//  The initial reactions have given way to some more thoughtful
//  commentary, capped by that of the inimitable Ms. Thornton.  - MF
 
From: Danise Busic (busicd@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
Subject: Re: Tim's article search

Hey --
Coming out of longtime lurkdom to hop in the conversation. And yes, I have
been faithfully reading all of my digests!!!!

Got a couple of comments about Nanci's "letter to the editor" or whomever:

First, I'd really like to thank Tim for running the article search in what
seemed to be the most reasonable manner --- looking for connections
between Nanci and Corcoran... Gives us a little bit more insight. Didn't
repeat all of the relevant posts he found in this response, but I was 
particularly interested in the 4th, along with our honorable webmaster's
interpretation. If I may be so bold --- I think Mark and I are both
"reasonable people"... :-)))) and the difference in our opinions here made
me realize how SO many of us are able to view this from SO many different
places.

> From: "Baird, Tim" (TBaird@maysval.com>                           
> Subject: Comments about Corcoran, and his comments on Nanci          

  (SNIP>

> 4.  I also found this from an October 12, 1995 article by Corcoran in
> which he reviewed a concert by Maura O'Connell:
> 
> "Several vocalists have been called ''a song's best friend," but
> no one is as adept at elevating the work of mediocre songwriters as
> the Irish-born singer Maura O'Connell, who held a packed Cactus Cafe
> audience in the proverbial palm of her hand for two sets, while
> bringing heavenly tones to the work of such ordinary talents as Paul
> Brady, Nanci Griffith and Mary Chapin Carpenter.
> 
> "I've always felt Griffith's ''Trouble In the Fields" is an
> insincere mess of knee-jerk compassion and ridiculous reasoning (The
> insolvent family farmer suggests selling the new tractor and plowing the
> fields manually as a way to make ends meet), but springing from
> O'Connell's luscious vocal region, the song grew new wings of meaning."
> 
> That's all that I really saw of interest.  But judging from Corcoran's
> comment about "Trouble In the Fields," maybe there's some basis for
> Nanci's letter-tirade.
> 
> Tim.
> 
> //  Sounds to me like Corcoran gained new respect for "Trouble" after 
> //  hearing O'Connell sing it, and now likes the song.  - MF 

(I hope it's OK to quote digest comments)

To me --- Corcoran gives ALL the credit and respect for the song and it's
meaning to Maura O'Connell (who I LOVE, don't get me wrong!) and uses this
opportunity to take pot shots at 2 of my favorites... Nanci and MCC. The
fact that he seemed to accept the actual song as O'Connell interpreted it, 
didn't remove the sting from his initial crack about "mediocre  
songwriters" and "ordinary talent"; or the nastier and less called for
comment about "Trouble in the Fields" being insincere and ridiculous. In
my opinion, reviewing an excellent concert by Ms. O'Connell could have
easily been accomplished in a more positive manner without bashing ANY
songwriters.

If Corcoran is the type of reviewer/critic that will seize this 
opportunity, a GREAT live concert, to slam the contributing songwriters
that weren't even THERE... then I think Nanci tried to give him and THOSE
LIKE him exactly the wake-up smack they need. I feel sure that his review
could have been as complimentary and powerful in support of Maura 
O'Connell without any sniping or pot shots --- I think this is cheap,
calculated, and aimed at getting a rise out of the public. So I would
think he and his paper would welcome an emotional response like Nanci's.
After all, it seems like that has been his ultimate goal...

Personally --- I agree with one of the other comments Tim's search
uncovered, that I didn't quote... Corcoran appears to be the type of
negative journalist that writes reviews I would prefer to skip, avoid, or
ignore. If a person doesn't have the guts, confidence, or talent to truly
compliment someone without tearing down someone else... then they should
let a more creative and positive person take the job.

The fact that Nanci chose to air her opinion of him is A-OK with me!!!

