Faster than the speed of loneliness… Nanci dies at 68

It was like a message from nowhere, a simple dignified tweet from beyond the Great Divide.

‘Rest in Peace Nanci Griffith’ … that’s all it said. The message was from country hero John Prine who died last year.

I met them both after a concert in the UK Midlands. A winter’s rainy night outside but the red velvet of traditional old English theatre, crackling fires inside, and the tinkling chatter of quintessential British accents in the foyer.

Nanci was tired after the show she’d just done … a marathon of beautiful, enigmatic, heart breaking but gentle songs, songs like Midnight at the Five and Dime.

She was waiting, with John, in the ‘green room’ at the back of the stage still sparkling with floating dust in the beams from the forgotten lights.

I seem to remember Nanci was sucking in the smoke of a cigarette and sipping from a beer. (My memory may be a bit smokey itself after twenty years in the ruins of time).

She looked cool, elegant, a little sassy. A demur Southern country wife with hidden sultry depths.

Nanci smiled and I smiled back.

John Prine wafted an amiable and bony hand from the slouching leather armchair that had almost consumed him. He was looking laconically bloated.

Nanci told me she’d been brought up 50 miles from Austin, Texas, and as a teenager played the clubs there but, then, in the 70s she chose to become a kindergarten teacher.

It wasn’t long though before she hankered after the travelling troubadour life again and in 1977 gave songwriting another chance. 

And it worked.

We talked about the acclaim her 1993 covers collection, “Other Voices, Other Rooms,” had garnered. It’s still one of my favourite albums, with guest appearances from John, Emmylou Harris and Bob Dylan, who played harmonica for her on “Boots of Spanish Leather.”

How sad to have accidently come across John Prine’s posthumous tweet. It made that short chat all seem so far away, a dim trip down the memory lane of a woman’s artistry and my own pleasure in meeting her.

Now she is gone.

Born July 6th, 1953, in Seguin, Texas, Nanci Caroline Griffith began her performing career as a teenager, playing clubs and festivals around Texas.

She was 68 years old.