Patty Griffin: 'Crown of Roses' (Listening Party)

Patty Griffin's 11th studio album Crown of Roses is a personal record that finds her reflecting on the death of her mother and her own cancer treatment. She will be at Sony Hall on July 29. She joins us for a Listening Party.

Alison Stewart: Crown of Roses is the title of Patty Griffin's latest album. Let's take a listen to part of the first track, a song called Back at the Start.

[MUSIC - Patty Griffin: Back at the Start]

Some things push you round so far

Knock you down so hard

It's hard to get up anymore

But here is the thing that I've known from the start

It don't mean a thing if you can't feel your heart

You might lose everything

Spend years in the dark but

It isn't the end you're just back at the start

Alison Stewart: The eight-track project marks the 10th album since her celebrated debut Living with Ghosts, which featured the acoustic folk song about her mother's love titled Sweet Lorraine. Let's take a listen.

[MUSIC - Patty Griffin: Living with Ghosts]

Lorraine who spoke of paintings in Paris

And outlandish things to her family just to scare us

Whose heart went pokin' where it shouldn't ought to

Whose mother could only spit at the thought of

Lorraine

Alison Stewart: The new album is the first since her mother died earlier this year at 93. Partly inspired by her, Lorraine's wedding photo graces the cover of Crown of Roses. A New York Times profile says it's about family, love, and politics that play out as country waltzes, little symphonies, and jagged blues. Joining us for a listening party is Patty Griffin. Patty, it is nice to see you.

Patty Griffin: Nice to see you, too. Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: Of course. Wanted to mention Patty will be at Sony Hall on West 46th Street tomorrow night at 8:00 PM. You kick off the album with that upbeat song, that Back at the Start. It's about starting over. What lessons have you learned in life from having to start over that made their way onto this album?

Patty Griffin: That starting over keeps going until you're done. [laughs] There's always something new. There's always some new challenge. Also, getting to hang out with a 90-something-year-old for the last few years, there really is anything more challenging than that part of life, which is disappointing to think about. We're muddling through now, working really hard, going, "Well, it's going to get easier later," and it's quite just the opposite, unfortunately, but also I'm glad to be challenged at the same time.

Alison Stewart: You were your mom's caretaker.

Patty Griffin: I was one of them. I'm one of seven children, and we all took turns doing that.

Alison Stewart: What did you learn from that experience?

Patty Griffin: I just really learned a little bit more about who my mom was, which I had missed a lot of. It occurred to me about 10 or 15 years ago that I didn't know her very well at all, and I just knew I needed to put some work into that.

Alison Stewart: You started the album with that upbeat track. Why did you choose it to be the first song, and what tone did it set for the rest of the record?

Patty Griffin: I thought it was a little more friendly than some of the other stuff on the record. It's a happy or sounding thing. I think it's the only one on the record that's like that, too. Everything's a little bit more-- I was trying out some new ways to sing. I'm getting older and voices changed and been through this and that and the other thing. Just experimenting a little bit with sound. I started with something that was maybe a little bit more familiar for everybody.

Alison Stewart: You want to set the table a little bit, like, "Here's a nice, safe table. Sit down. Now we'll talk about stuff."

Patty Griffin: Right. Exactly.

Alison Stewart: It was a song, though, I read-- It was an old idea. An old song that came back to you.

Patty Griffin: I went through a period of time, probably from late 2019 through this last year, where I would write stuff and then just immediately think, "That's terrible," and not use it. This song, Back at the Start, had a version that we played at a band rehearsal, and everybody said, "Let's do this tonight," and we did it. I was reading the lyrics, and I don't see very well, so we did it live, and I couldn't see what I was doing, and it didn't go very well. I just went, "Well, we're not going to do that anymore. Then I found it on my little voicemails of voice memos and thought, "Well, that's not so bad," but I couldn't remember the lyrics, and I had to rewrite it. That's how that came about.

Alison Stewart: That's interesting. How often does that happen, that you just toss something aside and then come back around to it and think, "Oh, this might be the right time?"

Patty Griffin: It did a lot for me. I think I had a confidence crisis. I used to write really based on what my voice wanted to do, and then my voice didn't do what I wanted it to do for quite a while. I had to find new ways of writing. Now my voice is matching up a little bit more with what I want to write. It was Hard to know whether things were keepers or not, because I would always have a feeling inside of my body from singing that would tell me, "Keep this." I wasn't able to do that for a while, so I had to adjust.

Alison Stewart: When did the album start to take shape? When did you really feel like, "I've got a series of songs that I can make into a record?"

Patty Griffin: I was trying to get Craig Ross interested in producing yet another record for me, and I sent him a pile of these voice memos. Just listening down through, I went, "Wow, he's going to really like these," and he did.

Patty Griffin: It was that simple.