Danise
busicd@gwis2,circ.gwu.edu

_________________________________________________________________
 
From: Michael Wilt (handofgrace@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Tim's article search

I didn't really want to get into this critic/letter flak, but---
It strikes me that critics like this Corcoran fellow, while they have
their purposes in society, are a dime a dozen--every newspaper I've
ever read regularly has one of these critics whose strength is tearing
performers down; "ordinary" talents like Paul Brady, Nanci Griffith,
and Mary Chapin Carpenter are a bit more dear than that (I'm curious
as to who Corcoran would categorize as extraordinary talents).
Frankly, Corcoran's "interpretation" of Trouble in the Fields, quoted
above, is about as piss-poor as literary analysis gets, focusing on
the literal meanings of the words and phrases rather than their
figurative meanings. I wonder what his take is on a line like "This
heart was born feet runnin'" or a classic Dylan line like "I just grew
/ tangled up in blue." Thoughtful analysis of songs and performers
takes time--it seems that Scott Alarik of the Boston Globe exemplifies
this kind of critical writing in the folk music world. It's no
accident that Alarik is, or at least has been, a performing
singer-songwriter, and a damn good one at that. It pays to have
first-hand knowledge of that which you are critiquing.
  Having no knowledge of the immediate motivation behind Nanci's
letter to the Texas critics, I can only say that I hope she got it out
of her system and can move on to focus on the physical and spiritual
healing she needs to undergo. I'm not embarassed by her expression of
anger, and I can only speculate that it may have been something she
had to do in order to open the doors to the future. No sense harboring
that kind of anger when you've got a cancer to beat and relationships
to re-define or restore.
  Back to the sidelines. . . 
Michael 'still a NanciNut after all these years' Wilt

_________________________________________________________________
 
From: "Robin Winning" (robin_winning@qmgate.optilink.dsccc.com>
Subject: A Modest Proposal

The last few months of Nanci Net have inspired me at last to "de-lurk" for 
the first time with a modest proposal: Let's de-commission the NanciNet and 
all go  back to living productive lives! 

Starting from the time Blue Roses was released,  the content of the NanciNet 
has been nothing but squawking and complaining about Nanci, her 
"affectations," the poor quality of her recent albums, her mixed live 
performances, her unpopular association with the Crickets, and on and on. 
When it's not criticism of her music, it's uninteresting and inappropriate 
comment about her personal life, her friendship with Maggie, and unfounded 
speculation on unsavory reasons for concert cancellations. When the news of 
her cancer recurrence came out there was a brief period of self-flagellation 
for treating our "aNGel" wrong, but then an immediate return to the bad old 
ways following the publication of herTexas Critics Tirade.

The letter to the editor reprinted on the NanciNet the other day regarding 
the hypocrisy of Corcoran for continuing to review music even after he had 
lost his ability to enjoy it hit home with me. If we don't enjoy Nanci 
anymore, if her last two albums were so bad, if her performance levels are 
down, if we think her illness is causing her to be irascible and 
inconsistent, then let's help her and ourselves by ceasing this endless 
comment, criticism, and reiteration of our own disappointment. It's boring 
and unconstructive.

I say we either raise the tone of this once-fun place to be or we end it and 
start the Lucinda-Net instead.

Robin "Bracing Myself" Winning


//  All right, all postings from now on must contain nothing but warm and
//  fuzzy thoughts.  Happy, happy, joy, joy.  ;-)   - MF
_________________________________________________________________
 
From: "Paul " (zebraspot@earthlink.net>
Subject: Getting tired

Ms. Griffith used to be a favorite, but I must say, I am getting mighty
tired of her preciousness, her prickliness,  and her liberal silliness. 
Anyone who can defend Mr. Clinton after all we now know (and should have
known all along, if we didn't have our heads buried somewhere), and only
attack the messenger(Mr. Starr), is a person worth listening to anymore. 
That kind of person is not wise.  I used to put up with her Anne Richardisms
 because the music was good, but it's not really that good anymore.

Of course, I wish her best of luck with her illness and offer my
appreciation for the good music in the past.

_________________________________________________________________
 
From: Susan Krauss (skrauss@hooked.net>
Subject: Nanci and Football

Yes Nanci and football.  Each Friday and Monday during football season,
KFOG (104.5FM) in San Francisco interviews Steve Young, the quarterback of
the 49ers.  They usuall talk football and music and when the 9ers win,
Steve gets to pick a song.  On Monday, they asked Steve what concerts he
went to this summer and he said that it was strange - he mostly went to
country shows like Garth Brooks.  Today they joked about the country music
and said if the team wins, they weren't so sure about letting him pick a
country song (the station is a rock AAA type station).  He laughed and said
it was an unusual concert season, but to top it off, he even saw NANCI
GRIFFITH.

