I have been a Patty Griffin fan now for a little over a decade and am so glad that she continues to put out music that doesn't stray far from the items that drew me to her in the first place. This doesn't mean that she hasn't or doesn't try new things or that all the albums are merely copies of each other with only new words about the same themes, but rather it seems she has stayed true to the elements that make a song what I like to think of as a "Patty Griffin" song. I won't take credit for finding my own way to her, but will give credit to a conversation I had with Sandra McCraken that I'm sure verged on half creepy and half awkward/stalker, but she was kind to me and suggested that I check out Patty Griffin and then I made some very bad joke about Andy Griffith which went over like a lead cloud and then her husband came up and then they went away. If I could see them again, I would thank them for the suggestion and apologize for being me. I would like to say I've changed, but I have only toned down the odd awkwardness during business hours and I'm sure my students would heartily disagree.
I was excited when I read that this album was coming out because it is her first regular album since 2007. She released a pseudo-Gospel album in 2010 (Downtown Church), which was good, but Gospel is not her normal genre and the album was lacking in the things I normally go to Patty Griffin for. For me and this will only further show my lack of musical knowledge, but when I listen to Patty, her songs are like getting to listen to a musical written by Sherwood Anderson and he's one of my favorites. Each of her songs takes you to these moments that seem so real that it is almost as if they happened in your own life. Her songs have been called a "roadmap of Americana" and I'd agree with that. And American Kid doesn't let you down if this is what you listen to Patty for.
There are 12 tracks on the record and each one is strong and each one seems to stand out, but also it seems to fit with the others. Or at least, that is how it feels to me. However, my favorite part of the album are not the songs, but rather the short eight or so minute video that has Patty Griffin talking about the album. I am so interested in how others write and the way she speaks about the songwriting process is worth the $12 that I paid for the album. I don't want to ruin the experience of listening to the video, but in it she talks about how the majority of music that is coming out now is too perfect and it is hard to listen to it and imagine that real life humans are behind the instruments and the voices. I had never thought about that before, but it made me think about where that train of thought goes and it bleeds into seemingly all things. We do live in a world where everything looks so polished and perfect and all the while everyone is walking around very unhappy and wondering where all the perfection is in their own lives when in reality, it doesn't exist anywhere, but rather the world is covered with people and events broken by our humanness. She goes on to say that she desired to make a record where everything wasn't perfect and where they just sat down and sang and played like real people and where the voices cracked sometimes and the instruments went out of tune. She said the old records sound like that and there is this great beauty in the brokenness of the songs, the words, the instruments, and in the voice of the performer.
The other item that stands out in the video is in her discussion of where the imagery for the album came from. During the time she was making this record, her father was dying and she spends some time talking about that and how the album is not necessarily about his passing away, but the album was written from this place and the songs are what she did to deal with his passing and in listening to the album, you can hear that. There are a few songs that seem to be about her dad, but mostly the album seems to be about the America that surrounds each of us. No, not what is going on in the news or the latest manufactured crisis of Washington, but what is actually happening on the street you live on, with the people you move through the day with, with the people you share dinner with, with the people who were once apart of your life, but now live some life away from you and you away from them. And I guess, this is what each Patty Griffin album is about. It is about people and that's why it is so good, so real, and so relevant because people never change, only the times change, but humanity is linked throughout time and the things that are important in 2013 were important in 1513. They looked different, but they were rooted in the sameness of the human experience.
Buy the album. Listen to each song slowly and more than a dozen times. Listen to the video. Roll your windows down and feel the words and let the music flow through your hair. And turn up these tracks: "Go Wherever You Wanna Go", "Don't Let Me Die in Florida", and "That Kind of Lonely". The second suggested song made me really think about my granddad and how he so desperately wanted to die in Oklahoma, but rather passed in North Florida. I did not understand that then, but I am beginning to understand this connection with the land and place that is apart me and starting to make me wonder about so many things. I do wish so badly that he could have died in those barren hills and been laid to rest in that dry, red dirt. His cemetery would not have been as nice and his funeral as nice, but I think there is something about Adam being made from the dirt and then us going back into it and the need for dead, organic matter in the growing of new things. But I do wish you could be buried in places where you loved. I wish that my granny could have been buried in that place where the salt water laps the sand and where she so love to just sit, but she is buried inland, so very far from the beach. I know this is not realistic, but so much of what we've made to be"real" life is manufactured and we've limited the freedom of this life with rules and laws and made ourselves live by them as if they were real. We made up the 40 hour week. We made up the 5 day work week. We made up the need to go to college. We made this distinction between respectable, honored jobs and those that aren't when all honest work is to be respected. We made up the days of the week and the way we feel about them. We made up daylight savings and the IRS. We created ways to kill off the living. We have made all natural things to be awkward and strange when they are real and beautiful in their own ways. I will stop here. Sorry.
