more boldly. "I know a cold as cold as it gets," she sings on the "Impossible Dream" album. And we believe her. ... On stage, Eliza will joke about her own inability to "do whimsy" and then launch into "Tender Mercies," with its opening image of a suicide bomber: "Across the world she tapes explosives to her chest, steps into a shopping mall." Eliza's sad songs often feature characters on the other side of pain -- wounded, fallible, but wiser, too. She's the rare artist in contemporary song who digs deeply into psychological nuance. The theme that unites Gilkyson's muscular "Land of Milk and Honey" and Griffin's moody "Impossible Dream" is longing. Both artists sing about an awareness of separateness, and the desire to connect with the elusive: Wisdom. Solace. Humanity. Peace on Earth. "Eliza has a lot of that Townes Van Zandt quality, when Townes was younger," says Ray Wylie Hubbard, who just recorded a version of Gilkyson's "Beauty Way" on his latest CD. "Townes' songs always had a lot of depth and weight. Eliza's songs are like that, too. Her lyrics just reach out and grab you by the throat. Her soul just pours out of her. And yet: She's hilarious on stage! She takes herself lightly, you know? "I always feel enlightened when I hear an Eliza song. And the motivating thing about Eliza and her music is what she can contribute to life. You know, she's not one of these people who says, 'What can I get?' It's actually about what she can give, and contribute to humankind right now." Both Eliza and Patty address the Iraq war on their albums, though Gilkyson plays her hand face up, referring to little men in the White House, while Patty works with allusions involving kites and coliseums. The two sing together on behalf of peace to close Gilkyson's album, joining Mary Chapin Carpenter and Iris DeMent on a long-lost Woody Guthrie anthem titled "Peace Call." Eliza felt compelled to write several songs about current events on "Land of Milk and Honey" -- not because she wanted to do "political" material, but because the build-up to war in 2003 and the ensuing invasion were breaking her heart. It was impossible to separate that pain from the music. "The human condition is my issue. That's been the case with me all along," says Gilkyson. "This is not a happy time. It is not a mindless time. While I'm experiencing a deep satisfaction in my life right now, there is at the same time a sense of woefulness in the human story. It's on my mind. I'm preoccupied with it. I don't think I'm a real fun person to be around right now." And here she starts to laugh. "Because I'm worried!" Hubbard recognizes the soul of his friend in the words. "There's an old quote I like: The opposite of injustice isn't justice. It's love," says Hubbard. "Eliza sees in this world that the correct response to injustice is love. Because she cares. She feels it. It's not sympathy -- it's an empathy she has that allows her to see through other people's eyes, to know their pain." Two great souls. Two great albums. On Sunday night, the winner in this Grammy category is clearly Austin. We are richer for their presence, these two sisters of song. Quoting sheryl novak : > it doesn't open to an article...it just has some mumbo jumbo about the > Austin American Statesman. > > Sheryl L. Novak, Administrator > sherylnovak@sbcglobal.net > JOHN MICHAEL'S SALON > 900 Round Rock Ave. Ste. 309 > Round Rock Texas 78681 > 512-388-4603 > www.johnmichaelssalon.com > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-mad-mission@smoe.org [mailto:owner-mad-mission@smoe.org]On > Behalf Of Luca, Joseph (EHS) > Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 12:34 PM > To: mad-mission@smoe.org > Subject: MM: Patty/Eliza article > > > Howdy--- > > A friend sent me this link; it's a nice piece about these two friends who > happen to be rather gifted singer/songwriters. > > Ciao, > > Joe > > http://www.austin360.com/music/content/music/statesman/2005/11grammys.ht > ml;COXnetJSessionID=CMcJDutQ00Uq7nUPDKqUXcd2CREqomv3yC1TW7J1tFZ2UnHZ9iTp > !6552243?urac=n&urvf081390178580.7013629362051901 > <> ------------------------------ End of mad-mission-digest V9 #37 ********************************