Patty Griffin

Her songs have been covered by numerous musicians, including Emmylou Harris, Ellis Paul, Kelly Clarkson, Rory Block, Dave Hause, Sugarland, Bette Midler and The Chicks. In 2007, Griffin received the Artist of the Year award from the Americana Music Association, and her album Children Running Through won the award for Best Album. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting at the 2023 Americana Music Honors & Awards. In 2011, Griffin's album Downtown Church won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Gospel Album and her 2019 self-titled album won the Grammy Award for Best Folk Album. She got a 2026 Grammy Awards nomination for her album Crown of Roses in the Best Folk Album category.

The recorded working language is English and Czech. The field of work recorded is music. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are folk rock and folk music. Distinctions recorded are Americana Award for Artist of the Year and Grammy Award for Best Traditional Gospel Album.

• Name — Patty Griffin • Birth Name — Patricia Jean Griffin • Born — 16 March 1964 • Origin — Old Town, Maine, U.S. • Instrument — * Vocals • guitar • piano • Genre — * Americana • folk • folk rock • country folk • gospel • alt-country • Occupation — * Singer • songwriter • musician • Years Active — 1994–present • Label — * A&M • ATO • Credential • New West • Website — http: pattygriffin.com

Griffin was born on March 16, 1964, and is from Old Town, Maine, next to the Penobscot Native American reservation. She is the youngest of seven children in her family. She bought a guitar for $50 at age 16, and initially sang and played with no inclination to become a professional musician. After a six-year marriage that ended in 1994, Griffin began performing in Boston coffee houses and was scouted by A&M Records, which signed her on the strength of her demo tape. When the finished studio recordings were submitted to A&M, company executives thought it was overproduced, so producer Nile Rodgers and the label instead released a stripped-down reworking of her demo recordings as the album Living with Ghosts. Griffin's second album, Flaming Red, released in 1998, was a departure from the acoustic sound of Living with Ghosts, with a mix of mellow songs and high-tempo rock and roll songs. The title track, "Flaming Red", is an example of the latter, beginning with an even beat until it increases to a fevered pitch of emotion. One of the songs, "Tony", was featured on the charity benefit album Live in the X Lounge. Her third album, Silver Bell, has a sound similar to its predecessor, but while it was recorded in 2000 it was not released by A&M until 2013 (well after unofficial bootleg copies had been circulating). A&M had dropped Griffin's contract after Silver Bell was recorded, and she was then signed by Dave Matthews' ATO Records. Griffin re-recorded some songs from Silver Bell, such as "Making Pies", "Mother of God", "Standing", and "Top of the World", for inclusion on later releases. After copies of the unreleased Silver Bell recordings were leaked and bootlegged, starting around 2006 they began circulating among fans, many of whom traded/shared music on internet message boards. In August 2013, it was announced that UM e planned to release Silver Bell, mixed by producer Glyn Johns, in October 2013. Four albums followed on ATO: 1000 Kisses (2002), A Kiss in Time (2003), Impossible Dream (2004), and Children Running Through (2007). In 2004, Griffin toured with Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings as the Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue. On February 6, 2007, she released Children Running Through. The album debuted at number 34 on the Billboard 200, with 27,000 copies sold. Of the album, Griffin told Gibson Lifestyle, "I just kind of felt like singing what I wanted to sing, and playing how I wanted to play. It's not all dark and tragic. It's a different way for me to look at things. Getting old—older, I should say, I'm not so serious all the time." It was also said that the album was inspired by her childhood. Griffin's songs have been recorded by numerous artists, including the Irish-born singer Maura O'Connell ("Long Ride Home"), Linda Ronstadt ("Falling Down"), The Chicks ("Truth No. 2", "Top of the World", "Let Him Fly", "Mary"), Bette Midler, Melissa Ferrick and Missy Higgins ("Moses"), Beth Nielsen Chapman, Christine Collister, and Mary Chapin Carpenter ("Dear Old Friend"), Jessica Simpson ("Let Him Fly"), Martina McBride ("Goodbye"), Emmylou Harris ("One Big Love", "Moon Song"), Bethany Joy Galeotti ("Blue Sky"), the Wreckers ("One More Girl"), Keri Noble and Ruthie Foster ("When It Don't Come Easy"), Joan Osborne ("What You Are"), Solomon Burke ("Up to the Mountain"), Miranda Lambert ("Getting Ready"), and Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors ("Long Ride Home"). Kelly Clarkson performed "Up to the Mountain" with Jeff Beck on guitar, accompanied by some orchestration on the "Idol Gives Back" episode of American Idol, and the live recording was released as a single immediately afterwards, reaching number 56 on the Billboard Hot 100 in its first week and giving Griffin her highest-charting position as a songwriter. (The audience gave Clarkson a standing ovation following her performance.) Griffin's version of the song was featured in episode 11 of the fourth season of the ABC television show Grey's Anatomy.

