Gillian Welch

Agree that the individual decelerating etc. etc. is not especially radical per se, but the context in which Welch has presented this does in my view (trad.alt?) and the manner in which this is expressed do make it rather radical. Cf. Mike Skinner's parallel deconstruction/desecration/re-creation of UK garage. With Drake, you kind of know what you're going to get (Island '72 - narrowcast demographic). As you imply, I don't particularly want to push Welch into canonisation/Camden Town Good Music Society hell. I have tried to convince Simon R to have a listen but without much success so far - more intent on drawing a line from This Heat/ACR circa '80/81 to Streets/Position Normal.

I do tend to jump several stepping stones of logic at a go - including back and forth (as it tends to fit in better with the tenor of the music I'm talking about, getting beneath its skin etc.) - but really the data question is self-evident from my theory; the replicant in whom this data (country, USA, Titanic) has been implanted and who spends an hour trying to make it into a coherent story with palpable reason. I hope GW herself gets to read the piece; would love to know what gulf (or not) exists between my perception of what she's done and what she felt she set out to do.

Really the answer is to read the piece, in real time, along with the album (that's how I wrote the final draft - "24" style).

But what I would hope to do is to try and sharpen up ideas about the art of listening; about listening to the space between chords, the ethos which has been used to construct the music/lyric interface. To try to break the surface of "yawn trad country zzz" and get to the nerve centre of what is actually going on within this music. Something perhaps close to "the truth" - like the majestic yet immediately forlorn "perfect" opening chord of Vaughan Williams' Tallis Fantasia, which the rest of the piece tries hard to recapture before settling for a compromise; not quite perfection, not quite God, but as near as humanity is going to get, and we should be satisfied with that.

Thanks also for the red clay info - does, as you say, bring a whole new dimension to that song and its relationship to the rest of the album.

As for the red dirt, I took that as referring to the red dirt of Oklahoma and those kind areas. In that country the dirt really is red so what you've got, in my opinion, is a song about the insecurities of the poor country person toward the city tempered with a sense of defiance as though she's trying to stake a claim that her life is good enough and has value as is.

"Welch drifts _inexplicably_ into Steve Miller's "Quicksilver Girl" - itself as much of a virtual "folk song" as anything here."

It's not inexplicable; the lyrics set it up. "Quicksilver Girl" is the song the narrator is listening to while she's losing her virginity.

"Then there's "Red Clay Halo" the only song here whose lyrics have turned up on Welch websites, all about a poor lass who can't get a guy as she has to walk through red clay (why?) to attend the dance. Her gown will only become golden in the afterlife with a red clay halo around her head. This is not comfy Opry fare. "

Well, not exactly. First, it's about a lad, not a lass. "Well the girls all dance with the boys from the city, and they don't care to dance with me." It's about poverty, and a bittersweet fantasy about a heaven for the poor, where those who lived in the dirt have halos and wings made of dirt. As for comfy Opry fare...this song, written by Welch and Rawlings, was originally recorded in 1998 by the Nashville Bluegrass Band. It's a very traditional bluegrass song; poverty, squalor, and sadness are the oldest themes in country and bluegrass music, and have always and will always feature prominently on the Opry. Just a question, and not as pointed as it might appear: Have you ever listened to the Opry? It's easy to imagine what it's like if you haven't, but try listening to it some Saturday on the web. Welch and Rawlings have performed on the Opry a few times, themselves.

"The Opry audience whoops its approval of Rawlings' Scotty Moore licks in the middle. It's only when you realise that the track is extracted from the artfully engineered film "Down from the Mountain" that you understand that the audience is one which has seen "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?" So they're all conspiring."

Well, this wasn't performed at the Opry. It was performed at the Ryman Auditorium, which is one of many former homes of the Opry; the Opry is now based, and has been for a long time, at The Grand Ole Opry House in the Disney-like Opryland complex, next to a terrifyingly gigantic shopping mall and chateau-like hotel. It's true that this cut is extracted from the "Down From the Mountain" concert, but it's not true that the audience has seen "O Brother"; the film was still in post-production at the time of the "Down From the Mountain" concert. The concert was simply a gathering of very earnest, straightforward musicians playing very earnest, straightforward music. If there is a hollywood sheen to the film of the concert, it's because the film was made by veteran showbiz documentary filmmakers...the same folks who filmed the Monterery Pop Fest, as well as Bowie's Spiders film and Depeche Mode's 101. Also, audiences whooping approval of guitar/mandolin/dobro/banjo/whatever solos is a bluegrass convention. It's just what's done at bluegrass concerts. I saw Welch and Rawlings recently in Nashville; Rawlings solo'd on every song, and received enthusiastic applause after every solo. He's a damn good guitar player, and deserves every clap. It's not conspiracy, or rebellion. It's all very conventional, traditional, and honest.

