// News of upcoming tour appearances, some words on the
// someday-soon new Nanci album, and more...
// Be sure to hang in to the end, so you don't miss another
// powerful post from Deb Thornton. [BP]

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Subject: NN: Calling all AZ NG fans!
    From: mark
    Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2004 9:14 PM

In case you're interested!

http://www.nancigriffith.com/tour_current_active.php?id=77

Mark

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Subject: NN: New CD
    From: Keith Farman
    Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2004 6:51 PM

Hi all.

Any news about the new CD?  Surely NG isn't going to tour the UK without
the CD out to promote?

Keith

// ask and ye shall receive...see below...[BP]

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Subject: NN: Nanci's Forthcoming New Album: January 2005
    From: Judith and Bruce Umminger
    Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 7:46 AM

I just picked up some news on Nanci's next album from Le Ann Etheridge's
website at:

http://www.leannetheridge.com/lagniappe.htm

The pertinent text is:

"January was cold, but we kept warm while recording tracks from Nanci's
new record.  She titled it 'Hearts in Mind'.  Nanci and Pat co-produced
it.  We recorded down on Music Row at one of those old 70's-style
studio, meaning there was lots and lots of dark wood and shag carpet.
But it had a cool vibe-we called it 'our treehouse.'  For two weeks, the
usual suspects (James Hooker, Ron de la Vega, Clive Gregson, Pat and me)
met up everyday around 10 and began to work.  Can you call it work when
you have that much fun?  There are a few new Nanci Griffith songs
(YEAH!!!) and she's recorded another Julie Gold song, one by Clive, one
by Tom Kimmel and Jennifer Kimball.  She duets with Mac McAnally on a
beautiful ballad written by my late friend, Ron Davies, called 'Rise to
the Occasion.'  And she recorded one of my songs 'Back when Ted Loved
Sylvia' and we co-wrote another one called 'Before.'  Long-time Blue
Moon Orchestra fans will be pleased to know Doug Lancio joined us for
the studio festivities.  Steel guitar legend Lloyd Green and Mr. Jimmy
Buffet are featured guests.  It's a great new Nanci Griffith album, but
you'll have to wait-it's slated for release January 2005 on Universal
Records."

Earlier news reports of Nanci's forthcoming album:

Elizabeth Cook will be singing "Simple Life" with Nanci on Nanci's new
album slated for September 2004.  For details, see
http://elizabeth-cook.com/Page_News/ECNewsFrame.html  Elizabeth co-wrote
this song with Nanci and she sang it with Nanci on Nanci's February 22,
2003, Grand Ole Opry appearance.  It is not the same song "Simple Life"
that Nanci wrote and Jeanie Stahl sang on her "All Grown Up" album.

Here's some additional information I gleaned from the Web regarding
Nanci's forthcoming album.
Parlor Productions recently announced the following on its website at
http://parlorproductions.com/news/entry?id=9 :

"Jimmy Buffet recently joined Nanci Griffith at The Parlor Studio to
record a duet for Griffith's upcoming album.  The song "I Love This
Town" was written by Clive Gregson, engineered by John Hurley, and
produced by Griffith and Pat McInerney, her long-time
drummer/percussionist in The Blue Moon Orchestra.  Griffith's as yet
untitled new album is tentatively scheduled for a fall 2004 release.

Bruce Umminger

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Subject: NN: House concert- Some Nanci Content
    From: Molly Prive
    Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2004 4:35 PM

I hosted Johnsmith in a house concert last night and it was fantastic!
He was a hit and I recommend seeing him. He was so charming, we had a
great time visiting with him. He asked how I had heard about his music,
and I told him someone on the Nancinet had recommended him. He said he
ran into Nanci not too long ago in an airport and told her how much his
girls enjoyed her music. He did not let on who he was, said she was very
sweet and gracious!! (He has worked with Tom Kimmel, once engaged to
NG.)

If you ever have the chance to catch him...do it!

Molly in Oregon

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Subject: NN: RE: Actually...
    From: ChocChippy
    Sent: Sunday, September 12, 2004 10:22 PM

In a message dated 9/5/04 someone writes:

(( Craig Fuller left Pure Prairie League after recording Amie to go to
Canada to avoid the draft.>>

I remember PPL coming to play at my college in the late '70s (with the
Marshall Tucker Band!); "Amie," their big hit was in '75, and the U.S.
draft ended in Feb. 1973 (I just checked the Selective Service's
website, not like I pulled that up from memory...), so if the dude moved
to Canada to avoid the draft, he must not have paying a whole lot of
attention.

Now THAT's how urban legends get started...

Kathleen W.

(Who has been having the "should we move to another country" discussion
with my partner. "You know, they REALLY don't want us here..." she said.
"That's exactly why I want to stay," I replied. "I'm a citizen, too,
whether they like it or not.")

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Subject: NN: RE: RE: Actually...
    From: Ken Stiffler
    Sent: Monday, September 13, 2004 3:14 AM

Kathleen W. wrote:
>> "Amie," their big hit was in '75, and the U.S. draft ended in Feb.
1973

One of those odd little bits of music trivia. If I remember correctly,
Amie was a late-charting hit. By the time Amie became a hit, Fuller was
long gone. He'd been replaced in Pure Prairie League, which had expanded
from a four piece band to about six people or so, and a new record "Two
Lane Highway" had already been released (or was released about the same
time). I remember seeing PPL in late '75 and being disappointed that the
vocals on Amie were so different from the record and that they did
nothing anywhere nearly as smooth as Early Morning Riser or Boulder
Skies. At the time, I had no idea of the personnel changes.

