Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, London Palladium, October 27, 2025.

‘Long Black Veil’ is an American folk ballad that dates from 1959, written by Marijohn Wilkin and Danny Dill, that tells the sad story of a man hung from the gallows for a murder he did not commit. He chose not to declare his alibi – he was “in the arms of my best friend’s wife” – in the courtroom so as not to betray his lover who “walks these hills in a long black veil”. It’s been covered by many – I heard it for the first time on The Band’s debut LP Music From Big Pink, sung plaintively by Rick Danko – and on Sunday night, at the London Palladium, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings chose to sing it for their sixth and final encore. 

But this was no ordinary encore, no ordinary climax to a wonderful concert, no ordinary way to close an evening that many will remember for a long time to come. Slightly overcome by the endless ovations, Welch and Rawlings stepped away from the microphones that amplified their voices and guitars, and walked towards the platform that covered the theatre’s orchestra pit. “This is something we’ve never done before,” said Welch. “We love this theatre. It’s like an old schoolhouse. You’ll have to keep very quiet now.”

You could hear a pin drop in the big old Palladium as the pair began, Welch strumming her Gibson, Rawlings picking out the odd note on that elderly Epiphone he so plainly adores. “Ten years ago, on a cold dark night…” And when they’d finished, after we’d strained but just about succeeded in hearing them perform acoustically in the strict sense of the word, the audience exploded, as they had time and time again during the previous three hours. 

        The current brief tour of the UK by the King and Queen of Americana is long overdue. My wife and I saw them the last time they were here, in 2011, in Brighton, and the long wait to see them again has been frustrating. Their stage set was absurdly simple, a pair of matching rugs, four microphones on stands, a small table and one stool, no drums, no back line, no lighting rig aside from spots that shone down on where they stood and a wash of whirly circles that spread across the deck. At just after 8 o’clock a lone roadie brought a banjo on to the stage, leaving it on a stand next to the table. It raised a cheer which he failed to acknowledge. 

        Then they arrived, Welch in a long, patterned dress, flared below the waist, country style, her shoulders bare; Rawlings dressed as a cowboy, scruffy old jacket, faded blue jeans and matching shirt, on his head a big hat that hid most of his face, its brim turned up at the sides. Welch chose her words carefully between songs, and seemed visibly moved by the warmth with which they were received. Rawlings said next to nothing, leaving his extraordinary guitar skills to speak for him. “Don’t hold back Dave,” said Welch at one point, grinning. At another, after songs that required both harmonica and banjo, she said: “You’ve heard it all now. Banjo and harp, that’s all we’ve got.” She's very droll. 

        They sang 25 songs in all, divided into two sets with a brief interval. Though they began the concert with ‘I Wanna Sing That Rock And Roll’, from 2001’s The Revelator, a good few – I counted seven in all – were from their Woodland album, released earlier this year. They nowadays have a deep well of material from which to draw, and the subtle change in billing that seems to have taken place fairly recently – they’re officially a duo in name now as well as in reality – adds Rawlings’ own recordings to their repertoire which now tots up to ten albums’ worth of songs between them, plus a covers set, some live recordings and archive releases. Very few songs from Welch’s first five albums were performed. 

        But whatever they sang, from whatever stage of their career, didn’t really matter. Each and every song was delivered with tenderness and care, with perfect harmonies and subtle accompaniment that gathered momentum only when Rawlings took a mesmerising solo, frantically picking away at his instrument, fast, clear lines, arpeggios and ringing top notes that took him well past his 12th fret. He hugs that Epiphone like a newborn baby. Almost every solo he took inspired applause that somehow launched the pair into the next, often final, verse of whatever song they were singing and thus created a fabulous momentum to close it. On most songs Welch set the pace, crouching forward to establish a chorded rhythm that Rawlings picked up very quickly, inking in the details in his spindly, spider-web fashion. For many they were joined on double bass by Paul Kowert who either plucked or bowed his instrument, its deeper timbre balancing the sharp tone of Rawlings’ guitar and adding depth to the music’s overall tonality.

