IN what is fast becoming one of the more worthwhile celebrations of roots music, the Budweiser Music Festival - taking place in various venues in Galway and Salthill over next May Bank Holiday weekend - manages to combine old favourites with newish traditionalists.
Of the newer acts performing, Peter Mulvey, Brook Williams, and Chuck Prophet should be prime targets for those wishing to hear acoustic based music played very well. Old favourites include Mary Black, Peter Green, John Prine, and Nanci Griffith.
Of them all, it is Griffith, who recently released the acclaimed Blue Roses From The Moon (Elektra), who embodies the essential elements of what lies at the heart of roots music. In the 1960s, she would probably have been classified as a folk artist. Certainly, Griffith is wantonly lumped in with Country for lack of a more defining category, and it is quite likely that her appeal among a largely urban audience accounts for her limited success in this area. Her tremulous voice, confessional songs, and static, intense stage presence, however, display strengths that few other roots singer/songwriters possess.
"I would hate to be a new artist now, just beginning a career in music," says a relaxed Nanci Griffith in a Dublin hotel, her speaking voice somewhat more helium influenced than one hears on record and stage. "It's difficult to establish an identity as an artist, as an individual, with what you do, creating your own category. Record labels tend not to have the patience anymore. Everything is quite immediate these days, and very little works that way. Except possibly in the pop market."
Griffith is as popular an artist in Ireland as she has ever been. Her previous album, Flyer, sold about 150,000 copies here.
"I'm consistent in my record sales. If only 600,000 Nanci Griffith fans worldwide buy my records, then that's lovely. I had always thought from quite early on in my career that what I did was not a commercially viable art. My first four albums were on small labels. I never thought I would sign with a major label, but then I did. I never thought I would win Grammys, but then I won them. So many things have happened that I would never have expected."
One of rock `n' roll's seminal bands, The Crickets (whose "brush `n' broom" style of playing was itself derived from country groups in and around Buddy Holly's native Lubbock, Texas) will be accompanying Nanci in Galway and for her other Irish dates.
"Yes, we are going to sing some Buddy Holly songs," says Nanci, apropos a fairly obvious unspoken question. "The Crickets will be doing a segment of their own in the middle of the show as well. People sure are getting good value for their tickets with these shows!"