THERE'S A VOICE BEYOND THESE WOODS (MARY MARGARET)

"Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.” - To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

I know we all have to check twice these days if we hear that a celebrity has died as the phenomenon of 'fake deaths' has become a feature of modern life like some sort of morbid random April's fools but only recently I discovered that the singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith did, in fact, actually die in October 2021 and am perplexed that I didn't know sooner. She had been a staple of my musical family for a good decade or so after first discovering her by listening to her CD 'Retrospective' on MCA Records. It seems she slipped off this mortal coil as unassumingly as she rose to fame in the world of country music where her light broke free from its bushel despite the 'fiercely private' artist's obvious shyness and life long battle with depression. According to her management she had requested 'that no formal statement be issued until a week after her death.' Perhaps this explains the discrepancy of me missing hearing the staggered, sad news back then at the time.

There's a fine line between maudlin tweeness and sincere authenticity and somehow, miraculously, Nanci Griffith found it during the best years of her career where she seemed to combine the wistfulness of Patsy Cline and the rock-a-billy swing of Buddy Holly with the worldly southern insights of Harper Lee's 'To Kill A Mockingbird'. In many ways I always imagined Griffith as Scout Finch all grown up and extending her father's sense of decency and well intentioned outrage at the world's injustices on the many stages she performed on in front of audiences across the globe.

It had been reported that she became a little too obsessed with politics toward the end of her life which is sad as it was the universal messages of her earlier songs which made her so beloved by those who encountered her work. Watching some of her interviews on YouTube, you can see a distinct sadness in her eyes and from what I've since read about her personal life it's perhaps understandable that she would be prone to bouts of severe depression and long periods of introverted reclusion. Strangely, I also recently heard of the premature death of a woman I knew who lived for awhile in my local town. She also had that same sad look of Nanci Griffith in her eyes and learning of her demise so close to learning of the loss of the Texas born musician made me draw a comparison. There was a sense in both these women that somehow the world and reality had betrayed their dreams of youth and with it broken their tender hearts. Maybe it was my guilty conscience rankling with me as I recalled that the last conversation I had with the local woman had been politically related and had left an unresolved state of affairs between us. Now she's sadly gone and I'm reminded of one of Griffith's most iconic songs, 'Late Night Grande Hotel', where she sings ...

"And maybe you were thinkin'
that you thought you knew me well
But, no one ever knows the heart of anyone else
I feel like Garbo in this late night grande hotel
Cause living alone is all I've ever done well"

Playing some of the artist's most famous songs after years of almost forgetting them entirely I was happily reminded of the sheer quality of her back catalogue. From 'Trouble In The Fields' to 'Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness' and my favourite of them all 'There's A Light Beyond These Woods, Mary Margaret' where she writes to her childhood friend and wonders what happened to their shared curiosity about 'the light, that glowed beyond our woods', a metaphor for dreams beyond Austin,Texas where they both grew up. The song captures the pure essence of what made Griffith's voice so unique and evocative as she seems to combine an 'old head' type of folk wisdom with the heartfelt innocence of a young woman daring to hope and ask questions about what this life is all about beyond the struggles of merely existing. It's this Audrey Hepburn-like fragility of Griffith that seems to accentuate the beauty of her work and listening to 'There's A Light Beyond These Woods' captures all this about her spirit and unlocks that ethereal sense of the spiritual that rarely finds a home in popular music. One also wonders how long it was until Mary Margaret found out that her lifelong friend had died.

"The fantasies we planned, well, Maggie,
I'm living them now.
All the dreams we sang, oh, we damn sure knew
How, but I haven't changed.
There'll never be two friends like you and me,
Maggie, can't you see?"

The light may have faded but the voice can still be heard beyond those same woods where it echoes along with all the other great musicians of history in the eternal song.