        Highlights? Too many to count really. Rawlings’ ‘Ruby’ and Welch’s ‘Red Clay Halo’ which closed the first set. More came in the second: Rawlings’ lovely ‘What We Had’ and ‘Hashtag’, both from Woodland; ‘Six White Horses’ from 2011’s The Harrow And The Harvest, with Welch hamboning and even stepping forward for a well-received twirl and two step; ‘Revelator’, with Rawlings’ sprawling, cresting solo; and all the encores, beginning with a delightful ‘Make Me Down A Pallet On Your Floor’, which, said Welch, they learned from Doc Watson himself, running through Neil Young’s ‘Cortez The Killer’, played furiously, a triumphant ‘I’ll Fly Away’, almost but not quite a singalong, Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’, another furious, incendiary cover and the icing on the cake, that pure rendition of ‘Long Black Veil’.

At the front of the stage – look, no mikes – for the final encore. 

        It takes a good deal to prise me from my nest in the country these days but it was more than worth it to spend three hours in the company of these ambassadors of a country that is no longer as great as it once was. Here’s hoping Gillian Welch and David Rawlings don’t leave it another 14 years before they visit our shores again. 

GILLIAN WELCH & DAVID RAWLINGS – Woodland Studios

I’ve waited a long time for this record, 13 years to be precise. Although there have been diversions in the form of live material, a covers album and multi-CD sets of demos and alternative versions of her older songs, that’s how long it’s been since Gillian Welch released The Harrow And The Harvest, her last album of newly recorded, original material. The Beatles released over 200 songs, the vast majority originals, in less time than that but Welch and her partner David Rawlings were stymied by the storm that seriously damaged their Woodland studio in 2020, and their pursuit of perfection is, of course, legendary. The word is that they recorded something in the region of 100 songs over the last decade, and these have been whittled down to the ten that appear on this album. 

        Furthermore, the lay off – if that’s the right term for it – has brought about a change in their working methods insofar as unlike on previous records by the pair Woodland Studios is not credited to Welch alone but also to Rawlings, and he takes the lead vocal on three tracks. In realty, of course, they’ve always been a duo in all but name. Also, there is a more complete feel to the production on this album, which isn’t to say that Welch’s earlier records were incomplete, just that she had established a rather spartan sound, a homespun, fireside feel that offered a sense of intimacy, as if she and David were singing just for you. On Woodland Studios just half the tracks feature Welch and Rawlings alone, with a full band – bass and drums with added pedal steel – on four and a hefty string section on two.  

        The subject matter hasn’t changed, however, and neither has the spikiness of Rawlings’ guitar, that easily recognisable sharp tonality. The songs remain desolate, the landscape barren, the protagonists in need of comfort. The freight train in the opening song, slowly chugging away, is empty; an analogy for America under its president elect? We can’t be sure but the outlook looks bleak. ‘What We Had’, the following track, highly pitched by David, looks back nostalgically to something lost, perhaps the storm-wrecked studio, its soft cadence enhanced by violins, violas and a cello deep in the mix. ‘Lawman’, the first by the duo alone, opens with a nod to ‘Bring A Little Water, Sylvie’, Lead Belly’s much-covered folk ballad, before mourning a lover’s death at the hands of law enforcement, while ‘The Bells And The Birds’ contrasts birdsong with peeling bells, its fragility lending it an ambience that could sit happily on any of Welch’s earlier albums.

        But for its full band arrangement, the same might be said of ‘North Country’, driven along by exquisitely-plucked guitars, a nagging, lilting figure, and harmony singing of the highest order. ‘Hashtag’, with hints at how covid unsettled our world – ‘Put another good one in the ground, Good lord it’s going ’round’ – is awash with melody, orchestral backing, Rawlings’ vocal lines warm and sympathetic. In contrast to ‘Riverboat song’, a gorgeous song of praise to an unnamed river on the Boots No 1 – The Official Revival Bootleg album, ‘The Day The Mississippi Died’ hints at a time when this mighty river might finally dry up, another touchstone for the state of America as it stands divided by politics, culture and inequality. 

