NEW RELEASE
Woodland Studios by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
- PLAYLISTS
Woodland Studios on Spotify and YouTube - REVIEWS
The Guardian, American Songwriter, Uncut - INTERVIEW
The New Yorker
A revealing and engaging interview with Amanda Petrusich - COMPLETE LYRICS
KURATED NO. 226-B
David Rawlings and Gillian Welch in their East Nashville-based Woodland Studios (David McClister photo)
WOODLAND RISING
Rebuilding their tornado-battered Tennessee studio is a hard-won life and musical challenge met
Their timeless sound and keen insight are two things that distinguish Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. There’s more of course – subtle and complex interplay which makes their two guitars sound like one or several; evocative lyrics, often mournful, that allude to trepidation and potential doom. The 10 songs on Woodland Studios encompass those attributes while surveying loss and upheaval, perseverance and growth.
The duo began their collaboration in the 90s when “Americana” was barely known as a genre. Their first album was 1996’s Revelator. In 2001 they released the much lauded Time (The Revelator) and purchased the famed Woodland Studios which has been host to recording sessions for artists like Neil Young, Tammy Wynette and Jimmy Buffett. In the ensuing years they collected six Grammy Award nominations with three winners including 2020’s collection of covers All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone) as Best Folk Album of the Year.
From devastation to new music
In the early hours of March 3, 2020 a devastating tornado tore through Nashville lifting off much of Woodland’s roof. In the black night under a deluge of rain Welch, Rawlings and tour manager Glen Chausse scrambled to salvage instruments, studio equipment and a life’s work of master recordings. The event left an indelible mark, one that shaped the new album.
“So much of what went into this record was things happening that you couldn’t imagine happening, losing things that you could not imagine losing. Unimaginable destruction, ” Welch told the New Yorker last month.
Rawlings observes that the tornado had a metaphorical parallel to their music. “I think we’ve spent a lot of time … thinking about how ephemeral everything is. I mean, that’s a theme that runs through the music. So it wasn’t an awakening, like, “Oh, I’ve never considered this.” It was almost a reinforcement of what we’ve chosen to spend our lives thinking about.”
That said, there’s nothing fatalistic in Welch and Rawlings’ feelings and intention. Welch tells the New Yorker, “Our narrators are never defeated. As low as they are, it’s not the end. I have profound faith in the human spirit, that people can get through the unimaginable.
“You don’t get through something by ignoring it. You get through it by really feeling it. I have yet to find anything in my life that cannot be expressed through folk music.”
The songs
Woodland Studios is their seventh collaboration and presents their first co-authored material in seven years. Welch and Rawlings do an even split on singing and songwriting duties. Between them they have a lot to say. His contributions feature fuller orchestral arrangements while hers tend towards the spare and minimal.
They describe the album in their own words: “The music is (songs are) a swirl of contradictions, emptiness, fullness, joy, grief, destruction, permanence. Now.”
Their 10 lyrical vignettes present varied themes from observations of things seen – as on the alluring album opener Empty Trainload Of Sky – and events unfolded on The Day The Mississippi Died. Hashtag is a touching homage to the late and revered Texas singer-songwriter Guy Clark who toured with the duo in their early days. Their incisive lyrics can be ambiguous as on What We Had – is this a song about a love having died or the damage done to the Woodland Studios? Or both? Similarly the delicate melancholy of the beautiful and haunting The Bells And The Birds leaves matters unresolved and tentative:
Listen how the bells they ring in the morning
What do they say to you, my love?
Some hear a song and some hear a warning
What do they say to you, my love?
Moving and exquisite, Howdy, Howdy closes the album and frames their decades-long partnership (and 2018 marriage) as being natural as nature:
Tell me, what did the moonlight ask the willow tree?
Tell me who is more blue, is it you or me?
We’ve been together since I don’t know when
And the best part’s where one starts and the other ends
This album has been a long time coming. From their affecting harmonies to exceptional musicality the work leaves no doubt that Welch and Rawlings continue at the top of their musical game. At the same time they remain among the best players in their genre.
21 September 2024
PLAYLISTS
On Spotify
On YouTube
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG-pRIXeCU7fwkpZSXaKghXUYQq0lGETb