The impetus and meaning, incidentally, for "I Want to Sing that Rock N Roll, are here: "The song stems from comments made by Carter Stanley on a live album during the late-'50s' country-music slump, when rock and roll overshadowed everything else." http://www.thestranger.com/2001-12-06/guide2.html

The above link provides an overall excellent historical and interpretational view of this record.

"After that, a meditation on the consequences of wanting to sing that rock and roll. "Elvis Presley Blues." In the chorus it's unclear whether Welch is singing "I was thinking that night about Elvis - the day that he died" or "did he die?" She ponders his sexuality - "he grabbed his wand in the other hand and shook it like a hurricane ... and he shook it like a holy roller with his soul at stake." At the end of his life, "in long decline" he thinks "how happy John Henry was ... beating his steam drill and he dropped down dead." Welch climaxes with a murmured "bless my soul, what's wrong with me?" A tribute which Freddie Starr will never sing."

I kind of like your sexual interpretation here, but I'm afraid it's groundless. Although sexuality does play in here, it's not the point of the song. First, he's "Grabbing ONE in the other hand," not his wand; she's talking about the fusion of racial musical genres; black R&B with white country music. And John Henry is not "Beating his steam drill"...he did, however, defeat ("beat") a steam drill in a race to build a railroad, after which John Henry fell down dead. This is also the source of the lyric, "Lord, let me die with a hammer in my hand." For more on John Henry, look here: http://www.ibiblio.org/john_henry/

"Bless my soul, what's wrong with me" is a brilliantly truncated extract from the Elvis track, "I'm all shook up." The entire lyric, which Welch has added to the song in live performance, is "Bless my soul, what's wrong with me/ I'm itchin like a bear on a fuzzy tree."

"It says fuck you far more fervently than Eminem taking the piss out of Steve Berman. "

Now THAT I can agree with!

"This is popular music which defies the undertaking. This is miles ahead. "

Thing is, though, this isn't popular music. It's pretty underground, by most American standard. The only Gillian you'll really hear on the radio is "I'll Fly Away" from the O Brother soundtrack. This music is miles and miles and miles behind, and miles ahead, and right on time. It overlaps old-time music with Woody Guthrie with Bob Dylan with The Stanley Brothers with Elvis with Blind Willie Johnson with Dead Kennedys with Kitty Wells with everything else. It's basically the whole history of RCA Studio B (Where it was recorded) all coming through at once. It's kind of ultimate postmodernism with all its machine noise turned down, so that the only noise is the noise of analogue tape, and yes, of fingers clicking on the strings.

I just wanted to add one little note for posterity's sake. The association of John in "I Dream a Highway" with John Henry is wrong. Like many of the other characters in this song, she's refering to a singer -- here Johnny Cash. Back when Johnny Cash was really screwed up on drugs and alcohol, he wreaked a little hell at the Grand Old Opry. At this show, he walked around the stage and kicked out the stage lights. The audience and the powers that be at the Grand Old Opry freaked and Mr. Cash was banned from the Grand Old Opry for many years.

She does go on to tie Johnny Cash in with John Henry in her reference to the hammer, but her initial reference is explicitly referring to the former.

Nothing as erudite as all the musings upthread. Just wanted to note that Gillian & David's cover of Black Star is excellent.

Yeah, they did that when I saw them live and it was quite striking

No album in four years though and no current tours.

lazy zing x 1000, and yet...

http://media.npr.org/images/podcasts/primary/npr_music_image_300.jpg

thanks for the pointer to the WFUV - Bonnaroo interview. Sounds like they are at least starting to pull together some new material.

I love Soul Journey as a deliberate full album, how the final lines rhyme "mall" (mall!) and "ball" and refer to the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and how they've got electric guitars for the first time in this song, and it feels like the end of a two-album or maybe four-album song cycle.

