A singular songwriter emerged with Nanci Griffith’s 1978 debut, one whose presence in the little populated musical space between Joni Mitchell and Townes Van Zandt meant she rarely got the credit she deserved. This record is a spare one, mostly plaintive ballads and sweetly arpeggiated acoustic guitar that serves to showcase Griffith’s already distinctive voice. The Seguin, Texas native gathered with a small group of peers in Austin to record the nine-song release live to tape—crafting a quiet, emotive album in the eye of outlaw country’s boisterous storm. Griffith wrote all but two of the album’s songs: “Dollar Matinee” spotlights her then-husband Eric Taylor, who wrote and sang lead on it, and “Montana Backroads” was written by Bruce Carlson. The rest show her big-hearted storytelling—personal, current tales woven with a folk traditionalist’s sensibility. The title track anticipates the life-spanning scope of “Love at the Five & Dime,” as Griffith tells the true story of the sacrifices it took to live her dreams. “West Texas Sun” and “Alabama Soft Spoken Blues” share a slow build and place-specific feel, a core Southerness; all the songs, but especially “Michael’s Song” and “Song For Remembered Heroes,” offer lyrics that reward deep listening. If a singer-songwriter strumming alone was already something of a cliché, Griffith still resisted most of the standard tropes and sounds of her peers—the songs on this album are fiercely personal and original, only familiar at first glance. “I learned the way it feels to be the man/Who sings the world a smile,” Griffith sings on “Michael’s Song,” a declaration that speaks to much of the early resistance towards the singer-songwriter’s work. Her poetry has as much or more of the confidence and competence of her male peers, a fact that was discomfiting to the mostly male critics listening to it. At its core is optimism, not nihilism—never trendy, but in Griffith’s case enviably timeless.