Nanci Griffith’s New Cd Full Of Diverse Music

Somehow, in the hands of Nanci Griffith, “I Fought the Law” almost becomes a happy song.

In the 1960s, The Bobby Fuller Four played the classic about a convict “breaking rocks in the hot sun” with fierce defiance. The Clash’s version two decades later burned with anger.

As performed by Griffith on her new CD, “Blue Roses From the Moons,” it’s a giddy, hiccup-filled ode to optimism in the most trying of circumstances.

The album of 14 songs is diverse and full of contradictions. There is a duet with Darius Rucker of Hootie & The Blowfish, and the late Buddy Holly’s band, the Crickets, backup on five cuts. They still rock, but the Crickets can’t disguise a persistent melancholia that pervades “Blue Roses From the Moons.”

It started as a present to fans requesting a new live album and was mostly recorded live in the studio. It shows off The Blue Moon Orchestra, who’ve been with Griffith for 10 years.

“In some ways, it’s a heartbreak album,” Griffith said. “All the characters, … they’re going somewhere, and they’re walking away from it with both feet on the ground.

“I love that about the characters on this record. They have a great resilience to them.”

Resilience was on Griffith’s mind a lot the past year. In September, Teresa Paulissen, a federal judge in Minnesota and girlhood friend, committed suicide.

In the following months, other friends died. Drummer Dave Early, who played with Van Morrison, perished in a car accident in Ireland. Bluegrass musician John Duffey died after a heart attack. And folk singer Townes Van Zandt, an important influence on Griffith’s writing, died on New Year’s Day.

“It was overwhelming,” Griffith said of the losses. She wrote “Saint Teresa of Avila” on the new CD in honor of Paulissen, with her sister Mikki Griffith and childhood friend Margaret Mary Graham.

“We went to a school that was headed by a Carmelite order of nuns,” Griffith said. “They’re the people who chant and sing … and create the harmony of Earth in voice. We wanted to write our own chant for Teresa’s memory to St. Teresa, in hopes it would be heard - to pray for her soul.”

There’s always been a tough streak behind Griffith’s little-girl voice and phrasing on literate songs such as “Once in a Very Blue Moon” and “Love at the Five & Dime,” which was a hit when recorded by Kathy Mattea. Griffith, 42, taught kindergarten by day and played honky-tonks by night in her native Austin, Texas, in the mid-1970s.

In 1976 she won the New Folk Contest at the Kerrville Folk Festival and started playing music full time the following year. For nearly a decade, she drove across the United States in a station wagon playing shows to support early albums on independent record labels.

In 1985 she released “Once in a Blue Moon,” the recording debut of The Blue Moon Orchestra. The folk-based sound on that and “Last of the True Believers” were influential on Mattea and other Nashville artists. Griffith was signed by powerful MCA Records in Nashville but never clicked as a mainstream country artist.

Instead, she moved on to pop albums produced by Glyn Johns (The Eagles, The Who) and Rod Argent (ex of the Zombies) before coming home with the all-star folk music tribute “Other Voices, Other Rooms” in 1993.

Her album, “Flyer,” in 1994, marked a move toward confessional lyrics, which “Blue Roses From the Moons” continues to a limited extent.

It is less a heartbreak album than a meditation on its aftermath, be it from a love affair gone wrong, a suicide, or what to do after you fight the law and the law wins.

“I think they’re all saying, ‘Spiritually, you can’t repeat yourself. If it’s wrong spiritually, you should move along.’

“Of course, (the song) ‘I’ll Just Move Along’ just says it: ‘I’ll move along. I may be slow, but I’ll do it.”’