I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: July 16, 2026] Patty Griffin

I have Patty Griffin’s first two albums.  I liked her first album (folkie) and really liked her more rocking second album Flaming Red.  I’d always thought she had kind of a weird voice but it was a cool voice. And then after those two albums I’d basically forgotten about her.  My wife really liked one of her songs (Where I Come From).  That one’s from 2019 and seems more likely that it would have been played.

Patty Griffin came out on stage with two musicians-a percussionist who was wonderful to watch–he had so much gear and hit all kinds of things.  I was very happy we were on his side of the stage.  And a guitarist who made some amazing sounds come from his guitar.  She announced their names but I didn’t hear either one.

Patty stood front and center and began singing.  And she didn’t sound anything like I thought she would.  I realized that the albums I liked were 30 years old, but I didn’t expect her to sound so different.  And when she spoke, it was practically a whisper.  Well, I have just learned today that Patty Griffin had a battle with breast cancer in 2016 and lost her voice.  She started singing again in 2019.

So I guess that explains why she sounds different.  And probably why she doesn’t sing any of her older songs–at some other recent shoes she did sing a song from her debut but clearly not at every show.

As she started All the Way Home, the guy in front of us whooped.  Really loudly.  I admit that I don’t like whoopers at the best of times.  But this was a small, quiet crowd.  In no way was any whoop necessary, but certainly once you did one and the crowd didn’t react, it’s time to read the room dude.

I enjoyed these first two songs from her latest album.  Back at the Start had s cool surf-guitar sound that sounded great with her whispery voice.  She played The Wheel from that 2019 album (my wife liked the wrong song, I guess).Then she played a bluesy song called Standing.  I don’t really like the blues as a genre, so I didn’t love this one.  Up next was a song about her mother’s passing.  Indeed, her whole new album is about that.  Born in a cage was a very pretty song. 

Then she moved to the piano and the guys left.  She said that she had written lots of songs about her mother, including Sweet Lorraine (from her debut) which her mother hated–she hated being written about.   The whooper had settled down an bit and even left to get a beer, I guess.  He came back during Servant of Love.  Patty was still on piano and her guitarist came back to make some really cool sounds while she played.

She followed it up with a “gospel” song.  She said had been trying to write a gospel song forever and this was it.  She started I Know a Way, a song that Patty can really belt out the words and the whooper started whooping mid-song.  He was also pumping his fist in the air to the beat.  I mean, what the hell?  The people in front of him left.  The people to his right left.  I’m not sure how embarrassed the people he was with were, but jeez, I was embarrassed to be near him.

Patty grabbed a mandolin for Shine a Different Way and when the guy whooped mid-song I swear she gave a dirty look in his direction.  And I told my wife we had to leave the area.  Which we did when the song was over.  We headed over to the other side of the room (I knew there were empty seats).

When we sat on the other side she played a song that she recorded with Raul Malo called Virgen de Guadalupe.  She sang it in Spanish and her Spanish sounded great.  She followed this up by saying that she was forming a club called the Recovering Assholes club.  I imagined that she was going to ask the whooper to join the club.  But she said that the next song No Bad News was the club’s anthem.  It was possibly my favorite song of the night from her.

She ended the set with The End.  Interestingly, a guy near us on this side kept telling someone to shut up and then even went and got a security guard.  The guard did nothing ad it was all just a little far away for me to know what happened.  Ending with The End makes sense, but she did come out for  a quick encore–it is a school night after all.  She sang the pretty The Word, and that was that.  The night was done by 10:20 or so.

So I wound up not enjoying Patty Griffin all that much.  Much of it was because of the whooper.  But I also didn’t like the bluesy/gospelly side of things.  She kind of lost momentum for me when she played the piano.  There were some songs I did like though, and I just went back and listened to he first two albums and liked them both quite a bit.

But as with many things, I guess I am against the stream of opinion

In 2007, Griffin received the Artist of the Year award from the Americana Music Association, and her album Children Running Through won the award for Best Album. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting at the 2023 Americana Music Honors & Awards. In 2011, Griffin’s album Downtown Church won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Gospel Album and her 2019 self-titled album won the Grammy Award for Best Folk Album. She got a 2026 Grammy Awards nomination for her album Crown of Roses in the Best Folk Album category.

⊕ Crown of Roses (2025)
¶ Patty Griffin (2019)
♥ Servant of Love (2015)
± Downtown Church (2010)
⇔ Children Running Through (2007)
Ø Impossible Dream (2004)