Nanci Griffith Live In Limerick And Galway, August 2008
By Emma Harney 28th Apr 2008

Grammy award winning music legend Nanci Griffith makes a welcome return to Ireland this August with three special shows: Wednesday 6th of August in LIT, Limerick plus Thursday 7th and Friday 8th of August in the Town Hall Theatre, Galway.

Whether performing her own poetically evocative material or the compositions of her influences, friends, and peers, Nanci Griffith possesses a powerful gift for inhabiting the songs she sings - for communicating unspoken intimacy and heartache through her tender voice and lilting, delicate phrasing. Her live performances in Limerick and Galway will feature all her best- known and best-loved classic songs.

At the outset of a career that has now spanned nearly three decades, Griffith first emerged as a writer of startling depth and subtlety, crafting sparse uncluttered vignettes that revealed a wealth of emotion in even the most humble of characters and settings. With her gifts as a songwriter lending invaluable insight, Griffith has also grown into a formidable interpreter of other people's songs, as demonstrated on such albums as the Grammy® Award-winning Other Voices, Other Rooms.

Born in Austin to “West Texas liberal” (her words) parents, Griffith began performing at the tender age of 14. Legendary songwriter Tom Russell, her earliest champion, heard her singing around a campfire that year at the Kerrville Folk Festival. Her career started to blossom in the late 70s and early 80s, with the release, and eventual re-release on Philo/Rounder, of her first two independent recordings, There's A Light Beyond These Woods and Poet In My Window. These were followed by the release of two other albums on Rounder, Once In A Very Blue Moon and Last Of The True Believers, which included Nanci's signature songs “Love at the Five and Dime” and “The Wing and the Wheel.” Last of the True Believers was nominated for a Grammy in Contemporary Folk in 1986, and “Love At The Five And Dime” was nominated for Country Song of The Year for Kathy Mattea, who sang it. Upon arriving in Nashville, Nanci Griffith swept Nashville off its collective feet with what Rolling Stone later described as her unique form of “folkabilly” music. She came to Music City as one of the brightest lights in a new generation of artists merging country with folk and pop music that included Lyle Lovett, Dwight Yoakum, and Steve Earle.


Her admirers are legion (Bob Dylan specifically requested that she sing “Boots of Spanish Leather” at his historic Madison Square Garden anniversary concert), and her awards appropriately numerous: five Grammy nominations, including a win for her gracious 1993 recording Other Voices, Other Rooms celebrating other songwriters, and two more for her dazzling performances on albums by The Chieftains. She has penned some of country music's most enduring compositions, including Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson's “Gulf Coast Highway,” Kathy Mattea's “Love at the Five and Dime” and “Listen to the Radio,” and Suzy Bogguss's “Outbound Plane.” Nanci was the first to record Julie Gold's Grammy®-winning classic, “From a Distance.”


Gig Details
Wednesday 6th August - LIT, Limerick
€42.00 Tickets from theatre box office Tel: 061-331549, book online www.uch.ie Doors 7.30pm

Thursday 7th & Friday 8th August - Town Hall Theatre, Galway
€42.00 Tickets from theatre box officeTel: +353 91 569777, book online www.townhalltheatregalway.com Doors 7.30pm

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