Happy listening and thanks for reading,
DAVID
I was excited when I read that this album was coming out because it is her first regular album since 2007. She released a pseudo-Gospel album in 2010 (Downtown Church), which was good, but Gospel is not her normal genre and the album was lacking in the things I normally go to Patty Griffin for. For me and this will only further show my lack of musical knowledge, but when I listen to Patty, her songs are like getting to listen to a musical written by Sherwood Anderson and he's one of my favorites. Each of her songs takes you to these moments that seem so real that it is almost as if they happened in your own life. Her songs have been called a "roadmap of Americana" and I'd agree with that. And American Kid doesn't let you down if this is what you listen to Patty for.
There are 12 tracks on the record and each one is strong and each one seems to stand out, but also it seems to fit with the others. Or at least, that is how it feels to me. However, my favorite part of the album are not the songs, but rather the short eight or so minute video that has Patty Griffin talking about the album. I am so interested in how others write and the way she speaks about the songwriting process is worth the $12 that I paid for the album. I don't want to ruin the experience of listening to the video, but in it she talks about how the majority of music that is coming out now is too perfect and it is hard to listen to it and imagine that real life humans are behind the instruments and the voices. I had never thought about that before, but it made me think about where that train of thought goes and it bleeds into seemingly all things. We do live in a world where everything looks so polished and perfect and all the while everyone is walking around very unhappy and wondering where all the perfection is in their own lives when in reality, it doesn't exist anywhere, but rather the world is covered with people and events broken by our humanness. She goes on to say that she desired to make a record where everything wasn't perfect and where they just sat down and sang and played like real people and where the voices cracked sometimes and the instruments went out of tune. She said the old records sound like that and there is this great beauty in the brokenness of the songs, the words, the instruments, and in the voice of the performer.
The other item that stands out in the video is in her discussion of where the imagery for the album came from. During the time she was making this record, her father was dying and she spends some time talking about that and how the album is not necessarily about his passing away, but the album was written from this place and the songs are what she did to deal with his passing and in listening to the album, you can hear that. There are a few songs that seem to be about her dad, but mostly the album seems to be about the America that surrounds each of us. No, not what is going on in the news or the latest manufactured crisis of Washington, but what is actually happening on the street you live on, with the people you move through the day with, with the people you share dinner with, with the people who were once apart of your life, but now live some life away from you and you away from them. And I guess, this is what each Patty Griffin album is about. It is about people and that's why it is so good, so real, and so relevant because people never change, only the times change, but humanity is linked throughout time and the things that are important in 2013 were important in 1513. They looked different, but they were rooted in the sameness of the human experience.
Buy the album. Listen to each song slowly and more than a dozen times. Listen to the video. Roll your windows down and feel the words and let the music flow through your hair. And turn up these tracks: "Go Wherever You Wanna Go", "Don't Let Me Die in Florida", and "That Kind of Lonely". The second suggested song made me really think about my granddad and how he so desperately wanted to die in Oklahoma, but rather passed in North Florida. I did not understand that then, but I am beginning to understand this connection with the land and place that is apart me and starting to make me wonder about so many things. I do wish so badly that he could have died in those barren hills and been laid to rest in that dry, red dirt. His cemetery would not have been as nice and his funeral as nice, but I think there is something about Adam being made from the dirt and then us going back into it and the need for dead, organic matter in the growing of new things. But I do wish you could be buried in places where you loved. I wish that my granny could have been buried in that place where the salt water laps the sand and where she so love to just sit, but she is buried inland, so very far from the beach. I know this is not realistic, but so much of what we've made to be"real" life is manufactured and we've limited the freedom of this life with rules and laws and made ourselves live by them as if they were real. We made up the 40 hour week. We made up the 5 day work week. We made up the need to go to college. We made this distinction between respectable, honored jobs and those that aren't when all honest work is to be respected. We made up the days of the week and the way we feel about them. We made up daylight savings and the IRS. We created ways to kill off the living. We have made all natural things to be awkward and strange when they are real and beautiful in their own ways. I will stop here. Sorry.
Happy listening and thanks for reading,
DAVID
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