SO there you have it.  Steve Young is a Nanci Griffith fan.

Waiting for the 9/19 Concord Newport show.

susan

BTW, I've heard that John Hiatt's erratic appearance at the Newport shows
is because his brother is dying.

_________________________________________________________________

From: Mitchell (o416@erols.com>
Subject: Nanci's cd picks

Did everbody see this but me?  I don't remember any mention of this on
Nancinet but then I nap a lot.  Often while pretending to read.

If you go to Amaznon's Book's music section, Artist picks, you will find
a short section on Ms. Griffith's favorite cds. ON the list you will
find Sinatra's "Wee Small Hours of the Morning," Steve Earle's "Train A
Comin'" Bruce Springsteen's "Tunnel of Love," and naturally "anything by
Buddy Holly and the Crickets." 

Reid "I shouldn't be looking an Amazon music this time of night with
this much to drink" Mitchell

_________________________________________________________________

From: paul.reeve@virgin.net (paul.reeve@virgin.net)
Subject: Nanci in London November

Hi all
I have seen a couple of mentions of a gathering before Nanci's _Sunday_
concert (29 Nov) but nothing about the _Monday_ event.
Anyone organising anything?

Paul
 
_________________________________________________________________

From: "Michael O'Byrne" (cathavin@iol.ie>
Subject: Price of admission to Nanci's Concerts.

This is my first time writing to your digest and my gripe is the price we
are being charged for admission to  see Nanci Griffith. Now I am one who
has purchased all her Cd's including the current one, with my family we
have always went to her concerts in Dublin and enjoyed them. She really
puts on a great show. But the prices have gone up in excess of 50% since
her last visit to Ireland. Now to give you and idea, I travelled to Dublin
this week and called to the Olympia ticket office and was told that the
prices were =A329.50 which is roughly $50 each. I would be interested to =
hear
some reaction to these charges and how do they compare to prices in the
States. I did'nt buy the tickets as their computer system was down at the
time but I went away with certain reservations as to  their value.
Michael


//  $50 seems pretty high.  But a good Nanci concert is priceless.  - MF
_________________________________________________________________

From: lomax1@iamerica.net
Subject: Nanci's Austin, 1980-1997 and my midnight ramblings. . .

Dear Nanci-Netters:  I'm another lurker but I am from a small town in
East Texas, identify with Nanci's Southern writers, and have noticed
that a lot of famous people come from here and though they may not live
here, maintain homes here. . .Texas women are a hardy breed all their
own and Texas can be a whole separate country. That much is true.

Michael Corcoran is an excellent critic with a way with words you would
not believe. . .grrrr. . .:)  For those of you who remember Townsend
Miller, Ed Ward and the elder statesmen of the Boston Globe and others
who were kind to Nanci earlier in her career, the contrast in slant and
style is vast.

I also believe "Corky" is the head honcho critic now of the Statesman and
the most likely one to jump on something like the letter.

(I live in East Texas now, having spent most of my adult life around
Austin) and am a folk singer/lyric writer who was fortunate enough to
meet and be around Nanci when she was still living in Austin.  I
attended many of her performances, and she became my premier influence
in my own story songs, which just now are beginning to meet with some
good praise (re:  Folk Music Digest, you'd think I'd know the date, but
we had a thunderstorm and my mail cache got drop-kicked to cyberheaven). 

At any rate, all of her Kerrville appearances were highlights of each
year's event, her Austin concerts (gigs, really) very well attended and
I was in awe of her.  The introduction either came through Weldon
Brewer of the original Folkville or a redhead Kerrvert named Sue who
had taken to my own music. This was years and years ago.

Anyway, too, I know that, at least in Texas, its very important to fit;
to be like others; to conform; to be in the mainstream of culture; and
how can a star of Nanci Caroline's magnitude not transcend that which is
the commonplace, by virtue of its singular brilliance?  I recall
Michelle
Shocked's line from "Memories of East Texas"--"and they could not make
room/for a girl who had seen the ocean." Diana, Princess of Wales, 
lamented the perils of having become a smart woman.  I'm certain some
woman on this net will identify with this dilemma:  sit or shine?