Also I love how each of her records sets up particular conventions in the first minute or two that define the parameters of what we'll hear: the dissonant opening to Time, the drums on Soul Journey.

I mean, there are plenty of other pleasures in this music, but their structure as full albums is part of it.

Revelator is conceptually brilliant.

WHAT DO I PLAY TO SEDUCE CORNY FOLK FUCK

For me, it's been downhill since Revival, and her reference to Gram Parsons pretty much takes all the fun out of ODing in a cheap motel room with a groupie.

i think revelator is the only record where she figured out how to do something wholly her own. still shows all her obvious debts and influences, and still indulges in some po-faced po'-folks stuff, but the musical and lyrical reference points are farther flung and more mysterious than on the other albums. i think it's really a great record. the songs stand up individually but also cohere into something greater, mystical, apocalyptic (and/or rapturous, if there's a difference).

on another note, anyone heard tim and mollie o'brien's cover of "wichita"? that's one of my favorite non-revelator gil songs, but she hasn't released a version of it herself as far as i know. the o'briens version is great.

Yeah, I totally agree about Revelator, and Soul Journey was a bit of a letdown in that regard - I mean not that she went backward or anything, but the album didn't add up to much for me.

I also really like the Nowhere Man/Whiskey Girl song for similar reasons (does something her own, loses the po-faced schtick)

All the talk of Red Clay upthread reminded me of this story

I guess taste is taste, but I can't help but think that people who use the "NPR music" zing are more interested in stylistic than qualitative distinctions.

I mean i remember that xhucx kept calling her "schoolmarm folk," and I can hardly accuse him of being deaf to qualitative distinctions, but I don't hear schoolmarm folk in Gillian Welch at all.

well there is something a little antiseptic about her, although in a somewhat complicated way (as marcello's first post does a good job of illuminating: "too impeccable to be real; not enough dirt on her boots, not enough creases in his suit. But then that's the point.")

i understand complaints about her humorlessness, even though i think she's funny sometimes, and as far as neo-authenticity goes she can be a big offender. but that's one reason i think revelator is her best record, because it kind of moved beyond a lot of that. a few songs aside (including "red clay halo," which i like a lot anyway because it's a good tune), it's not particularly mannered or self-consciously rootsy.

"npr music" though is just as dumb as any other dumb tag. bob dylan is npr music too. so is ella fitzgerald. and?

I always thought "Red Clay Halo" was a cover - it sounds like some kind of traditional song that's filtered down over the years into the martyr complex of mainstream country (and a lot of rural, or wannabe rural, white people - them big city elites are making fun of us!).

guess I missed the secret sign that "npr music" was supposed to be trenchant criticism. ok, you've convinced me that she's crap. will stop listening to her and all other npr crap immediately.

Can we agree on a definition - "NPR Rock" ??

ROFFLE:

somewhere between crowded house and wilco.

-- stockholm cindy (winter version) (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 20 January 2006 05:12 (1 year ago) Link
...there lies obsession.

-- Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 20 January 2006 05:32 (1 year ago) Link

This thread reminds me of what Tom Smucker (quoted by Xgau) said about Woodstock:
"I left one thing out of my Woodstock article. I left out how boring it was."

No album in four years though and no current tours.

― Hurting 2, Tuesday, October 23, 2007 5:09 AM (11 months ago) Bookmark

What is up with that?

weirder is that there kind of were tours, right? like a bunch of american shows a year ago, maybe. she's got really good new songs, too.

I am watching this right now: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074qnh/BBC_Four_Sessions_Gillian_Welch/

(which that Youtube is from)

yeah funny that it's been so long since her last record! i interviewed her in 2005, i think, and at the time she hinted that a new record was imminent. guess not! she did say that she liked having her own label because it allowed her to go by her own timeline. have heard one amazing new song "the way it will be" that they play live. though calling it new at this point is silly, i think I heard them do it in 2003 ...

saw her in brooklyn last year and she was grrr8

website lists a bunch of albums that she and david rawlings have "appeared" on, no tour dates

I kind of assumed after Everything Is Free and Wrecking Ball that she'd just never bother recording for public release again.

New album due next year according to metacritic; no release date as yet.

I saw her play summer before last and she was superb. They are a uniquely mesmerising live act. That song "Throw Me A Rope" has been hanging around at least since near the time of Soul Journey. Hope it's on any new album that comes out.

