It seemed like a never-ending, cruel joke. In 2016, Patty Griffin was diagnosed with breast cancer, and due to radiation treatment, she ended up losing her voice. Three years later, the lauded singer-songwriter released Patty Griffin, an album that would go on to win a Grammy, but her powerhouse vocals were noticeably diminished. Then came the pandemic, and though she attempted to write, anxiety got in the way of her creative powers.
But now, Griffin has come full circle with her eleventh studio album—and first in six years—Crown of Roses, which Garden & Gun is proud to premiere in full. “Eventually, I got sick of being stuck,” Griffin tells G&G. “I went back to ideas that I tossed to the side and realized there was more there than what I originally thought.”
The youngest of seven children, the Austin-based Griffin spent much of the last few years caring for her elderly mother in her home state of Maine. Their relationship was tumultuous; an early Griffin song, “Sweet Lorraine,” offered an unflinching look at her mother’s challenges. But as Lorraine faded—she passed away in February at age 93—Griffin began to reconcile her own faults. “I was looking at all she had to deal with in her life,” she says, “which led me into the larger concept of women’s stories in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. So much of my work has been focused on men and trying to understand them. This is the first record where I spent time on women’s stories.”
Crown of Roses’ album cover features a photo of her mother on her wedding day, and the hushed “Way Up to the Sky” serves almost as a bookend to “Sweet Lorraine,” acknowledging the hardships her mother faced raising seven kids while her marriage was collapsing and money was scant. The gentle shuffle of “Back at the Start” opens the album with notes of regret and rebirth, and throughout, the album is quintessential Griffin, seeing her shift easily between rootsy Spanish-inflected sounds (“Born in a Cage”); the slinky, defiant “I Know a Way;” and the eerie old-school blues of “Long Time,” which features former partner Robert Plant matching Griffin’s sturdy howl with a spooky harmony.
Listen to Crown of Roses in advance below. The album is out Friday, July 25, and available to order here. And look for Griffin on tour, including a slate of co-headlining dates with Rickie Lee Jones this fall.