As for Nanci's anger, well, I just don't think the critics get it.
They probably just don't get what she is trying to do with her music--
for example, perhaps sacrificing some "quality" to pack so many
musicians
behind microphones.  I don't think there's anything wrong with the
way she sings "maorning" on We Five's "You Were On My Mind". I'm
sure the critic missed the essence of pure folk process Nanci's
catalystic qualities made happen and the magic that took place in the
studios where that album was recorded and mixed.  How much more could
Nanci's self, her compendium of a career work, be misunderstood by
Mr. Patterson?  There is a right to indignation. 

In reviews, Nanci has been referred to as having a "cult" following.
She was, in Austin, a folk festival figure, and an icon in what was then
a more folk-friendly town to a greater extent among happy denizens from
hippie, yuppie, kicker, political, etc. cultures getting along in a
wonderful place called the Armadillo World Headquarters, which closed in
1981.  Nanci's place of memories is no longer mine musically; it has
changed, and I don't know quite how, but it has. Sometimes I think the
"bountiful" I recall has moved up the road to Round Rock and Georgetown.
. .:) But the spirit of folk music, with the exception of Kerrville and
the few people who remain who revive it is not what it was during the
60s and 70s.  That much, is also true.

Don't you think what any performer wants, truly, more than anything, is
to show 'em in your home town, not only performance and career, but the
degree to which you have become rather loved, or beloved. .  .OVToo
is more of an archival/hootenanny of Nanci and old friends, even
generations of folk singers.  More than anything, she surely wanted
her hometown newspaper to recognize her work as worthwhile and presented
as a lovely gift to the world, especially to Austin and Texas. On
top of this, going through cancer alone--my husband has been diagnosed
with prostate and is halfway through radiation with good prognosis--
Nanci,  I flip bottle caps at the moon for you every once in a while
. . .My best guess is to have this album, this child, rejected in the
home town paper is like a ultimate slap in the face to Nanci.  Listen
to Flyer again!

I know this has been way too long but it is the wee small hours of the
morning and they're playing that Toto (?) song on the radio here and
I keep hearing this one line as "I left my brains down in Africa." so
it is time to get offline. . .

Cathy Welch
lomax1@iAmerica.net
East Texas, Texas

_________________________________________________________________

From: Debra Lynn Thornton (dlt4@email.byu.edu>
Subject: Avila, Bountiful, the human heart, and other true spaces

This started out as a short email to Dave, to whom I pointed out that the 
critic's assertion of writer's block may well be an accurate statement 
since it's been two and a half years since Nanci has performed an original 
song. Then the message sort of went somewhere else and I decided it might 
be worth sharing with the whole crowd. It's about the Trip to Bountiful 
(she inserted the word "back" to the phrase---a telling modification), the
passage that Mircea Eliade calls the Myth of the Eternal Return, and there 
are a few nuances about creativity and illness and what happens in the soul 
cast alone into the alchemical fire of transformation.

It's true that her productivity has been more impressive at other times in 
her career, but two and a half years is a long long time to go without 
writing a song. Yes, the other projects do take up her time, but it is also 
true that people can be highly productive in other areas and still be blocked
artistically--that's the time people generally do take on other things, 
hoping that getting away for a time will unclog the artistic arteries.

I appreciate your lawyerly willingness to acknowledge evidence to the
contrary. I wish there were some evidence to support your position--that would
mean new material, wouldn't it? Better for all concerned (unless it sounded 
like the remake of Gulf Coast Highway), including Miss Nanci.

The primary reason i'm responding to your email, though, is agree with you 
about St. Teresa of Avila, which is, in my opinion, one of her best songs 
ever (though it's co-written with her sister and Maggie). I think the direction
it's going in--call it the realm of spirit or beauty bare or essence--is the 
true direction of her art, and i think she's afraid to go there as a person 
and as an artist. Heading backwards, chronologically and historically, 
signifies her retreat--she cannot be a 40-year-old reincarnation of Buddy 
Holly or anyone else, try as she will. She chose to leave the Cap Rock of 
Texas, which is not her natural or her own folk roots after all; she grew up 
in urban Texas and she, like K. A. Porter, didn't go back. Their work 
reflects that.