When I posted about Craig Fuller, in that brief synopsis of PPL history
I also forgot to mention that, in a later incarnation, PPL included a
young Vince Gill.

All in all, and one way or another, PPL was a more influential band than
they get credit for.

After a quick Google search, here's a followup:

Check out http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/pure_prairie_league/bio.jhtml
and see how uneven my memory is.  :)  At least I was in the ball park,
though Fuller maybe never went to Canada? Now that I read it, the
hospital story sounds familiar. If Fuller never went to Canada, I'm not
sure how he was included in Ford's pardon, though now that my memory is
getting jogged, I seem to remember hearing that Susan Ford was a big PPL
fan and part of the impetus for Ford pardoning the draft resisters was
being pestered by his daughter in regards to Fuller.

Oh yeah, that's right: Carter pardoned the draft resisters - and was a
fan of country rock bands like Marshall Tucker Band, which probably
explains my confusion.  :)

So Ford pardoned Fuller at the urging of his daughter Susan, but only
after Fuller had missed out on the benefits of having a hit song on the
radio. But it appears Fuller never left the country, so that blows the
entire point of posting about Fuller in the first place. What can I say?

Life is strange.   :)

Ken

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Subject: NN: blood
    From: Deb Thornton
    Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 4:46 PM

I have been reading with interest all these months, and perhaps the
opportunity to postpone preparing for class drives me to comment. Or
maybe it's having reached a political saturation point, a weather
disaster saturation point, a soul shock wave shaking from the
blood-soaked earth, newly freshened by the red tide of children going to
school. Maybe it's teaching the writings of Martin Luther King and
Flannery O'Connor with their calls for nonviolence and maps of grace and
mystery. Maybe it's cooler temperatures, a mountain on fire early,
reddened and fallen leaves. Maybe it's three years of insane lies,
persuasions, mushroom clouds, being here downwind and facing more wind.
Maybe it's the child's innocent eyes, the colleague's conversational
tenderness, the mother's appeal, the father's nurturing, the heart's
deepening. Perhaps it's walking near-dawn in a broad mountain valley and
the moon's crescent dipping bluewhite halflight, Venus a spotlight
closeby, Orion and his dog standing guard among diminishing stars and
the brief silhouette of a pelican flying across the moon's horns, the
unwieldy body held aloft by languid wings, a gangly blend of calm and
movement. Maybe it's slitting the belly of a rainbow, ripping its gills
from their point of attachment and running my thumb up its spine to
release the last of her pooled blood from her body, this fish I killed.
The blood on my hands.

The checks and balances neither check nor balance; the boundaries are
eroded by legislation and inattention. The demise of totalitarianism
unbalanced the nuclear holocaust, unchecked the cold warriors who saw a
clear path to world dominance and may have forged in their mind's
manacles the great governmental paradox: the origin of totalitarian
democracy or democratic totalitarianism, if you prefer. I don't think
the architects of war mean well. On the world stage, much has been
destroyed in a few years' time, and the echoes of echoes of a war
declared on a sovereign nation creates a new holocaust, the spawn of two
words: pre-emptive defense. Otherwise known as offense. The political
agenda that assumes world dominance (with what restraint) through a
marriage of military might and commercial colonialism may be a rough
beast slouching towards Bethlehem, and its blood-dimmed tide may engulf
us all. Armageddon? They may have recipe, blueprint, will, command.

I'm not OK. I'm tired. We are all human beings. My blood prefers to work
in veins. I can wash the fish blood off my hands, but it's still spilt,
dislodged from veins. I can join the dying and rip my gills out, drown
in air and human voices. But in the shadows, the fallen leaves glimmer
in the halflight, returning to earth from a season of green breathing.
The rain of grace moistens the parched earth. This is the Body of Christ
in the earth? Not as the world giveth...

What will I give? And to whom? I still have those choices. God help me,
I still have those choices. I can still choose not to fear, can turn to
Faulkner's list: love and honor and pity and pride and sacrifice and
honor and courage and hope and endurance.

Tonight I'll walk the lake shore, binoculars in hand. I'll see pelicans
skimming the surface, killdeer panicking, a child and a dog running in
the water, a mother-ship keeping close watch, black-necked stilts,
avocets, rafts of ibis, an egret or two, maybe a heron, billions of
gnats, swallows not keeping up. Maybe some ducks, a watersnake, a beach
littered with shells and feathers. A sunset. The red end of another day.
Fatigue in mind and knees, I'll bend down and thank a loving God for
this day, for the souls in it. I'll pray for the rain of grace to
continue to fall on the sinless earth and its denizens, for the rain to
wash the blood from my hands. I will marvel: "This is the world You died
for."

And tomorrow, one cherished and transitory moment after another, I'll
take another look, peering into time and space for a glimpse of that
so-loved world.

Deb Thornton

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