^It should be; it's been a staple of the live set for a while. In an NPR interview at Newport this year she said she & Dave were in the midst of recording a new album. Said it doesn't take them all that long to record them, just to start recording.

And YOW! that initial post! Well done, Marcello. Though I would argue vociferously with many of your transcriptions ("every word seen in the data"?) and quibble with your interpretations, you capture the SPIRIT of the record extremely well. It's an album that calls for interpretation, explication, exegesis. Repeated listening as a whole artifact, complete immersion, fear and trembling. It has some kind of special power that she'll probably never tap again (and the timing of the album was accidentally impeccable; it had a weight that seemed to capture the whole circa-911 American underground zeitgeist perfectly). For a long, long time I've wanted to write a fairly lengthy piece about this album but have felt - have been - unequal to it. Yours will do instead. Kudos.

have just been blown away by this album, having not played it in years. there's not one wasted moment. great writing upthread too.

Six years without a record. Weird.

don't think she's toured in a very long time either

Doesn't she guest on a track on the Dark Was The Night compilation?

Maybe she is gone off the net because of me.

Man, I loved Soul Journey at the time, I might dig it out again this evening.

I think she plays at least a few shows every year -- and there's something called the David Rawlings Machine that seems to be playing out from time to time. Not sure what that is, though. Covers? But yeah, the fact that she's made what -- 4 records in 15 years does not suggest someone too concerned with a standard timetable. But anyone who's made a record as flat out brilliant as Revelator has earned her laziness!

http://atruersound.blogspot.com/2007/07/gillian-welch-david-rawlings-revival.html

what happened to that duets album that was meant to come out last year

Love Gill and Dave, but I am not getting a lot from the new record. Lots of pleasant and pretty songs but nothing I've connected with really.

I like several of the songs individually, but collectively I think it's a bit of a bore — pretty much how I usually respond to them, with Time (the Revelator) as the major exception. It's all very sturdy, but Welch's determined lack of anything but the driest possible humor keeps me at a bit of a distance.

loving the new one — sounds totally great to my ears

fwiw I adored Harrow and Time with plenty of love for the rest of the catalogue as well. This one just lacks mystery I think.

This is making me realize my first impressions of their records has been “this is pleasant enough but maybe lacking” and then their weird tapped-in-to-the-history-of-song starts to unfold. I’m about halfway with this one. Trainload, North Country,and Hashtag have moved into the this-has-always-existed feel for me. Mississippi hit deep for the first time on my last listen.

this is 100% great imho - ok it's intimate and held back and adult but it's so... perfect. Each note is where it should be and their voices sound even better together now hers dropped a bit with age.

something like "north country" is like every song that "americana" artists have been trying to write for like 25 years — and yet in Welch & Rawlings' hands it feels totally fresh. perfect is the right word.

Runnin around
with her
rag
top
down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsC3wsVSJYk

That sounds like Pistol Annies to me, maybe the song they were listening to the night they said, "Fuck it, let's be a band."

Bout time for a tribute album, don't yall think?

This'll do for now:
Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile---Elvis Presley Blues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NEFBFMAjRk

i think my main disappointment with woodland is the lack of a rythym section. got excited when empty trainload of sky dropped that drums and bass guitar were back.

Gorgeous live version of "Hashtag"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMuwzkPpa7o

there's about 5 songs from that show on youtube (the others are audience recordings) btw

e.g. I Hear Them All (David Rawlings Machine) / This Land Is Your Land:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX9_GReUhFE

they're going to reissue Time The Revelator and after that the first two albums - oh, and Rawlings has links to the Corning Gorilla Glass people :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrYg6Xz0DXg

Beautiful version of hashtag - thanks for sharing.

First listen last night and enjoyed it. It's almost got a sophistipop sheen to it in places, which I am very much here for. Rawlings-sung tunes are probably the weakest ones here.

they're going to reissue Time The Revelator and after that the first two albums - oh, and Rawlings has links to the Corning Gorilla Glass people :-)

📹

I know it's obtuse and basic to say this, but: when you have a voice like Welch's in the band, and a liquid, endlessly inventive guitarist like Rawlings, choosing to forego those things to have Dave sing simpler fingerpicked songs seems, I don't know, somehow bloody-minded to me. I get it, he's essential, they're equal partners, but hand on heart there is never a moment I'd prefer to hear him singing than her. Hashtag sure is a lovely song, but it quickens to life when Gill sings.
Also musicians don't obsess about sound quality because their hearing is often shot.

