It's fitting that Patty Griffin devoted her most recent album of new material to the memory of her father. Family was the genesis of her musical life growing up in Southcentral Maine.
"My earliest desire was to sing along with my mother," Griffin said. "My mother sang constantly doing her housework. I was always around music. It made me feel better than anything else, to hear her sing and to sing with her."
That familial path runs through "American Kid," released in 2013 to sweeping praise from critics and fans. In writing about her personal life and relationships, Griffin also dug into some universal subjects.
"I feel like they're always connected," she said.
Griffin's father, Lawrence Joseph Griffin, was an Irish immigrant who fought in World War II, including in the Battle of Normandy.
Like thousands of other veterans, Griffin says, her father carried the weight of the war once he returned to America.
"At the time they first started doing stories about PTSD and suicides and that sort of thing, it seems really connected to my father's life in that way," Griffin said. "I know he carried around a lot of trauma from his life. All of that generation did quietly. A lot of what you see, it shakes their world and their family's world forever."
Not every song on the album deals with those repercussions, but all feature Griffin's keen development of song, both lyrically and melodically.
"I'm very much rooted in physical sensation -- and emotional sensation," she said of her songwriting. "I've said that to people before and they act like I'm full of shit. I don't really have a thought behind it."
Griffin grew up on the radio rock of the 1970s, finding a bounty of styles and imagination in the music of artists such as Elvis Costello and Blondie.
"You turned on the radio and it was something amazing," she said. "You might hear a nine-minute song on commercial radio. It was an open, creative part of our culture. It was more exciting than any religious training or anything I was learning at school."
But as an apprehensive young musician, Griffin wasn't ready to follow the acts she admired.
"I was too shy to audition for bands," she said. "I just sat in a room for a long time and wrote songs and played guitar. I finally started playing in a duo with my guitar teacher. He kicked me out of the lesson room and onto the stage."
Griffin released her debut album, "Living With Ghosts," in 1996, and quickly became a favorite in folk circles for her lucid voice.
Griffin's recent list of collaborations is as impressive as anything on her resume. She recorded "Downtown Church" in 2010, featuring friends Shawn Colvin and Emmylou Harris. The album won the Grammy award for Best Traditional Gospel Album in 2011.
She was part of Robert Plant's revived Band of Joy in 2010, which also included Americana favorites Buddy Miller and Darrell Scott backing up the former Led Zeppelin frontman.
Griffin is scheduled to tour with gospel/blues legend Mavis Staples this summer, renewing a relationship with another former collaborator. The two women performed a duet on "Oh Happy Day: An All-Star Music Celebration," a compilation which won the Grammy for Best Traditional Gospel Album in 2010.
Griffin will also start recording material for a new album in upcoming months.
"I'm starting a record in mid-April and hopefully that will be coming out this year," she said. "I hate to say it out loud, in case it doesn't."
Other musicians have gravitated to Griffin's music, with dozens of artists spanning multiple generations from Linda Ronstadt to Kelly Clarkson recording her songs.
"You keep your fingers crossed you're going to like it," she said of the covers. "I think about writing songs, once you put them out there they're gone. Hopefully, they're everybody's. If they make karaoke, that's awesome. I think that's what they're for."
Patty Griffin
With Sarah Jaffe opening
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday
Where: Glenn Massay Theater in Palmer
Tickets: $45 at alaskapac.centertix.net
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Where: Atwood Concert Hall in Anchorage
Tickets $48 at centertix.net