When word got out that Nanci Griffith was doing an entire album of other people’s songs, her phone started ringing off the hook. Friends and fellow artists called from all over to give suggestions.
“Janis Ian called me the most often, saying `Do you remember this song? Or that song?’ It was never anything of hers,” Griffith says. “And the same with Emmylou Harris, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt and others who called. They never called to push their own songs.
“I’m just thrilled the way it turned out,” Griffith says of the new album, “Other Voices, Other Rooms.” “There’s a cast of thousands on it, but everybody feels it’s their record. I like that.”
The cast extended to Chet Atkins, Bob Dylan, the Indigo Girls, Arlo Guthrie, Carolyn Hester, John Prine, John Gorka and Odetta.
“I just dearly loved this project. I felt this was the only time in my life when I could really champion other writers. I write so much myself that everyone expects me to record my own songs in the future,” Griffith says. “I don’t know if I’ll ever make a sequel, but it won’t be for a while.”
The 17-song acoustic journey spans Kate Wolf’s “Across the Great Divide,” Woody Guthrie’s “Do Re Mi,” the Weavers’ “Wimoweh,” Dylan’s “Boots of Spanish Leather,” Van Zandt’s “Tecumseh Valley” and Hester’s “Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound.”