(that interviewer is Michael Fremer who's been an audio gear reviewer for 30+ years, first at Stereophile / Analog Planet and latterly Tracking Angle.)

I know it's obtuse and basic to say this, but: when you have a voice like Welch's in the band, and a liquid, endlessly inventive guitarist like Rawlings, choosing to forego those things to have Dave sing simpler fingerpicked songs seems, I don't know, somehow bloody-minded to me. I get it, he's essential, they're equal partners, but hand on heart there is never a moment I'd prefer to hear him singing than her. Hashtag sure is a lovely song, but it quickens to life when Gill sings.
Also musicians don't obsess about sound quality because their hearing is often shot.

OK I was just absolutely thunderstruck by "The Bells & the Birds". Astonishing, mesmerising song, it just crept up on me. These guys.

Saw Welch & Rawlings live last night ( occasionally joined by an acoustic bassist). I am a fan of Welch’s voice and her vocal harmonies with Rawlings and they seem like really nice folks. My folk music loving wife loved the show and is wowed by them. I enjoyed it but have determined I am not as wowed by their songwriting.

They did a 2 hour set with a break between the first and second hour

“We’re such a quiet band, we really use the room,” Welch says. “We can hear you guys. We don’t have in-ears in; we don’t have monitors blasting up at us,” she explains, naming two methods many touring musicians use to ensure they can hear themselves over the din of the crowd and their bandmates. “Our show changes every night depending upon the theater and the vibe of the crowd. By the time we get to the encore, we all know each other, and the night has usually coalesced into something. And we react to that in the encore.”

From recent interview in Washington Post

I saw them for the first time in Baltimore Saturday night. They played that rousing medley of Rawlings' "I Hear Them All" (which truly sounds like it could be a standard from the 1930s) and "This Land is Your Land." I wasn't aware a version of that was released on that Inside Llewyn Davis concert album a few years back. They also ended with a cover of "White Rabbit."

We almost went to that Baltimore gig, but went to last's night Virginia near DC gig instead. We did not get that medley. We did get "Time the Revelator" which I think someone who went to both shows says you did not get Saturday

here's the link to recent Wash Post interview by freelancer

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/12/04/gillian-welch-david-rawlings-concert-dc/

We didn't get "White Rabbit" either

I was at the Kingston NY show. Great time. Packed venue.

Tiny Desk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfGdjdxxOuU

always a treat to see these two play live

I haven't seen them live, but as for the xpost songwriting, as I said way upthread, was struck by the previously-unreleased megadumps re careful detail, brief scenes from a seeming variety of lives, which (I'll add) may assume different significance depending on how they are sung and played, from night to night: a thought which tempts me to follow them around like a Deadhead.

Deadhead, Dylanhead---I wonder if there are GillianandDaveheads---

Several years ago, a friend of mine mentioned them to his (singer-songwriter) son, who said, "Oh yeah, they stayed at my house." Dad: "Oh I would liked to have met them." What, if anything, his son replied is unrecorded by me, but he and his Dad like a lot of the same music, so if he reported everyone who stayed there etc.

"Oh I would have liked meeting them," more like

upthread:

(maaaan)Anybody jonesing for Gillian and Dave should check out Kieran Kane & Rayna Gellert:
https://kanegellert.bandcamp.com/album/the-flowers-that-bloom-in-spring

This is superb, thank you dow. Love the art, too.

― Indexed, Thursday, August 10, 2023 4:45 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

You're welcome! I like the art on the Bandcamp page too. This is something I just came across on there, still need to check the two previous duet albs they've posted. Every time I listen, it hits me a little harder, in that-low key way.

― dow, Thursday, August 10, 2023 9:03 PM

GILLIAN WELCH & DAVID RAWLINGS PLAY GRATEFUL DEAD ACOUSTIC RECKONING TOUR DATES
April 9 - Port Chester, NY at The Capitol Theatre
April 10 - Port Chester, NY at The Capitol Theatre
April 11 - Port Chester, NY at The Capitol Theatre
April 17 - Oakland, CA at Fox Theater
April 18 - Oakland, CA at Fox Theater
April 23 - New Orleans, LA at Saenger Theatre
July 25 – Newport, RI at Newport Folk Festival

holy shit finally Grateful Dead songs with people who can sing