Gillian Welch

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.

They wrote & finished them back in — what? 02? — but are just releasing them now. Decent interview in Rolling Stone that details the history.

Third volume is due in I believe November.

They trotted out a handful of these “lost songs” in concert at the time, gave em a little spin in the light, but none stuck around even as far as Soul Journey.

There was another clutch of songs between Soul Journey and Harrow that Gil & Dave weren’t happy with — that bunch referred to in many interviews where “our writing slipped, I got writers block.” The only one from those that made the cut for Harrow was “The Way It Will Be” ... plus I guess “Someone Like You” which became “Dark Turn of Mind” with completely rewritten lyrics. But I think that batch of songs is at least as strong as what made it onto Harrow — I cant see why they rejected “Spiritual Way” or “Knuckleball Catcher” but let “Down Along the Dixie Line” slip past the goalie.

“Oh, two mennonites on the road.”

Yes, and several if not most of these Vol 2 songs are about frustrations and resources of well-tended, too-well guarded thoughts and feelings, incl. might mess up the other person if you did disclose/share, also yourself if you failed, but also the price of seeming like you don't need him---anyway, it works, backstory in Stone and elsewhere, yeah---- the also fine Boots No. 1, from sessions that first yielded Revival, is also on bandcamp, along with all original releases and that recent quarantine bedsit set of covers:
https://gillianwelch.bandcamp.com/music

Sorry, I meant to post that on What Are You Listening To?, thought you and I were on there! I had just posted about this set there. Anyway, yeah, all of her stuff is on bandcamp, or just about.

I’d love to see a comp of stray tracks, soundtrack stufff, etc. Their version of “Dreadful Wind & Rain” is killer, and largely unavailable. Other things like “Ride, Ride” would fit nicely alongside.

These lost songs collections are astounding. Imagine having a song as good as Picasso lying about the place?

yeah, crazy that both of them pretty much feel like classic albums — and crazier still that there's still one more on the way!

Yeah, and it's not like with Dylan, where so much good-to-great stuff was fairly well-known and available for so long before The Bootleg Series, also, in terms of out-of-the-blue news, as I said, we're not getting them on a Neil Young/Arthur Russell/Patrick Cowley timescale, so this is ideal.

aargh volume 3 is up next, the preview track "Peace in the Valley" is an original rather than the standard, one of her songs of clear-eyed doom which nobody else can touch. Unbelievable it just sat on a tape for two decades.

still holding out for a welch recording of "you just don't love me"... only one i know is heather waters and apparently that's only available on deezer (!!!)

Finally getting to Volume 2. Damn it’s so good. She was mining an endless seam of beautiful tunes.

Biggish NYT profile piece here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/03/magazine/gillian-welch-david-rawlings.html

Vol. 3 is up today: https://gillianwelch.bandcamp.com/
First listen: first track rides me out of the gate, second straight ahead, number three is stone cold showstopper, throws me into the Kurt Weillian arms of four, five curls me into a delta pallet, but then--well there are several that seem most like vehicles, mainly handy for just the right simple-subtle goosebump performance, yknow that's all it would take, predictable in their way, but handy for sure, and could also imagine buckskin Neil Young bringing out more of the strummy drama of "If I Ain't Goin' To Heaven" and "Peace In The Valley"--but there are also more stone colds crying out to be covered---not strictly necessary, but nice to oblige them by imagining, say, xpost Willie again on "Strangers Again," him and/or Toby Keith, Eric Church on "The Cowboy Rides Away," and the Everly Brothers must come back for "There's a First Time For Everything" and omg "The Streets of St. Paul."
Bold souls will find a way to the disconcerting, possibly post-gospel "Put Your Foot Upon The Path: "You may live another day, you may never laugh again."
"One Little Song" seems like the perfect nightcap lullaby send-off for the whole thing, which will (via her site only) be a box set, vinyl + your choice of MP3, WAV, or FLAC---real purty but the CD version is $30.00 cheaper and I don't have a record player. Though of course bandcamp has all the digital options for each vol., no CDs sold sep., however.

Plenty of momentum in this set, not that there wasn't in the first two, but maybe a sense of being in the homestretch, that they've gotten used to doing all this, know it's all gonna be alright.

This isn't bad at all, but I don't really get as much of a thrill from it. A few of those songs where I feel she's too-obviously putting on a character, asking god for redemption or whatever, which doesn't come across as sincerely as others do.
Also - two previously released songs ("Make Me Down a Pallet on Your Floor", which is traditional anyway, and "One Little Song") and "Streets of St Paul" is obviously an early version of "Wrecking Ball".

We are so happy to announce our upcoming reissue of Gillian Welch & David Rawlings' All The Good Times on CD.

Previously released in limited handmade editions available only from our webstore, the new version of the CD will be available everywhere on March 5th, 2021.

The first Gillian Welch / David Rawlings collaboration to feature both of their names, All The Good Times is a collection of 10 acoustic covers and has received a 2021 GRAMMY nomination for Best Folk Album.

After a devastating tornado ravaged Nashville in the Spring of 2020 making their studio unusable, immediately followed by a global pandemic shutting down their community and touring livelihood, Welch and Rawlings were able to find the inspiration to set up recording equipment in their home living room and record 10 performances on their reel-to-reel of some of their favorite songs from the likes of John Prine (“Hello In There”), Bob Dylan (“Abandoned Love”), Norman Blake (“Ginseng Sullivan”), and more.
A vinyl reissue is coming later this year - more details to come!

didn't know anybody still uses reel-to-reel---advantages?

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TQonl6exhNU/maxresdefault.jpg

Advantage - those amazing 70s memories taping music off the radio. Otherwise shrug

Tape loops

Congratulations to Gillian Welch & David Rawlings for winning Best Folk Album at the 63rd annual GRAMMY awards last night for All The Good Times!

All The Good Times is now available on compact disc worldwide, as well as on streaming and digital download services.

A vinyl reissue is coming later this year - more details to come!
Why this and not Boots 02? Maybe the latter was rec. too long ago or some other Grammys rules/logic

It's been a while since anyone said it so: the Boots series is just extraordinary.

This is probably challopsy but I've had a few so: the thing that eventually makes me turn Welch off is Rawlings: his tone is rich and beautiful but his runs can get a bit samey and busy. I'll get my coat.

Co-sign the love for the Boots series. It’s an interesting compare / contrast with Miranda Lambert’s Marfa Tapes. But also love Rawlings guitar work…

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/gillian-welch-time-the-revelator-1203615/

It's highs are not as high as Time (The Revelator), but Harrow and the Harvest has been like a slow burn for the past 12 years or whatever since it came out, just slowly but perpetually rising in my esteem and my heart. I go back and forth on whether I can say it's my favorite.

Anyway, I was just listening to "Hard Times" and searching to see if "we're supping on tears, we're supping on wine" was their own construction. It is, I think, but I was pleased to see that it is an allusion to the original "Hard Times" (Come Again No More), which features the line

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor

Nice little Easter egg, made me smile.

Also, as incredible as the Boots comps are and as gorgeous as their covers can be, I would really love to hear some new original music from these folks!

Harrow & Harvest was just rereleased on vinyl after selling for $$ on discogs for a while.

Listened to Soul Journey for the first time last night and I liked it more than expected. The cover and title aren’t very compelling, but it’s pretty good.

Also, as incredible as the Boots comps are and as gorgeous as their covers can be, I would really love to hear some new original music from these folks!

Don't sleep on Poor David's Almanack from a few years back. It's credited to Rawlings, but there are several co-writes with Welch and she sings and plays on it as well.