Gillian Welch

I really love "Bells of Harlem". Didn't know there was a new one.

i always thought that was a song written by ryan adams. apparently they wrote it together. anyways it is one of the highlights of heartbreaker, ryan adams amazing debut.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_c1YM53Wwo

this is exciting.

If there are future volumes for each album in her discography, I will probably buy them all. Hoping too this means a vinyl issue of Time The Revelator is being planned. One of the few albums for which I would unhesitatingly plunk down for a super deluxe vinyl box set

Oooh, my wife will like that and want to hear the unreleased songs. Me, I'm just kinda curious

If this thing is being released only on cd, why does that give us hope that TTR will get a vinyl look-in?

I guess my thinking was that if she's at the stage in her career in which the catalogue is being reassessed, eventually a full vinyl reissue campaign would have to follow. I bet they'll wait for RSD or something, but it's pretty strange that TTR has never had a vinyl release. In short, it's just wishful thinking on my part, I guess!

Surprise new album!!

https://gillianwelch.bandcamp.com/album/all-the-good-times

Yay! A summer with a new Gillian Welch *and* a new Kathleen Edwards!

oh my god welch/rawlings doing "hello in there"....I am dead with happiness

<3

nice

I can't imagine this will be anyone's favorite welch/rawlings release but it's such a nice surprise that it seems churlish to complain

^this

Yay! A summer with a new Gillian Welch *and* a new Kathleen Edwards!

Thanks for the news, hadn't thought to check. Also, the prev. linked 21-track Boots No. 1 https://www.uncut.co.uk/news/listen-exclusive-stream-gillian-welchs-boots-no-1-official-revival-bootleg-98175/ has a lot of my fave W&R studio work---they've always seemed pretty dependable live, at least on Public Radio concert series but some of the studio albums put me right to sleep. Also, the most recent Sound Machine studio album was pretty uneven, but it's mostly him---there was a time when she was touring as a part of the Machine, albeit a part producing a large amount of Sound, and that was good on Public Radio too (she said later that she was disgusted by her songwriting for several years, so shifted to thinking of herself as Dave's touring singer/rhythm guitarist).

yeah obviously this isn't a "proper" new GW record of originals, but damn it sounds good. would love it if they loosened up a little and did more things like this.

Yeah, and they do "Abandoned Love"! Didn't know about that song 'til you linked Dylan's version, Tyler, thanks. Getting generous with their Bandcamp---for isnt, all of this:
https://gillianwelch.bandcamp.com/album/boots-no-1-the-official-revival-bootleg

A covers series, yes!

the most recent Sound Machine studio album was pretty uneven

Are you talking about Nashville Obsolete or Poor David's Almanack? The latter was released under his own name and I think it's excellent, although it didn't seem to get much attention at the time.

At some point live they turned into the living embodiment of the Prairie Home Companion, but I love that I can listen to the records whenever I want separate from the gimmick. They are admittedly fun live, though, particularly because of Rawlings, who is a great player and pretty funny.

Good summary, Josh. xpost I meant Almanack, but although I remember it as sometimes not handling the predictable folkie elements very well, my Nashville Scene ballot for 2017 releases does have it in the Related Top Ten (imaginary category I always add); the only comment there is an aside in notes on Boots No. 1: "Some of these are full band, rockin' in a Model-A way. (Electrified music is one of the traditions saluted and utilized on Welch-partner David Rawling’s Poor David’s Almanack)." So yeah, I guess I liked it pretty well overall.

Time (the revelator) is such a matchless collection of songs that it does put the rest of their oeuvre in the shade somewhat but I will honestly lap up any old thing they put out because their singing and playing is such a tonic. I could listen to them harmonise forever

such a good album is that.

I admittedly don’t keep up with interviews etc but is there any explanation behind her lack of output over the last decade? Seems like she’s been active but there is just no rush to release an album’s worth of new music.

iirc just good old-fashioned writer's block

Revelator is all-time, but Harrow sure gives it a run for the money.

She's been writing plenty but it's been on Rawlings' albums.

Personally I'd say Harrow was the least essential of the albums released under her own name. Revelator >>> Revival >>> Yearlings >>> Soul Journey >>> Harrow

fite me

Agreed re: Harrow. The “Way it Could Be” boot was the follow-up album I needed & didn’t get.

Pretty stoked for this covers record tho.

BOOTS NO. 2: THE LOST SONGS is the second release of archival music from the vault of
@gillianwelch
and
@thedaverawlings
. This remarkable 48 song collection will be spread over three volumes. Volume One will be released digitally on 7/31. Listen to two new songs now and preorder.
https://store.aconyrecords.com/products/boots-no-2-the-lost-songs-vol-1

https://is4-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music113/v4/3c/9a/40/3c9a4011-0e12-8ab9-8cbc-adea3f56f1c9/source/450x450bb.jpg

Strange Isabella, one of the pre-release tunes, is particularly nice.

