Gillian Welch

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

well, this is out ... Basically a Gillian Welch/David Rawlings record, I gather, with Rawlings fronting the band ...
http://kylepetersen.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/daveraw_cover_select-353x.jpg
Haven't heard it though!

it's okay

yeah, it's sort of amazing it took them 6 years to release what is essentially a stop-gap album ...!

I wish she'd come back. I have strong nostalgic ties to Hell Among The Yearlings and it's always been my go-to album of hers. It came along at one of those times in life when no matter what it was coming along it's going to mean something to you forever. It was kinda funny to seek out other albums that I recognized as being equally good, more or less, and to realize that the sentimental pull I've attributed to the music for so long had a lot more to do with time and place, with me and my own life, than anything else. Which of course isn't to sell her short...

Too many years of the wrong GW amirite

I like that Rawlings Band album better and better the more I listen to it. But it ain't a patch on the GW-fronted stuff. You just can't fuck with her voice, whereas DR is a much better backup singer than frontman.

that marcello review is unreadable.

And you realise that this astonishing piece of music is beyond even a reverie, not the reverie of the dying Charles Foster Kane trying to make a personal sense of his life, but the imagined, implanted reverie we recognise from Blade Runner. It is the American equivalent of Tricky's "Aftermath." A replicant trying to learn and assimilate an alien cultural vocabulary. Bowie's imagined Sinatra gabble at the end of "Low." An alien trying to find its mother, its womb.

actually part of it is very readable, for roffles.

Yeah, that review is pretty much horseshit.

I've seen GW and DR MANY times - at Merlefest, with the bluegrass faithful who absolutely LOVE them, at Bonnaroo, with the hippies, who also LOVE them, and out in LA at the Largo, a venue that, among other things, serves as their home away from home. She is FAR from humorless, is an excellent musician, and any aping or pantomime that may come across to those looking for more "authentic" country is her adoption of a certain musical vocabulary, and not her attempt to come across as real or the genuine article.

ALL the musicians I've ever seen her play with - Emmy Lou Harris, Tony Rice, Alison Kraus, etc. - they all have a great affection for these two, and obv. enjoy the opportunity to play with them.

That's all I'll ever need to know.

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