        The remaining three songs, ‘Turf The Gambler’, ‘Here Stands A Woman’ and ‘Howdy Howdy’, revert to their established style, just Welch and Rawlings playing and singing together. The first, about the demise of a poker-playing down-and-out, has the feel of an ancient folk song, with added Dylanesque harmonica; the second, taken at a crawl, sees the protagonist looking into the mirror as she dwells despondently on her past; while the song that closes Woodland Studios is a rather melancholy contemplation on togetherness that belies its chirpy title and features Welch on softly plucked banjo. 

        Other reviewers have remarked at how the wistfulness of Welch and Rawlings’ songs is mixed with compassion, how the characters within them face a stark reality that is not always apparent from the America that advertises itself on television and in the movies, and in their struggle to overcome this reach towards a kind of heroism. I concur with this analysis. On yet another exquisitely crafted, long-awaited album, Welch and Rawlings lay bare some truths within songs of yearning and sorrow, just as they always have done and, I hope, will continue to do. It’s rumoured they’ll be visiting the UK again next year. I’ll be first in line for my tickets. 

GILLIAN WELCH, DAVID RAWLINGS & BARRY GIBB

My Just Backdated posts about Gillian Welch and her musical partner David Rawlings don’t get that many hits compared to those on the popular rock bands I write about, but I’ll keep plugging away. The latest little Welch/Rawlings gem to reach my ears is ‘Butterfly’, a track on Greenfield: The Gibb Brothers Songbook Vol 1, the recently released album of Bee Gees songs recorded by Barry and various country artists. 

Chosen as the lead track, it is a song I’d not heard before, written and recorded by the Brothers Gibb in Australia before they arrived in the UK in 1967. It first saw the light of day on an LP called Inception, a compilation of early recordings by the Gibb Brothers that was released without their approval in 1970. The tracks were a mixture of originals and covers, including four Beatles songs, all recorded in Australia in 1966. 

Since quality control is high on the agenda for Gillian and David, it goes without saying that ‘Butterfly’ is a lovely song, very suited to their harmonic skills and reminiscent of The Everly Brothers at their melodic best on songs like ‘ALL I Have To Do Is Dream’, ‘Long Time Gone’ and the sublime ‘Kentucky’. A count-in and some characteristic sharp end guitar picking by Rawlings leads into the opening line, ‘Green fields where we used to wander’, suggestive of the album’s title, sung in soaring, expansive unison by Barry, Gillian and David. It’s a floaty, melodic love sung, surprisingly mature when you consider that the eldest Brother was just 19 when it was written, his brothers only 17. 

Though the album as a whole is firmly country, and includes duets with Dolly Parton, Keith Urban and Alison Krause amongst others, ‘Butterfly’ leans towards the bluegrass style of Welch’s own records, a mid-tempo ballad that flows like the best of those expansive early Bee Gees songs. Trivia fans might be interested to know that in 1965 and 1971, respectively, it was also recorded by the UK bands Unit 4 + 2 and Marmalade, and in 2013 The Bee Bees sanctioned the release of Inception, including ‘Butterfly’, which they retitled Bee Gees Diary. 

GILLIAN WELCH – Boots No 2: The Lost Songs Volumes 1-3

Earnest Gillian Welch fans like me nowadays bear a striking resemblance to that frustrated bloke at the bus stop. You wait for ages, only for the unexpected arrival of an avalanche of riches. It is now nine years since her and partner Dave Rawlings released The Harrow & The Harvest, their last album of newly recorded songs, the only respite during this lengthy drought being 2016’s Boots No 1, The Official Revival Bootleg, a 2-CD set of outtakes from the mid-nineties sessions that produced her debut set Revival and which was reviewed here on Just Backdated - http://justbackdated.blogspot.com/2016/11/gillian-welch-boots-no-1-official.html. 

