Patty Griffin Performance

Tom Waits once described Bruce Springsteen’s early work as being like cinema, like small movies.  This description fits Patty’s work, too.  In San Francisco you could sense that the whole room was transported during songs such as “Top of the World,” “Nobody’s Crying,” and “Trapeze.” As Patty explained, she attempts to leave room for the listener to get involved in the material and, on some level, to collaborate with her.  The stories she tells are told through very concrete images but nonetheless an ambiguity remains.  These are not opaque songs but open songs, with room for listeners to imagine even more than Patty explicitly presents.

Quiet, shy in her way, but clearly game for a laugh, Patty was an enormous pleasure as a guest.  Several people came up to me after the show, amazed at what they had just seen, thrilled by the generosity of the artist and the sheer depth of her talent.  It was a great night of talk about songs, the strange places they come from, and the roads they take to get here.