Picky Patty and the Party of One by W.O. Wainwright

‘The Wheel’ offers a scathing commentary on how society has forever been divided between ‘Who is weak and who is strong’. Paired with Patty’s earnest voice and a particularly haunting guitar, it is impossible not to get a sense of the deep attachment the song’s protagonist feels to their hometown, nor their disgust at how the high levels of unemployment faced by its inhabitants is ‘Like a bad joke somebody told on our town for their enjoyment’.Īside from ‘Where I Come From’, there are plenty of other captivating tracks on this album. A poignant tribute to forgotten rural towns, it charts the beautiful if sometimes harsh effect of the changing seasons on country life, from the ‘winter’s long’ that gets ‘into your boots’, to the ‘tourists’ who ‘come through…when the sun shines’. One which I could (and did) listen to on repeat without getting tired of it. ‘Where I Come From’, the third track on Patty Griffin’s eponymously titled album, is without a doubt one of those songs. ‘Miss Ohio’, heard on a now long forgotten radio show, led me to Gillian Welch, while ‘Something On Your Mind’, playing over the closing credits of some equally unmemorable TV programme, brought me to Karen Dalton. My only forays into the genre in the past have usually come about by accident, having been caught by surprise by one of those songs that, every now and again, come on the TV or radio and, through their sheer beauty, stop you in your tracks and make you immediately search for the source and listen to more.

Not being an avid listener of folk music, I was unfamiliar with Patty Griffin’s work before listening to this album.

Picky Patty and the Party of One by W.O. Wainwright