Griffin will release her first all-new album in over six years
“There’s secrets I don’t tell ever to myself/I just keep moving.” So begins “Back At The Start,” the first song released from double Grammy Award-winning artist Patty Griffin’s new full-length opus, Crown Of Roses, her 11th studio album and first in over six years. Crown Of Roses will be out on Friday, July 25th, via her own PGM Recordings label via Thirty Tigers.
With its purposeful position as song one on side one, “Back At The Start” sets the rich tone for the album, embodying a rhythmic and soulful shadowy shuffle written during the pandemic, junked, and then reclaimed. The murky yet pulsating track sees Griffin probing the idea of letting go of the stories we tell ourselves.
“I came back to the song because I like that first line,” Patty Griffin says. “Part of it is about getting on with it, but part is also about staying stuck and going through the motions. It’s really a constant thing to try to be alive while you’re alive.”
Crown Of Roses sees Patty Griffin once again forming a poetic tapestry woven from the threads of love, loss, grief, disillusionment, resilience, and hope, shifting fluidly between intimate confessions, philosophical musings, and symbolic storytelling – all grounded in intensely human feelings and emotion. Burrowing into the stories she had long been telling herself, the award-winning songwriter ruminates on a vast array of themes and deeply personal topics, spanning the trajectory of women in the 20th and 21st centuries and communion with nature to the sound of her voice after cancer treatment made its mark to the relationship with her late mother, whose wedding day photo graces the album’s cover, set into artwork by Mishka Westell that captures many of her greatest loves, including the Maine woods of her – and Patty’s – childhood.
Produced by longtime collaborator Craig Ross and featuring musical contributions from her trusted band members David Pulkingham on guitar and Michael Longoria on drums, the album drifts from spare folk to gauzy Americana to sly gospel blues over the course of eight moody new songs that evoke the scrubby west of Griffin’s adopted Texas and the calming verdancy of her home state of Maine. From the atmospheric “Born In A Cage” and the spectral “Long Time” (which includes a backing vocal cameo from Robert Plant) to the sparse, emotional authenticity of “Way Up To The Sky,” Crown of Roses is among Patty Griffin’s most profound works to date, continuing her exceptional talent for translating thorny concepts and finely wrought character studies into songs that speak as much to her own experience as they do to the lives of those who have loved her music now for more than three decades.
“If I try to hit things on the nose, they don’t feel authentic to me,” Griffin says. “If I can emotionally dance around things, it feels like I can be more honest singing it.”
Griffin will celebrate Crown of Roses by joining forces with legendary double Grammy Award-winner Rickie Lee Jones for a very special tour. Dates begin October 10th at Philadelphia, Mississippi’s Ellis Theater and then continue through a November 1st finale at Dallas, Texas’ historic Longhorn Ballroom.
“Rickie Lee has been a North Star for me,” says Griffin. “Knowing how undeniably sublime she is as a songwriter and performer has kept me more grounded. I mean, with songs like hers, I’ve reminded myself over and over, women have voices that need to be heard and that have great value.”
In addition, Griffin has slated a number of headline shows over the coming months. Highlights include a special record release show at New York City’s Sony Hall on July 29th and a home state headline performance at Houston, Texas’ Heights Theater on October 8th.
- Back At The Start
- Born In A Cage
- The End
- Longtime
- All The Way Home
- Way Up To The Sky
- I Know A Way
- A Word
