When we last carried an interview with Patty Griffin I had stolen time from her backstage at The Band of Joy gig in Edinburgh, To get things started we’d knocked on her dressing room door. I felt slight trepidation at this point as I’d already encountered Robert Plant and he’d rightly wondered what on earth we were all doing there. My nerves, however, were offset by the intrigue of seeing her put down her guitar to come to the interview up the stair. What was she doing in there? ( to misquote Tom) Was she writing new songs…would there be an album….was anyone else involved?
The answers didn’t come immediately but a few weeks ago I found out everything. Patty Griffin and Robert Plan came in to Studio 1 at AC central to record a session and Patty talked extensively about that writing process, her collaborators and clear up if she was really writing songs in that dressing room. It was a truly one-off AC experience made slightly, and I choose this word carefully, surreal by the great presence of Robert. He was such fun; chatted to everyone about music, Scotland, being famous…everything really. It was also clear that he loved being involved and bringing a little more attention to what Patty Griffin was doing. As you well know – and I’ll reiterate it here again – I think Patty is my favourite singer. She could sing anything and proved how versatile she was on Downtown Church a couple of years back, but on this new record she’s on sparkling form writing, playing and singing her own songs. It’s a very moving story of loss too as she will explain when she tells us the story of her late father who didn’t say very much (he had been a trappist monk at one point) but did say the words, ‘Don’t Let Me Die In Florida.’ It’s a great session with some brilliant insights from Patty so don’t miss it.
We’ll play new things from Houndmouth, Mindy Smith, Dawn McCarthy and Bonnie Prince Billie and the very moving title track to the new Guy Clark album. Expect some great old music from Trisha Yearwood and another new voice from Scotland.
We start at the usual time of five past eight on BBC Radio Scotland.