• 1965 Gibson J-50 Guitar • 1993 Gibson J-200 Junior Guitar • Charles Fox Guitar

• Illustration — Griffin performing at the North Carolina Museum of Art in 2006 In September 2008, Griffin sang "You Got Growing Up to Do" in a duet with indie artist Joshua Radin on his album Simple Times. In October 2008, she sang background vocals on Todd Snider's cover of John Fogerty's "Fortunate Son" for Snider's Peace Queer album. In February 2009, she was featured on the album Feel That Fire, by Dierks Bentley, in a duet on the song "Beautiful World". In 2009, Griffin, along with Mavis Staples and the Tri-City Singers released a version of the song "Waiting for My Child to Come Home" on the compilation album Oh Happy Day: An All-Star Music Celebration. • Illustration — Griffin performing "Up To the Mountain" at the Carter Reception Dinner during the Civil Rights Summit at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2014 The collaboration with Staples led EMI's Peter York to suggest Griffin make an album of gospel songs. Griffin agreed on the condition that friend and bandmate Buddy Miller produce the record. The album, Downtown Church (her sixth studio album), recorded at the Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville, was released on January 26, 2010. The album, featuring Shawn Colvin, Emmylou Harris, and Griffin's long-time friends Buddy and Julie Miller, contains songs by Hank Williams, and Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton, as well as "All Creatures of Our God and King" (credited to St. Francis of Assisi). In July 2010, Robert Plant toured the United States with Band of Joy (reprising the name of his band in the 1960s), with Griffin as a backing vocalist and singer-guitarist Buddy Miller, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Darrell Scott, bassist-vocalist Byron House, and drummer-percussionist-vocalist Marco Giovino. She is also featured on Plant's solo album Band of Joy, released in September 2010 by Rounder Records. In 2014 Griffin parted with Plant after a long relationship; they had lived together and divided their time between Austin, Texas, and England. In 2019, Griffin released "River", a track from her then upcoming self-titled album and her first new music since battling breast cancer. Patty Griffin was released on March 8, 2019. On January 11, 2019, along with an official announcement of her new album release Patty Griffin (on her PGM Recordings label via Thirty Tigers), a new song, "River", she announced a 2019 concert tour. She followed this with Tape in 2022. Griffin released her eleventh studio album, Crown of Roses, on July 25, 2025. The album was produced by Craig Ross and distributed by Thirty Tigers, while the artwork featured her late mother on her wedding day. She also announced the Crown of Roses tour starting on June 27, 2025, which includes a special record release show at Sony Hall in New York City and a headline performance at the Heights Theater in Houston, Texas.