Patty Griffin: Yes. I realized that there was something here. I wasn't really thinking, "Let's go make a record that people talk about." I really just wanted to put a record out that-- I'm 61. I'm just lucky to have been here this long, so I just was going to put a record out that the fans would have something new to listen to. I felt like I really needed to do that, anyway.

Alison Stewart: My guest is singer, songwriter, and musician Patty Griffin. She just released her latest studio album, Crown of Roses. She joins us for a listening party before performing at Sony Hall on West 46th Street tomorrow night at 8:00 PM. It's a listening party, so let's listen to some more music from the album. This is a song titled I Know A Way. It's Bukka Allen playing organ and electric piano on this song. How'd you hook up with him, and why did the organ seem like the right instrument to use?

Patty Griffin: The organ was Craig's call. Bukka, I've known for 25 years or so. We just live in the same town. That's it.

Alison Stewart: He seems like a really-- the right person to send your song to. Even if he didn't write it, you could send it to him, and he would have something to add to it.

Patty Griffin: Bukka? Yes. There's a lot of that going on on this record.

Alison Stewart: Yes? Oh, tell me.

Patty Griffin: Austin's got a great scene still, even though we're finding it hard to rent. You guys can relate to that here. There's still amazing musicians there.

Alison Stewart: Oh, I used to go to Austin all the time. The Ugly Americans. Do you remember them?

Patty Griffin: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Hanging out with them a lot. Enough said. Let's listen to Patty Griffin, I Know A Way.

[MUSIC - Patty Griffin: I know A Way]

You can’t go down that road

The one that you knew so well

It disappeared in a landslide

There’s not a plane in the air

That’s gonna get you there

Believe me

It’s been tried and tried and tried

Sometimes you feel like a fool

To try and try again

To keep on singing out

Straight into the wind

With all the bells ringing, yeah

So many voices singing

Trying and trying to bring in some love, love, love, love, love

But I know a way

At least I heard of a way

Alison Stewart: That's Patty Griffin with I Know A Way. The first line you hear in that song is, "You can't go down that road. The one that you knew so well." What were you thinking about when you were writing that line?

Patty Griffin: That sometimes life does that to you. God, it's doing it to everybody on the globe right now in different degrees. Like it or not, you're not immune from these massive changes that are happening to life on the planet. You just got to keep going, figure out how to keep going. That's just that simple. I know A Way is taken from-- It's like a tipping the hat to the gospel song I Know a Way to Get Over and how I got over that song. I listen to a lot of gospel music because it just serves this thing inside you. It gets you to keep going. I'm not really particularly Christian, but I really love music that's set up to empower, and I think that expression.

Alison Stewart: If someone wanted to get into gospel, what are two tracks they should listen to after this interview's over?

Patty Griffin: Oh, God. I would just get Freedom Highway by the Staples Singers. That's a really great place to start [crosstalk] going to school.

Alison Stewart: All right, everybody, get Freedom Highway, according to Patty Griffin. I want to talk to you about a phrase used in a New York Times profile that was done on you. You should read it, by the way. It's the come apart. You wrote that in this New York Times piece that you hope that the album Crown of Roses and your mother's passing are the capstone of a nearly two-decade period that you've called the come apart. First of all, what is the come apart?

Patty Griffin: I think everybody is in their life, and they're going along, and sometimes you're aware and sometimes you're not aware that you like how things are going, but it's not exactly where you feel like you belong. When I got to do music full-time, I was just so excited to do music full-time that I was like, "Yes, whatever you got to do, I'll do that." I drifted away from some of my early joys of making music, I think. I had a really hard time just figuring out how to get that to all go back to a much more natural thing for me. Does that make any sense?

Alison Stewart: A little bit. Yes.

Patty Griffin: I think I would daydream about just blowing it all up and going and becoming a hermit for a while. I didn't have to because my life did that anyway. It blew up on me, in small ways, nothing really, fortunately, very disastrous. There were a few train wrecks in the last 15 years that forced me to go small and get with myself.

Alison Stewart: You had cancer?

Patty Griffin: Yes.

Alison Stewart: That's what we're talking about.

Patty Griffin: One of them, yes.

Alison Stewart: One of the difficulties is that you ended up losing your voice due to radiation treatment. First of all, what was that like?

Patty Griffin: Awful. You can relate, because you--

Alison Stewart: I can relate.

Patty Griffin: It's an identity crisis for sure.

Alison Stewart: Did you have a moment when you thought, "Okay, I'm going to go work in a bookstore? What am I going to do? I can't sing. I can't express myself the way I'm used to."

Patty Griffin: I was thinking I might be able to get good at bagging groceries. I really, really like doing that. [laughs] Where I go, they'll let me bag my own groceries sometimes, and I'm getting really pretty good at it. Anyway, I didn't know if I was retired or not for sure for a while.

Alison Stewart: What made you keep going?

