For a singer and songwriter who didn’t have very many “hits,” Nanci Griffith has been the subject of more than a couple of “best of” collections. Recently, three of her early country/folk releases, from her days on the Philo folk label, were reissued. From A Distance: The Very Best of Nanci Griffith (MCA Nashville), focuses on her MCA years (1987-1991) is the first of Griffith’s “greatest” compilations that doesn’t disappoint. One of the most remarkable things about the disc is how clearly you can hear the evolution of her sound. The songs from Lone Star State Of Mind (including the title track and her cover of “From A Distance” that pre-dates Bette Midler’s by a few years) her mid-’80s MCA debut has a strong country twang to it. Storms, her next disc (produced by Glyn Johns), featured a synthesized keyboard on songs such as “I Don’t Want To Talk About Love” and “It’s A Hard Life Wherever You Go,” which is a little startling at first, but sounds perfectly natural after the first listen. Griffith returned to her acoustic roots on Little Love Affairs, an album that contained one of her best-known songs, “Outbound Plane.” Oddly enough, synthesizers surface again on the Late Night Grande Hotel Disc, and enhance songs such as “It’s Just Another Morning Here” and the title track.
It’s been three years since What I Deserve, the last full-length Kelly Willis album was released. It was probably a daunting task for Willis to try and follow up an album as well-received and acclaimed as What I Deserve, but on the appropriately titled Easy (Rykodisc), she makes it sound, well, easy. Like its predecessor, Easy contains Willis originals and collaborations, including the lustrous, but shaded “Wait Until Dark” (co-written with John Leventhal), the heartbreaking “Reason To Believe,” and the country shuffle of “If I Left You.” Willis also has an “easy”-going way with songs by the late Kirsty MacColl (the suitably countrified “Don’t Come The Cowboy With Me Sonny Jim!”) and acclaimed blues artist Marcia Ball (a twangy version of “Find Another Fool”).
There seems to be little doubt that Dolly Parton has done some of her best work in the three years since she released Little Sparrow, her first album for bluegrass label Sugar Hill. Halos & Horns (Sugar Hill), her latest disc, continues the trend. The original songs range in style from the bluegrass blues of “Not For Me,” “What A Heartache,” “Dagger Through The Heart,” and “If Only” to joyful spirituals infused with a thoughtful religious fervor such as “Hello God” and “Raven Dove.” Parton also maintains her knack for storytelling, as you can hear on the flirtatious “Sugar Hill,” “John Daniel,” and the album’s delightful centerpiece “These Old Bones.” Parton also performs to covers, Bread’s “If” and Led Zepplin’s “Stairway To Heaven,” both of which are given new coats of paint through her bluegrass readings of the songs.
Kathy Mattea, a country music superstar and AIDS activist who helped redefine the sound from Nashville, dabbles in Celtic-influenced spirituals on her new album Roses (Narada). You can hear it in the mandolin on “Guns Of Love,” the whistle on “Ashes In The Wind” and “Come Away With Me,” and especially in the fiddle of the two-part “Isle of Inishmore.”
In keeping with the “roses” theme, there is Bramble Rose (Lost Highway) by Tift Merritt. Pairing Merritt up with producer Ethan John (Julianna Raye, Ryan Adams) makes perfect sense for the singer/songwriter’s major label debut disc. With the early albums of Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris in mind (and perhaps an unconscious nod to Sheryl Crow), Merritt has crafted 11 catchy contemporary country tunes, including “Trouble Over Me,” “Virginia, No One Can Hear You” “Bird Of Freedom,” “I Know Him Too,” and “Diamond Shoes.”
Country and roots music is no longer confined to Nashville, Tenn., and Austin, Tex. Witness Patty Blee, who is based on the Jersey Shore. Her album Disguise (Treasure) has enough of an audible twang to qualify it as country. Listen to the pedal steel guitar and violin on “Down To The Water,” and tell me I’m wrong.
The Best of Loretta Lynn, Volume 2: The Millennium Collection (MCA Nashville) will bring smiles to the faces of many country music traditionalists. Loretta Lynn’s influence can be heard in each of the artists’ above, and this compilation, which includes “Wine, Women and Song,” “Fist City,” “You’re Looking At Country,” and the controversial “The Pill,” covers her mid-’60s through early 1980s hits.