        October saw the download-only release of an album of cover versions called All The Good Times that, annoyingly, I can’t seem to download, especially as it contains their take on John Prine’s lovely ‘Hello In There’. Now, suddenly, we have Boots No 2: The Lost Songs Volumes 1-3, available for some time as a download with a 3-CD disc set scheduled for mid-December. It contains 48 songs, all recorded as demos in 2002 to fulfil obligations to a publisher who was presumably charged with distributing them to artists that might record them. 

        Only three of these songs are familiar to Welch/Rawlings fans, so I’ll deal with them first. Two appeared on Soul Journey (2003) which suggests they are outtakes from these sessions. ‘One Little Song’ is taken at a slightly faster tempo than the album version but is otherwise identical, while the blues standard ‘Make Me Down A Pallet On Your Floor’ benefits from a sweeter guitar part, courtesy of Rawlings. The third, Hank Williams’ ‘How’s About You’, appeared on Rawlings’ A Friend Of A Friend solo LP in 2009. Here Welch takes the vocal on a sparser arrangement. 

        

        Which leaves us with 45 further songs to digest, a veritable feast that might not have been laid on our table but for a tornado that ravaged East Nashville in March of this year, tearing the roof off Welch and Rawlings’ private studio where their archive was stored. The effort to salvage the archive inspired an atypical decision on their part to release this motherlode of tracks, hitherto intended only for business use. 

        The snail-like pace at which Welch and Rawlings release albums of new songs can doubtless be attributed to their endless search for perfection, the level of which surpasses the most exacting standards. It comes as no surprise, then, that their demos – if that’s what the tracks on Boots No 2 really are – do not sound like demos to me. They sound like finished recordings by an act that simply prefers to accompany itself on guitars without further adornment, unless one of them switches to banjo and/or adds a harmonica. 

        By and large the songs follow the pattern you would expect, songs of hardship, hymns to the downtrodden, a few nods to old time religion, bluesy and melancholy for the most part with a hint of anger here and there. In amongst the sadness, however, there are occasional bursts of joy, usually toe-tappers like ‘Back Turn And Swing’ that might suit the repertoire of a banjo-led quartet in check shirts and cowboy hats booked for the Saturday night hoe-down in the Lucky Horseshoe saloon. Equally joyous but on a more personal level is ‘Happy Mother’s Day’, an affecting dispatch to the birth mother that Welch, who was adopted, never knew. 

        As you would expect, some of these songs – among them ‘Hundred Miles’, ‘Beautiful Boy’ and ‘Lonesome Just Like You’ – boast gorgeous melodies, simple and seemingly effortless, on some cases so fleeting as appear merely as sketches. Variation comes with ‘Honey Baby’, a close-mike recording with muted guitar picking that sounds as if Gillian is in the room alongside you, crooning in your ear; ‘Turn It Up’, pure fifties rock’n’roll; ‘Wella Hella’, a slinky, slide-guitar 12-bar; ‘What Can I do’, a short shuffle in jazzy tempo; and ‘There’s A First Time For Everything’ which would fit neatly into a set by Tony Bennett. 

        Every now and then I can hear traces of songs that have appeared elsewhere in the Welch catalogue. There’s a suggestion of ’Caleb Meyer’ in ‘Shotgun; of ‘Scarlett Town’ in ‘Little Lui’; and ‘Red Clay Halo’ in ‘Back Turn And Swing’. I should add here that ‘Didn’t I’ is a charming, albeit slower but still shameless, rewrite of Willie Dixon’s ‘My Babe’ but this is an aberration. The simple country blues of ‘Picasso’ more characteristic of their work, enhanced here by whichever of the pair blows the harp. It's quite beautiful. 

        Forty-eight songs are a lot to digest but I’ve listened to them all at least three times now and while it may be that new delights dawn on me after repeated listening, I can state without a shadow of a doubt that Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are composers and musicians of the highest rank who produce music as lovely as anything you’ll hear right now. 

