NANCI GRIFFITH, Red Butte Garden, Sunday.
Even in the face of pain, Nanci Griffith can remain strongly optimistic.
Such was the case during her Sunday evening show at Red Butte, which she ended prematurely because of kidney problems which had forced her into a Boise hospital the previous day. Yet even with her health problems — and from "being a little loopy" because of the "Rush Limbaugh drugs" she was taking — Griffith managed to deliver almost 75 minutes of music.
As on her most recent album, "Hearts In Mind," the opening song "Simple Life" set the tone for the performance with its mid-tempo, two-step pace and idealistic lyricism. Based on her between-song chatter, "Simple Life" may very well define her outlook on life: "I want a simple life/Like my mother/One true love for my older years/I don't want your wars/To take my children."
While Griffith may be lossely classified in the same camp as other "West Texas liberals," she is really nothing more than an American patriot who wants a peaceful world run with compassion. While that may place her in opposition to the current president, Griffith focused what few political statements she made on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and her hope that "love" would fix the world's problems.
She also got her loudest spontaneous cheers when she improvised during "The Flyer," a song about a chance encounter (and possibly immediate love) with an Air Force pilot, by adding the line, "I would give anything/To see all our flyers, flyin' home tonight."
Although most of her songs stayed within the same comfortable rhythm — fast enough to keep people's feet tapping but not quite peppy enough to get people dancing — the two best songs of the night came when she slowed everything down. On "Late Night Grand Hotel" and "Gulf Coast Highway," the focus shifted to her delicate Texas twang, framed beautifully by the piano of James Hooker, and they grabbed the crowd's attention better than the more upbeat songs. The latter also featured a duet with Hooker, whose gritty, Merle Haggard-esque voice provided a nice contrast to Griffith.
The most insightful moment of the night came during her introduction to her biggest hit, "From A Distance," which she said actually sat on the shelf for almost five years because the record company said it would never work as a single. Of course, it eventually found its way into Bette Midler's hands and became one of the more ubiquitous torch songs of recent times.
Other highlights included the fun "I Love This Town," which is sung as a duet with Jimmy Buffett on the album (and the song sounds more Buffett than Griffith), but was sung equally well on Sunday as a duet with guitarist Clive Gregson. Griffith's closing song, "If I Had A Hammer," was also a lively finale.
Sadly, Griffith was not able to come back to the stage for an encore and, despite her perpetual onstage smile, she looked genuinely tired when leaving. Then, again she had delivered 15 songs' worth of material, which for many artists is enough to constitute a full show.
E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com