Last Friday evening, while still in a state of shock only minutes after hearing Nanci Griffith was dead, I posted on Twitter about a book we’d written together once and said how proud I was when she asked me to help her with it.

There was a portrait of Nanci on the cover of the book that I didn’t particularly like. Sure, it was pretty and colourful, and as such, bound to serve its eye-catching purpose. But to me the cute image of Nanci smiling was relatively asinine, and it said practically nothing about the multi-layered nature of the woman I had come to know during the time we spent together at her home in Franklin, Tennessee, working on the book.

There was another, far more interesting photograph, taken by Gerry O’Leary, that I hoped would be used on the front, not relegated to inside the back cover. It was taken during the recording session for Other Voices, Too, a record that featured a staggering array of guests such as Odetta, John Prine, Emmylou Harris and Irish musicians Dolores Keane, Sharon Shannon and Philip Donnelly.

The picture was taken while Nanci was listening to the playback of what is arguably the definitive version of Stephen Foster’s Hard Times Come Again No More. The sense of wonder was still there in her voice nearly a half year later when I asked Nanci if she could recall precisely what she was feeling when O’ Leary’s camera clicked.

“I have this old St Christopher medal that was given to me by my boyfriend when I was 12, and when I’m really hopeful or really intense, it always ends up in my hand,” she replied, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

See what I mean about the multi-layered nature of Nanci Griffith? But let’s look a little closer at her generosity of spirit, particularly as it applied to Ireland, a country she loved — and ached for, in terms of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, about which she wrote in her song It’s A Hard Life Wherever You Go.

She told me then, 23 years ago: “When Dolores Keane’s voice kicked in on Hard Times Come Again No More, she was that ‘pale sorrowed maiden’. She is the soul of Ireland. You can hear her crying. And everyone at the session was crying. It was a powerful moment.

“Also, you have Lucy Kaplansky coming in, doing the high part, and that adds another layer of ethereal beauty. As did the fact that Nollaig Casey and Mary Custy were reading and playing from Stephen Foster’s original charts, which brought the whole thing back to basics, back home in every sense. We felt like we had brought Stephen Foster back to his ancestral home of Ireland. It was magical.”

For me that quote, rather than some kind of generic Wikipedia overview of her life and art, captures the soul of Nanci Griffith. I went on to say, in the book: “Nanci really does see herself as a human tuning fork, a form of musical instrument through which other voices, other spirits, flow and — hopefully — take flight. In other words, she sees herself as a folk singer in the purest sense, a conduit for all that is common but also uncommonly rare.”

I have no doubt that the spirit of Nanci Griffith, as captured in her music overall, will continue to echo throughout time because it was so transcendent and so true. I sincerely hope that when death came to claim her, she was holding tightly to that St Christopher medal. And that her soul does rest in peace.  

Joe Jackson’s Under the Influence interview with Nanci Griffith is available on The Joe Jackson Interview Podcast