RIVERBOAT SONG by Gillian Welch

In November of last year I wrote approvingly about Boots No 1 – The Official Revival Bootleg, a double CD set of outtakes and alternative versions from Gillian Welch’s 1996 album Revival, her much acclaimed debut recording. In particular I have come to love a song therein called ‘Riverboat Song’, a gently swaying ragtime tune with a hint of blue, about the river that flows past the singer’s door, a lament for a time when this river, referred to always as ‘she’, carried far more traffic than it does today and seemed to have a greater purpose beyond ‘[tumbling] to the sea to find some company’; in truth it’s a rather melancholy song of sympathy for the barren times on which her treasured river seems now to have fallen.

Set to a gorgeous melody that, like many of Welch and her partner Dave Rawlings’ compositions, sounds as if it could have been written at any time in the last 100 years, we hear about the river’s more prosperous era, when a huge cotton crop came floating past, and when the paddle-steamers – ‘the Mississippi Queen and the Alabama Pearl’ – were floating dancehalls that rang with the sound of gamblers and Dixieland jazz as they made their way down to the Gulf of Mexico. After a lovely chorded ragtime guitar solo, reminiscent of John Fahey at his best, we learn about how the river flooded ‘in the spring of ’65’, becoming ‘ten miles wide’ and how those on the banks should have seen it coming because, after all, ‘a woman’s gonna make a fuss if no one pays her any mind’. 

The songs ends where it began, with Welch serenading her river in spite of everything, ‘the blue old girl travelling past’, urging this neighbour of hers that she loves so much on its watery way. A delightful sense of affection towards her river just about prevents the whole piece from descending into a well of sadness.

Rivers have inspired countless songwriters over the ages, and in some respects Welch and Rawlings’ ‘Riverboat Song’ is a grandchild of ‘Ol’ Man River’, from the 1927 musical Showboat, sung most famously and with unfathomable warmth by the great bass singer and political activist Paul Robeson. While some songs use a river as a metaphor for overcoming hardship (‘Many Rivers To Cross’ by Jimmy Cliff or ‘The River’ by Bruce Springsteen) and others dwell on things that happen alongside them (‘Take Me To The River’ by Talking Heads and ‘Down By The River’ by Neil Young) or even celebrate their power (‘Grand Coulee Dam’ by Woody Guthrie and ‘Proud Mary’ by Creedence Clearwater Revival), ‘Ol’ Man River’ and ‘Riverboat Song’ are simply celebrations of the wonders of a river as nothing more, and nothing less, than a creation of nature.

Talking of unchained power, my favourite Led Zeppelin track is river related: ‘When The Levee Breaks’, from their fourth album, originally recorded in 1927 by Memphis Minnie and Kansas John McCoy, and written about the Great Mississippi Flood that destroyed homes and crops that year. There’s a hint of this song in Welch and Rawlings’ verse about when their river flooded, and also in the ragtime bluesy feel of the original. Of course, Page & Co take the song by the scruff of the neck and shake it like a chorus girl, but there’s genuine old-time authenticity in Plant’s shrill harmonica when it arrives over Bonham’s relentless drum pattern, and Page’s slide guitar is unfussy, strident and similarly relentless, suggesting a warning call and the very real feeling of impending doom felt by those who live by a river during a particularly bad rainstorm.

The insistent feel of this Zep track is in some ways shared by Creedence’s surging ‘Proud Mary’, bringing to mind the reality that a river never stops moving, not even a tidal one like the Thames which, when the flow changes from upstream to down, seems to swirl around like a whirlpool, re-arranging itself for the next phase but still stirring, still in motion. So it’s no wonder that rivers, in themselves or as a metaphor, inspire songwriters; be it the contrast between Paul Simon’s troubled water and the stately progress of Art Garfunkel’s complementary vocal, or Dylan brooding on his luck as he watches the river flow, or Springsteen drawing a parallel between a river that has dried up and died and the broken dreams of Mary and her man.