Patty Griffin: I would go and do shows, and it's really humbling to have a relationship with an audience for 30 years. People just, they show up year after year, record after record, and they want this service from you. I think when I was younger, I thought of it as this effort I had to make. I didn't really see until I got older that it's a generosity that's coming back towards you. It just made me inspired to keep going. Just the act of singing in the most basic way, just humming along to a record or something, it always makes you feel better. Why not just do that? However it sounds, keep doing that.

Alison Stewart: Was there anything a fan said to you that has stuck with you during that period when you weren't quite sure if you were going to sing again or if you were going to sing differently, and was that okay?

Patty Griffin: Probably there was, but I can't think of anything right now. I think I just needed to find a natural voice inside of me because it had changed very dramatically and very quickly. It took a while. Still working on that in my mind.

Alison Stewart: We're talking to singer, songwriter, and musician Patty Griffin. Her new album is called Crown of Roses. She's joining us for a listening party. It's time to listen to another song. This is a song called Born in a Cage. Can you tell us a little bit about the backstory behind this?

Patty Griffin: This is a co-write. We started making this song-- Michael Longoria and David Pulkingham, and I were doing a show in Montana, and we were doing a sound check. Michael was playing some beats, and I started humming. It just seemed like something was happening. I hit the voice memo and then wrote lyrics to it later called Born-- It just wanted to be Born in a Cage, so that's what it is.

Alison Stewart: This is Patty Griffin.

[MUSIC - Patty Griffin: Born in a Cage]

All over the world

The little birds stop singing

Morning comes through the trees

But they are gone

Maybe they're fast asleep somewhere or tired

Or finally forgotten the song

Year after year they disappear from the valley

Year after year they disappear from the high plains

Mothers still cry

But after a while

No one's searching

Just a faded sign in the rain

Another day goes by in this strange age

Are they gone or do they hide from the rage

Alison Stewart: I love the clapping in the background. It's my favorite part.

Patty Griffin: That's Craig. He loves to clap. He's clapping all over this record. He's like, "I clapped there. Is that okay? I'm leaving it."

Alison Stewart: It's interesting because you cited Brazilian singer Rosa Paseos as an--

Patty Griffin: Rosa Passos.

Alison Stewart: Passos, thank you. She's amazing. Go look her up. Rickie Lee Jones and Billie Holiday, and your mom as inspiration for you vocally.

Patty Griffin: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What do all those women have in common?

Patty Griffin: They're brokenhearted, I think. I don't know about Rosa Passos. She doesn't look brokenhearted, but I think to sing like that, you have to be. There's a very clear presentation of-- My superpower is I know how to sit with brokenheartedness and sing it ou,t and it heals. It helps people somehow. It's quite a service, actually. Billie Holiday, I spent some time thinking a lot about her in the last few years, and there's so much about her life that's out there that you know all about her tragedies. To sing that close to the bone every single time, that's quite a service because it does really serve people to have that music to listen to. I don't know.

Alison Stewart: No, I think poetry is that way, too.

Patty Griffin: Yes.

Alison Stewart: When people are feeling things, they want to hear music or they want to read poetry.

Patty Griffin: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Your mom's on this album quite a bit. How would you describe how she's on this album? I don't want to describe it. I'd rather hear you describe it.

Patty Griffin: There's actually a song about her which she never got to hear. She passed away before this record was finished. She's literally on this record. I think the experiences that I've had with her in the last 10 years of life have shaped so much of where I'm at now. I don't think that she and I had a close relationship for a very long period of time. While we were rebuilding it, I was thinking, "It's really too bad we didn't." I think one of the things that I've learned from rebuilding my relationship with my mother is how much power there is in certain places in the world that don't get any attention at all.

The engine of the world is not getting any attention. The engine just keeps being the engine. Does that make any sense at all? She was part of that. She was part of that story of just-- She was an engine that made a lot happen and sent a lot out into the world. At the end of her life, she wasn't really even sure that she had been a good mom, even. She had all these doubts about everything. She questioned everything about herself, because we just don't tend to look at those people as powerful very often in our culture. I learned that that is the power. That is the one. That's the one that I am really interested in listening to now.

Alison Stewart: We got this amazing text that says, "I saw Patty in 2016 at the Old City Winery. She played with a guy who added a second guitar. Just the two of them. An amazing show."

Patty Griffin: Oh, wow.

Alison Stewart: Patty Griffin's latest album is Crown of Roses. It's out now. She has a show tomorrow night at Sony Hall on West 46th Street at 8:00 PM. Patty, thanks for joining us.

Patty Griffin: Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: We're going to go out on the song Way Up to the Sky.

[MUSIC - Patty Griffin: Way Up to the Sky]

It was a hard time

It was a long line

It was a steep climb

With too many kids to handle

She got her kids raised

And her nerves frayed

As her life blazed through her eyes

Made out of candles

Those lumber trucks kept rolling south

With their loads of