All The Good Times contains two Dylan covers but not Diamond Joe - did they ever cut this one in the studio?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GQSN9V5frc

(oh right, Good As I Been To You is the Dylan album with the incomplete credits - it's a traditional. I stand corrected)

xxpost All 16 tracks of Volume One streaming here:
https://gillianwelch.bandcamp.com/

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/gillian-welch-david-rawlings-boots-album-1035488/

waited until Bandcamp Friday to get this, am loving the shit out of it so far

16 tracks, but they slip right through the headphones, beautifully sung and played, former mostly her, latter her and Dace, presumably, anyway can be two or maybe more guitars meshing---in s string of all those scenes, situations, from all those lives, or maybe it's one life, which makes the listening-thinking even eerie-er--find myself going back to listen to subsets before I can get away. Some are glimpses---Pitchfork review backstory has it that she and he went through many notebooks, pulling out sketches, fragments etc., trying to beat a publishing contract deadline, and be done with that contract--so some of them end abruptly, but folk songs can do that too, and overall I think it works pretty well. And this is only Part 1 of 3.

speaking of the Pitchfork review, I think it's otm:https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/gillian-welch-boots-no-2-the-lost-songs-vol-1/

And unlike my comments, no typos (sorry).

Despite having mostly listened to progressive hip-hop, r&b, and electronic pop in recent years, I find myself listening to 'The Lost Songs Vol. 1' every couple days since it came out. There's a sort of perfection, a "just so"-ness about Welch's tunes that I think at some points I've tired of, but right now, it's just so appealing. Perhaps the relative "smallness" of these tunes and this collection is particularly appealing. It's just inimitably tight songcraft--nothing surprising, nothing "innovative," but that just doesn't matter when the songs are this pure.

Really excited for the further two volumes, if they're even close to as good as this one. It slightly beggars belief that these were all essentially unused scraps, completed and recorded over a weekend--but if so, even more astonishing. Who has recordings like this, and waits around for 18 years and an inland hurricane to decide to share them?

Everything Is Free has been covered by lots of artists. This one from Sylvan Esso with Jenn Wasner is hypnotic

Lost Songs Vol 2 is out, and it's even better than Vol 1.
https://gillianwelch.bandcamp.com/album/boots-no-2-the-lost-songs-vol-2

An over abundance of riches then. I’m still enjoying Vol. 1 :)

Didn't hit me quite as instantaneously as 'Vol 1.,' but I think I was distracted by the new Sault. Revisiting today.

All afire on a Gillian kick, first in 10+ years. Spent the day making up the fantasy album that might have come out between “Soul Journey” and “Harrow”.

Bottom of the Sea
Knuckleball Catcher
Gamblin’ Man
Someone Like You
Cops Won’t Leave Me Alone
Lawman
We’re the Outlaws Now
Tell Me What You Think About
I Love You More Than Ever
Fair and Tender Rose
Too Many Nights on Your Own
Spiritual Way

If they had ever made this record, for sure they would have dropped a couple — if only for length — but they left an embarrassment of riches on the cutting room floor... I hope Boots vol 3 rectifies this.

Second reel, songs slipping by, scenes from life, maybe all the same life, getting around---as in Part 1, but now seems like I'm spending more time in each song, though they aren't longer now, don't think, and while there are words, whole verses sometimes that I'll have to come back to, the music always pulls me in and along---maybe it's a bit more intense overall, than Part 1.
Hadn't noticed before any use of recognizable whole melodies---of course the phrasing, of writing and performance, has always fit the classic folk-country-blues nexus, somebody growing up with that on the radio, not the Smithsonian box sets, is the suggestion,using that vibe and tradition for their own personal folk process, even when it's something they can't say out loud---but here "Didn't I" makes personal use of "This Train," and "Fair September" reminds me of "Seven Bridges Road," though it's cooler, even speculative, while roaming in a month of transition, an emotional weather report, as Tom Waits would say: trailing the heat wave, after "You gave me a thirst, no water could quell." Not too fancy, but can imagine a jazz take.
"I Only Cry When You Go" strikes me right off like a classic Willie Nelson ballad, somebody better cover this. She's tough, he thinks she don't need him, which goes with the fear inside "Good Baby" and "Beautiful Boy," where she's scared of lots of things, "most of all the telephone," but also the "moments of romance, giving what can't be repaid"--think that's what she says! Like, giving what isn't really hers to give, this classic love stuff she's learned about, heard about, like everybody does? Think that's right. "Picasso" comes to her door, paints a picture of her she don't like, shows things in her, but she's gonna go "get a hotel" and this longing out of her system, so art can help, maybe.
"Pappa Writes To Johnny": Road song, no whinin' just sayin' (and after all, "Why would you laugh, if you felt like cryin', why would you say it, if sayin' it was lyin'"): okay then, "Dark was the night, cold was the ground, so I got up, and I walked around," but there's a turn-around/possible "meet-up" of a kind at the end that I won't spoil.
"Wella Hella" is the only plugged-in one, I think, but that's okay, pretty much all of these have the juice it seems.
Part 3 will be here by the end of the year, right?
https://gillianwelch.bandcamp.com/album/boots-no-2-the-lost-songs-vol-2

"Giving what can't be repaid" might also/instead (sounds like also, in context) what she gets from him that can't be repaid, or so she fears.

More and more, these seem like the songs of someone who doesn't trust herself to do justice to her feelings, their object and inspiration, private life, public expression--so maybe that's why she left them in the can, unfinished for so long---she did say in an interview or publicity materials that she got disgusted with her writing, just toured as a member of Dave's band for a while---although on the radio tapes I have, her voice in effect sings lead, she can't help it being that distinctive, gotta give it up to her talent after all, and so she has by finishing these things.

At least we're not getting them on a Neil Young/Arthur Russell/Patrick Cowley timescale.

Also, maybe singing them in the persona/POV of the self-mistrustful woman with good secrets, clues, cards, is how she got them finished, even if particulars orig. came from old postcards, snapshots in thrift store books, Netflix, whatever.