You can hear Gillian Welch singing ‘Riverboat Song’ on YouTube, both the version on Boots No 1, and a different take that features a bluesier acoustic guitar and an accordion in the solo. Here’s the links:

Boots version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co_yxrv9KYw

Alt version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI9lgjIdvq8

GILLIAN WELCH – Boots No 1, The Official Revival Bootleg

The arrival of a new record from Gillian Welch and her partner Dave Rawlings is an eagerly anticipated event at Just Backdated. Welch is parsimonious to say the least when it comes to releasing her work, no new recordings having surfaced since The Harrow & The Harvest in 2011, and only three further studio albums and an eight-track live set having been made available in the 20 years that have elapsed since her extraordinary debut Revival. This new release fills a gap but it’s not really new, being instead a 2-CD set of outtakes, alternative versions and demos from Revival, 21 tracks in all, including seven songs that haven't appeared on record before, together with a studio version of ‘Wichita’, hitherto available only as a live track on the Revelator Collection DVD, Welch and Rawling’s only live recording, and an outtake of ‘Red Clay Halo’, the bluegrass romp that wound up on Time (The Revelator) in 2001.

Well, as far as Just Backdated is concerned the odds and sods from Welch and Rawlings are considerably more worthwhile than most artists’ greatest hits, and I’ve been listening to this compilation for four days straight. Revival, released without much fanfare in 1996, was and remains a hugely influential record, the precursor to Americana, a kind of historical country genre that like the songs on The Band’s first two albums exists outside of time, old but new, traditional but contemporary, and definitely rural. Revival was a stunning debut from a couple who seemed to have stepped out of the past; 10 peerless songs, every one of them perfectly formed, superbly understated, mostly dark, always poignant. She even looked the part in her calf-length dresses, pale countenance and unshowy flat hairstyle (though of late she's gone blonde with startling results). As I wrote in a concert review of the duo some years ago (to all intents and purposes they are a duo, in all but name), their songs are a throwback to the time of America’s Great Depression, and are peopled by the dispossessed, migrants and orphans, poor families with too many kids and simple folk who put their trust in God. In a line or a few words Welch evokes hardship and period in the manner of John Steinbeck and the photographer Dorothea Lange whose Migrant Mother adorns a wall in our house.

All we’d heard from Gillian Welch until Revival was the song ‘Orphan Girl’, covered by Emmylou Harris a year before the album was released. Now probably Welch’s best known song (though ‘Elvis Presley Blues’ from Time (The Revelator), lately impressively covered by Tom Jones, runs it a close second), ‘Orphan Girl’ appears twice on Boots No 1, firstly an alternative version without the slightly Twin Peaks-doomy electric guitar that arrives late on the familiar version, and also as a home demo. Welch’s vocal inflections are remarkably similar on all three versions, setting the melancholic tone for almost all that follows.

Much the same applies to the majority of the outtakes of tracks that appeared on Revival, with Welch’s parts fairly consistent through the recording process while slight variations in the guitar accompaniment, Rawlings’ contributions on choruses and solos, and minor adjustments to the tempo and backdrop of songs offer an insight into their gestation. Nevertheless, for those of us who consider Revival to be the Sgt Pepper of Americana, it’s fascinating to hear demos and early versions of songs we now know so well, and to read about their development in the excellent sleeve notes. ‘Annabelle’, in which a mother mourns the loss of her infant daughter in a ‘hard life of tears’, appears to have been initially titled ‘Words On A Stone’; ‘Pass You By’, of one Revival’s more strident tracks – and I use the term cautiously – began at an easier pace with Jim Keltner’s shuffling drums more relaxed and producer T Bone Walker contributing a bluesy solo; a stereo mix of ‘By The Mark’ brings out the delicate counterpoint harmony between Welch and Rawlings on the chorus; two versions of the sultry ‘Paper Wings’ show off Roy Husky on stand up bass and Rawlings on pedal steel; and an early (1993) demo of ‘Tear My Stillhouse Down’ lacks the full-on backdrop of the Revival take but shines through in its relative simplicity.

