In the long and storied career of the late, great Nanci Griffith, a musical legacy has been left behind that will, in years to come, surely stand the test of time just as much as it does now. As with all artists with any kind of longevity attached to their work, the merits of Griffith’s output, the ranking of her many albums, will long be debated. In these pages back in 2024, one of our number gave his own take on that here: https://americana-uk.com/essentials-the-top-10-nanci-griffith-albums. That particular offering saw 1986’s Last Of The True Believers coming out on top, with The Flyer cast away at number 10.
It perhaps shows just how strong Griffith’s output was over the years when The Flyer was Grammy-nominated and, as far as chart success goes, and we all know how misleading and distorting that can be when measuring success in our beloved americana genre, it was second only to the 1993 covers album Other Voices, Other Rooms in the UK. In the US, nothing topped it as being her most commercially successful album.
The Flyer was as autobiographical as it would get for Griffith, noting in the sleeve notes for the album that it wasn’t a conscious effort to write of herself and time; it just happened. “It’s a fly-by-night traveller’s life I have led. Paths have crossed so consistently in my life that I no longer call the intersections coincidence. They are just “flyers”, those intersections, faces and stories of people I don’t know all that well. I don’t really know anyone all that well. I just fly”.
As well as her eighteen studio albums, Griffith also recorded two live albums. The clip here shows Griffith performing The Flyer at the Tennessee Theatre in Knoxville in 2002. The whole gig was released as the live album Winter Marquee later that same year.