I have written at length about Griffith as a southern artist, placing her
alongside Welty and McCullers, where, for a time in her early career, she
definitely belonged as a musical storyteller. That she identified herself 
in that capacity is evident in her liner notes for some of the early albums. 
She has since moved away from there, and away from the more literary 
aspects of her songwriting. At the same time, the physical and artistic 
movement towards Ireland was still a true artistic direction for her (as 
it was for McCullers and especially Welty). There are great personal and 
artistic differences between the Southern artists who left their homes in 
the South and the ones who stayed home--the richer literature (Faulkner, 
Welty, O'Connor, Warren, Percy) comes from the ones who root themselves 
in place and love and struggle within their community. The ones who left 
the South (McCullers, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and Porter) depict
the place as a freakish, almost Gothic environ that must be escaped lest it 
swallow one whole (see the last line of Griffith's letter)--at the same time
the center doesn't hold for those writers either, and their structures of 
meaningful support are flimsy, and in the end their art is diminished as 
they distance themselves from their own cores and can't sustain as high a 
quality of art. This, of course, is debatable, but Faulkner's the one in
the crowd who won the Nobel Prize, and who holds a high place in global
literature. Nevertheless, there is much to be learned from the literature 
of displacement.

Long ago, Nanci adopted Tom Wolfe's creed, "It's that old blue line, you 
can never go back home," and her latest attempts to go back home, to "return
to Bountiful," and to embed her own personal legend and legacy in Texas,
have had mixed results--she has not received the glowing welcome home she 
thinks she deserves (and she's even tried to speak the language, to adopt 
the musical phraseology of the Texas idiom--the critics called it overly 
"mannered," and many of the NanciNet faithful courted the wrath of others 
in describing it as an affectation and many other less polite terms). I 
think that the hyperbolic nature of her letter to the Texas critics firmly 
supports that assertion. The pissed off prodigal daughter? Instead of having
a feast upon her Bounteous return, she accuses them of eating the flesh of 
their own children--in the end, she asserts that she has been eaten alive, 
critically. Like any soul in great pain, she responds to an apparent 
rejection by rejecting with added vehemence. So it turns out the Bountiful 
wasn't so bounteous after all, and her home place has spat her out, coughed 
her up like the whale expelled Jonah, who then went in the direction he was 
originally asked to go to deliver a message people heeded instead of 
rejecting.

How does an artist or any person find, re-cover, the last true note and pick
up the thread from there? Go back to Avila and re-tread, discalced, the 
gulf coast highway as an act of pilgrimage, then set sail for water and 
ether--head for the realm of spirit that St. Teresa points to, bring heaven 
and earth together, finite and infinite twisted together. Illness also poses
that challenging question--or established the link between body and spirit--
in a more direct way, a more tangible way. She will work it out on some 
level.

What do you do when you want to go home and there is no home to go to? The 
body is the soul's truest home, and now even her body is a semi-hostile, 
cancerous environment. Oh, Texas Rose, thou art sick! Who cannot but wish 
her well?

I think one of the things Griffith hasn't realized is that the trip back to
Bountiful is a solo flight, an elemental, bareheaded, barefooted pilgrimage, 
not a voyage with a cast of fifty plus supporters. Conrad says, "We live,
as we dream--alone." The trip back to Bountiful is about transformation and
rebirth, finding a new voice, an individual voice, not losing one's voice 
in a massive choir but daring to be unaccompanied by mortals. The soul 
journeys alone, not with an entourage, because ultimately it is alone, was 
conceived singly, makes all significant transitions singly. So that we can 
be whole, so that we can bring whole selves to our communities, to other 
voices in their other rooms, and to the Bar across the great divide.

She has written so often about winged hearts and wings of desire and the 
down in her own feathered heart in flight, the wing and the wheel, the 
incessant flights of fancy and heart spirit. She is an experienced traveller.
Who cannot but wish her and every other Flyer well in that and all journeys? 
All heroes, according to Joseph Campbell, suffer the pain of separation from 
their familiar home, the initiation of deeper wisdom, and the return with a 
gift for their communities. What a gift if will be should she live to create 
her own Bountiful--or to continue to create her own Bountiful, which is all 
of her most genuine and generous art.

Deb Thornton


//  What a gift, indeed.  Thank you, Deb.  There are many who share your 
//  hopes.  - MF
_________________________________________________________________
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