Of more interest, though, are those songs previously unavailable, some of which the duo evidently performed on stage early in their career. On Disc 1, ‘Go On Downtown’, by the prolific Texas songwriter and performer Robert Earl Keen, seems custom built for Welch’s style, though the opposite is probably true in that Welch was influenced by Keen’s style for Revival, unhurried and lonesome, its syllables effortlessly stretched out; and ‘Georgia Road’, a slow-paced 12-bar blues, purposeful and with some fine trilling on the solo. Disc 2 offers many more surprises: ‘I Don’t Want To Go Downtown’ is another mournful blues; ‘455 Rocket’ a toe-tapping rockabilly car song with a great James Burton-style solo from Rawlings; ‘Dry Town’ a fabulous and witty original song in the style of Johnny Cash, chugalong country with Rawlings offering a spot-on Luther Perkins impression; ‘Riverboat Song’ an absolute gem, Just Backdated’s star choice from the new songs, a gorgeous melody with lyrics about a great old river that rolls along into the sea, lonely now that the river men and paddle steamers have gone, but still mighty, wide and liable to flood; and ‘Old Time Religion’, the traditional bible-thumping gospel sing-along that evokes the congregation at some little ol’ wooden shack of a church where its worshippers arrive in horse-drawn carriages.

In amongst these is that second, pedal-steel driven ‘Paper Wings’ and the disc concludes with the publishers’ demo of ‘Acony Bell’, Welch’s exquisite song about a wild flower, after ‘Orphan Girl’ my favourite track on Revival, and the song that gave its name to their personalised record label. All of which means that you’ll have to look very hard to find music as charming, eloquent and inspired as that on the second half of this second disc.

Gillian Welch's new look

Now all we need is a brand new record, not to mention a few overdue British dates.

DAVE RAWLINGS MACHINE – Nashville Obsolete

Starved of new music from the delightful but stingy pen of Gillian Welch, the new album by musical partner Dave Rawlings and his Machine seems like the next best thing – but it’s not exactly a barrel of laughs. Nashville Obsolete offers just seven songs, all bar two of which creep along at snail’s pace, by and large echoing the mood of the dour quartet on the cover who look like they’ve just seen a ghost, especially Welch in her ankle-length antique white dress and an expression of sheer terror on her face.

         While 2009’s A Friend Of A Friend, Rawling’s first offering beyond the shadow of Welch, was a relatively sprightly affair, Nashville Obsolete is rambling and oblique, troubled and less easy to befriend. The songs are long and loquacious, most extending beyond the five minute mark with ‘The Trip’ more than twice that, its verses sung-spoken as a weary lament that is only allayed by a gorgeous lilting chorus to which Welch adds impeccable harmony. I particularly liked the line: ‘There’s a picture of an old black man in a beaver hat. He wears a hidden smile and a pair of white spats.’

         The tenor of opener ‘Weekend’, too, is lightened by its chorus, but don’t expect Rawlings and Welch to be anticipating the end of the week like, say, Eddie Cochran. Their Saturdays and Sundays aren’t much fun really, and neither are women with short hair, whom Rawlings advises against falling for in the slightly spooky ‘Short Haired Woman Blues’.

         The sense of doom is relieved only by ‘The Last Pharoah’, at 3.30 the shortest song on offer, which at least skips along with a rhythmic pulse, and the throwaway, somewhat silly, romp, ‘Candy’, with its ambiguous insinuation that Rawlings and Welch might be singing about a sweet or a girl or, indeed, a sweet girl. A jig of the kind that this pair can rattle off in their sleep, it’s a companion piece to ‘Sweet Tooth’ from Rawlings’ earlier album which I actually played for my bemused dentist a year or two ago.

         The record closes on another atmospherically unhappy saga, ‘Pilgrim’, and while there’s a chance that Rawlings is being tongue-in-cheek in his desolation, the mood throughout does seem to echo the pair’s disenchantment with both relationships and the world in which we live. Welch, of course, co-wrote all the material and is adept at conjuring up a similar ambience, usually suggestive of struggles borne by dirt-poor Americans in the Great Depression. Hereabouts, although a keening old fiddle often adds to the gloom, the despair seems a tad more current.

         Fortunately, that unique Rawlings signature guitar sound remains intact. To my ears his flatpicking on frets high up the scale sounds at times like a mandolin with single strings or, on the lower notes, like a fretted cello. I am hard pressed to think of any other acoustic player whose tone is so immediately recognisable, as it was here from the very first notes of ‘The Weekend’. I would guess, too, that he has a few John Fahey albums in his collection.

