“There’s secrets I don’t tell ever to myself/I just keep moving.” So begins “Back At The Start,” the first song released from 2x GRAMMY® Award-winning artist Patty Griffin’s new full-length opus, Crown Of Roses, her 11th studio album and first in over six years. Crown Of Roses will be out on Friday, July 25, via her own PGM Recordings label via Thirty Tigers. Pre-orders/pre-saves are available now.
With its purposeful position as song one on side one, “Back At The Start” sets the rich tone for the album, embodying a rhythmic and soulful shadowy shuffle written during the pandemic, junked, and then reclaimed. The murky yet pulsating track sees Griffin probing the idea of letting go of the stories we tell ourselves.
“I came back to the song because I like that first line,” Patty Griffin says. “Part of it is about getting on with it, but part is also about staying stuck and going through the motions. It’s really a constant thing to try to be alive while you’re alive.”
PRE-ORDER/PRE-SAVE CROWN OF ROSES
PATTY GRIFFIN
CROWN OF ROSES
(PGM Recordings Label/Thirty Tigers)
Release Date: July 25, 2025
Credit: Mishka Westell
Tracklist:
1. Back At The Start
2. Born In A Cage
3. The End
4. Longtime
5. All The Way Home
6. Way Up To The Sky
7. I Know A Way
8. A Word
# # #
Crown Of Roses sees Patty Griffin once again forming a poetic tapestry woven from the threads of love, loss, grief, disillusionment, resilience, and hope, shifting fluidly between intimate confessions, philosophical musings, and symbolic storytelling – all grounded in intensely human feelings and emotion. Burrowing into the stories she had long been telling herself, the award-winning songwriter ruminates on a vast array of themes and deeply personal topics, spanning the trajectory of women in the 20th and 21st centuries and communion with nature to the sound of her voice after cancer treatment made its mark to the relationship with her late mother, whose wedding day photo graces the album’s cover, set into artwork by Mishka Westell that captures many of her greatest loves, including the Maine woods of her – and Patty’s – childhood.
Produced by longtime collaborator Craig Ross and featuring musical contributions from her trusted band members David Pulkingham (guitar) and Michael Longoria (drums), the album drifts from spare folk to gauzy Americana to sly gospel blues over the course of eight moody new songs that evoke the scrubby west of Griffin’s adopted Texas and the calming verdancy of her home state of Maine. From the atmospheric “Born In A Cage” and the spectral “Long Time” (which includes a backing vocal cameo from Robert Plant) to the sparse, emotional authenticity of “Way Up To The Sky,” Crown of Roses is among Patty Griffin’s most profound works to date, continuing her exceptional talent for translating thorny concepts and finely wrought character studies into songs that speak as much to her own experience as they do to the lives of those who have loved her music now for more than three decades.
“If I try to hit things on the nose, they don’t feel authentic to me,” Griffin says. “If I can emotionally dance around things, it feels like I can be more honest singing it.“
Griffin will celebrate Crown of Roses by joining forces with legendary 2x GRAMMY® Award-winner Rickie Lee Jones for a very special tour. Dates begin October 10 at Philadelphia, MS’s Ellis Theater and then continue through a November 1 finale at Dallas, TX’s historic Longhorn Ballroom. Tickets for all newly announced dates go on sale this Friday, June 6, at 10:00 am (local). For complete details and ticket information, please visit pattygriffin.com/tour.
“Rickie Lee has been a North Star for me,” says Griffin. “Knowing how undeniably sublime she is as a songwriter and performer has kept me more grounded. I mean, with songs like hers, I’ve reminded myself over and over, women have voices that need to be heard and that have great value.“
In addition, Griffin has a number of US headline shows over the coming months. Highlights include a special record release show at New York City’s Sony Hall (July 29) and a home state headline performance at Houston, TX’s Heights Theater (October 8).
ABOUT PATTY GRIFFIN:
Patty Griffin is among the most consequential singer-songwriters of her generation, a quintessentially American artist whose wide-ranging canon incisively explores the intimate moments and universal emotions that bind us together. Over the course of three decades, the 2x GRAMMY® Award winner – and 7x nominee – has crafted an exceptional, still-evolving body of work that prompted the New York Times to hail her for “[writing] cameo-carved songs that create complete emotional portraits of specific people…[her] songs have independent lives that continue in your head when the music ends.” 2019 saw the acclaimed release of Griffin’s GRAMMY® Award-winning 10th studio recording, PATTY GRIFFIN, which made a top 5 debut on Billboard’s “Independent Albums” chart amidst unprecedented worldwide acclaim, and later, a prestigious GRAMMY® Award for “Best Folk Album.” Among her many other accolades, Griffin has garnered three prominent Americana Music Honors & Awards, including the esteemed “Lifetime Achievement Award,” and “Album of the Year” for Children Running Through, and “Artist of the Year,” making history as one of but a small group of female artists to win the latter award alongside Loretta Lynn, Gillian Welch, Brandi Carlile, and Sierra Ferrell. In addition to her remarkable creative career, Griffin has also devoted considerable energy and focus towards the well-being of the planet as well as showing compassion for the less fortunate among us via personal and public acts of charity. Having crafted a rich catalog that chronicles love and death, heartache and joy, connection and detachment, the upcoming Crown of Roses sees Patty Griffin continuing to push her miraculous art forward, as always imbuing every effort with compassion and craft, uncanny perception, and ever-increasing ingenuity.
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