• Title — Details — Peak chart positions • US — US Christ — US Folk — US Indie — US Rock — US Taste • Living with Ghosts — * Release date: May 21, 1996 * Label: A&M * Formats: CD, cassette — — — — — — — — — — — — • Flaming Red — * Release date: June 23, 1998 * Label: A&M * Formats: CD, cassette — — — — — — — — — — — — • 1000 Kisses — * Release date: April 9, 2002 * Label: ATO * Formats: CD, cassette — 101 — — — — — — — — — — • Impossible Dream — * Release date: April 20, 2004 * Label: ATO * Formats: CD, music download — 67 — — — — — — — — — — • Children Running Through — * Release date: February 6, 2007 * Label: ATO * Formats: CD, music download — 34 — — — — — 2 — — — 5 • Downtown Church — * Release date: January 26, 2010 * Label: Credential * Formats: CD, music download — 38 — 1 — 1 — — — 7 — 8 • American Kid — * Release date: May 7, 2013 * Label: New West * Formats: CD, LP, music download — 36 — — — 4 — 5 — 11 — 3 • Silver Bell — * Release date: October 8, 2013 * Label: A&M, UM e * Formats: CD, LP, music download — 64 — — — 5 — — — 22 — 25 • Servant of Love — * Release date: September 25, 2015 * Label: Self-released / Thirty Tigers * Formats: CD, LP, music download — 68 — — — 3 — 8 — 15 — 13 • Patty Griffin — * Release date: March 8, 2019 * Label: PGM (Self-released) / Thirty Tigers * Formats: CD, LP, music download — — — — — 11 — 5 — 46 — 5 • Tape — * Release date: June 10, 2022 * Label: PGM (Self-released) / Thirty Tigers * Formats: CD, LP, music download — — — — — — — — — — — — • Crown of Roses — * Release date: July 25, 2025 * Label: PGM (Self-released / Thirty Tigers * Formats: CD, LP, music download • "—" denotes releases that did not chart

• Title — Details • A Kiss in Time — * Release date: October 7, 2003 * Label: ATO * Formats: CD, cassette • Patty Griffin: Live from the Artist's Den — * Release date: September 9, 2008 * Label: Artists Den * Formats: Music download, DVD • Before Sunrise (Live 1992) — *Release date: February 13, 2020 *Label: Lo-Light Records *Formats: Music download, streaming

• Lilith Fair: A Celebration of Women in Music (1998) – "Cain" (recorded live during the 1997 tour) • Live at the World Café: Vol. 15 - Handcrafted (2002, World Café) – "Rain" • 107.1 KGSR Radio Austin – Broadcasts Vol.10 (2002) – "Rain" • Elizabethtown Soundtrack (2005, RCA Records) – "Long Ride Home", "Moon River" • Oh Happy Day (2009, EMI Gospel/Vector Recordings) – "Waiting for My Child To Come Home" (with Mavis Staples and The Tri-City Singers) • Live at the World Cafe: Vol. 5 (1997, World Cafe Records) – "Every Little Bit" • Live at the World Cafe: Vol. 16 – Sweet Sixteen (World Cafe Records) – "Makin' Pies" • Feel That Fire (2009) - "Beautiful World" (Dierks Bentley featuring Patty Griffin) • Band of Joy (2010, Decca/Rounder) - backing vocalist for Robert Plant on tracks 2–5, 8, 10–11 • I Love: Tom T. Hall's Songs of Fox Hollow (2011, Red Beet) – "I Love" • Nathan Bell's Red, White, and American Blues (It Couldn't Happen Here) (2021, Singular Recordings/Gokuhi Ent.) – "American Gun", "A Lucky Man", "To Each of Us (A Shadow)"

• Year — Title — Peak positions — Album • US AAA • 1997 — "Every Little Bit" — — — Living with Ghosts • 1998 — "One Big Love" — 5 — Flaming Red • 1999 — "Blue Sky" — 7 • 2002 — "Rain" — — — 1000 Kisses • "Chief" — — • 2004 — "Love Throw a Line" — — — Impossible Dream • 2007 — "Heavenly Day" — 17 — Children Running Through • 2013 — "Ohio" — — — American Kid • 2015 — "Rider of Days" — — — Servant of Love • 2019 — "River" — — — Patty Griffin • "—" denotes releases that did not chart

• Year — Title — Peak positions — Album • US Country • 2009 — "Seeing Stars" (Jack Ingram featuring Patty Griffin) — 54 — Big Dreams & High Hopes

• Year — Video — Director • 1996 — "Every Little Bit" • 1998 — "One Big Love" • 2002 — "Chief" — Traci Goudie • 2003 — "Rain" • 2004 — "Love Throw a Line" • 2009 — "Beautiful World" (with Dierks Bentley) • 2010 — "Little Fire" • 2013 — "Ohio" — Roy Taylor

Patty Griffin is recorded as having received Americana Award for Artist of the Year and Grammy Award for Best Traditional Gospel Album.