Patty Griffin, Sara Watkins, Anaïs Mitchell unite voices for a cause

A day after her Use Your Voice tour opened in the decidedly non-wintry city of St. Petersburg, Fla., Patty Griffin seems content, if not encouraged.

“We’re having a great time,” she says. “There is a lot of love out there.”

The love, in this instance, is twofold. Much of it comes from collaborating with her co-billed songsmiths: fiddler, vocalist and Nickel Creek alum Sara Watkins and new-generation folk champion Anaïs Mitchell. Then there is the mission that gives the Use Your Voice tour its name: specifically, an alliance with the League of Women Voters that hopes to help encourage participation in elections among female voters.

First, there is the sisterhood and the music Griffin is creating with Watkins and Mitchell. The teaming recalls the last time Griffin performed in Lexington” a 2008 outing with Emmylou Harris and Shawn Colvin. As in that performance, the current trio is augmented by a celebrity guitarist (the earlier show featured Buddy Miller, and Saturday’s bill will boast David Pulkingham, who has played Lexington previously with Alejandro Escovedo), and the three headliners will swap songs and stories.

“They are really, really brilliant,” Griffin says of Watkins and Mitchell. “I think Sara is one of the most beautiful singers I’ve ever heard in my life on top of being a pretty incredible instrumentalist. Her songs are sort of otherworldly. People say that a lot about singers and their songs, but to me, her sense of timing and placement of words is so incredibly unique, delicate and beautiful. Anais, to me, is one of the finest lyric writers that we have out there right now. I think she is really outstanding that way. Within the folk tradition, she is a leader, really.”

The feeling turns out to be more than mutual. Vermont-based Mitchell, who opens a fully staged theatrical presentation Off Broadway this spring of music from her 2010 album, Hadestown, cites Griffin’s 1996 demo-style debut album Living with Ghosts as a pivotal inspiration.

“Living with Ghosts is sort of lodged deep in my psyche. When I first started writing songs, I was very influenced by that album. I love how its sound was so stripped back. So it’s so wonderful to get to hear Patty every night and, even more than that, to get to sing with her and play with her.”

Griffin’s newer recordings — 2013’s American Kid and 2015’s Servant of Love — have unfolded with an almost orchestral ambience, but the overtly acoustic setting of the Use Your Voice tour reflects the folk roots that all three headliners share.

“I think it is pretty much home for all of us,” Griffin says. “I’m always gunning to get out there and do things that are a little more stripped down. I love doing it this way. There are things that are actually quite cool-sounding with everybody chipping in on different things they don’t normally play. We’re even having some fun trying to figure out how to become a drummer when we have to.”

“I’m always so overwhelmed by the power of just the human voice and very basic accompaniment,” Mitchell says. “I think part of it is just being able to be a storyteller and how to focus entirely on the story in that kind of a setting.”

There is also the more dutiful aspect of the Use Your Voice tour: its goal of encouraging women to participate more vigorously in the selection of their elected officials. Griffin emphasizes, however, that such a crusade is entirely nonpartisan.

“We want you to come out and vote,” she says. “Whatever your point of view is at this moment, share it — or at least participate in the democracy with us and let’s see what happens.

“The fact that we’re doing this in a big presidential election year is not necessarily an accident, but it’s just a matter of timing. To me, a major, major deficit in voter turnout is in local elections. Single women will turn out for a presidential election a little more than they will for a local one. Local elections really affect issues that have to do with single women — for example, the public school system. We really want single working moms’ opinions on that and how that should work within our communities.

“We want everyone to feel welcome at our shows — male, female, all walks of life, whatever your political affiliation.”

As for life after the Use Your Voice tour, Griffin remains open, relishing a sense of chance that seems to go hand in hand with her music.

“One of the things about my job that is awesome is that I never feel like I know what I’m doing. There are so many infinite things about being in this kind of work. There is such variety of music. It really all comes from the same source, I believe, but there are so many ways of expressing it. It’s endlessly inspiring, so I feel like I’m always learning even though I’m always slightly behind the game.”

This story was originally published February 18, 2016 at 1:32 PM with the headline "Patty Griffin, Sara Watkins, Anaïs Mitchell unite voices for a cause."