         Rawlings and his Machine are touring the US right now, with Welch as part of the band alongside Paul Kowert on bass, Brittnay Hass on fiddle, Willie Watson on guitar and Jordan Tice on mandolin, though mandolin duties are occasionally shared with John Paul Jones. Welch plays the drums, as she does – sparingly – on the new album. For the sake of any manic depressives in the audience, I can only hope the shows offer a broader range of material, or that the live renditions of these new songs are spruced up a bit.

         It is now four year’s since Welch’s The Harrow And The Harvest, so we’re overdue another from her which I anticipate eagerly. On the pictures in Nashville Obsolete’s booklet, some of which were taken by the noted photographer Henry Diltz, it looks like she’s dyed a few strands at the front of her hair blonde. I doubt she’ll cut it short though. 

GILLIAN WELCH, Brighton Dome, November 12, 2011

I wrote this simply because I enjoyed the concert so much, and eventually posted it on the Rock's Back Pages blog which is no longer operating. Gillian Welch's albums are among the most played in our home and on my iPod. 

The aching melancholia of Gillian Welch’s songs about adversity is only partially balanced by the sprightly, lyrical playing of her immensely skilled guitarist and partner David Rawlings. In a concert that lasted well over two hours and included almost 30 songs, Welch and Rawlings – a bona fide duo in all but name - demonstrated levels of sincerity and soulfulness that puts to the sword the shallow nature of so much of what passes for popular music in the 21st century.

          There was no support. Welch and Rawlings played two sets, the first opening with the gorgeous ‘Orphan Girl’, the lead song on her debut album, which set the tone for an evening of delightful harmony singing, though the concert was dedicated primarily to showcasing songs from her most recent recording, the long awaited The Harrow & The Harvest. Of these ‘Scarlet Town’, ‘The Way It Goes’ and ‘Down Along The Dixie Line’ shone like jewels, while for ‘Six White Horses’ Welch abandoned her large Gibson Jumbo and slapped her thighs to emphasize the rhythm on a song that is unusually upbeat for the pair. She also executed a rather cute square dance, tapping the heels and soles of her cowboy boots on the stage and raising the hem of her floral dress barn-dance style, much to the audience’s delight. Meanwhile Rawlings played a small and elderly-looking f-hole guitar worn high on the chest like the old Merseybeat groups, executing sizzling runs, graceful arpeggios and bluegrass picking to rank with any ol’ boy from Tennessee. He uses a capo well up the fretboard to produce a high, ringing tone, a bit like a mandolin, that is as captivating as it is unusual. He and Welch both alternated between guitars and banjo on selected songs, while she occasionally blew a mournful harp from a rack around her neck, commenting at one point how ‘chicks’ don’t like to play harp because it smears their lipstick. “Not the kind I use,” she added drily, to the crowd’s amusement.

         There were highlights from their back catalogue too, most notably ‘Elvis Presley Blues’, ‘Look At Miss Ohio’ and ‘Revelator’ which featured a furious free form guitar coda from Rawlings. Their celebratory rendition of ‘I’ll Fly Away’, the Dillards’ song as yet unrecorded by them, lifted the Dome roof during the encores, its soaring harmonies causing this reviewer to momentarily reconsider his Humanist views on reincarnation.

          The roots of their material, a timeless hybrid of country, bluegrass and folk all wrapped up into the modern generalisation of Americana, stretch back through Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie to as far away as Stephen Foster, and are all the more remarkable for having been written, largely by Welch and Rawlings, in the past two decades. When Welch sings hauntingly of the hardships endured by migrants and orphans, and poor families who place their trust in God, you are taken back to the Great Depression, that time and place in the dustbowl of American history so graphically documented by John Steinbeck and now re-interpreted musically by this pale, self-effacing and enormously likeable girl whose superb performance brought Brighton Dome to its feet in repeated demands for encore after encore that climaxed, uncharacteristically, in a strident run through Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’.

I could happily have listened to them all night.