She made me a country music fan
The music of Gillian Welch
Today a lovely career-spanning reflection on the music of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and a review of their latest album Woodland. You'll need to be a paid subscriber to read it. Thank you for supporting this newsletter if you can.
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Luke O’Neil
Luke O’Neil
That’s the way that it goes, that’s the way
by Anna Hamilton
In high school I had a subscription to Spin magazine and a habit of reading most of the new music reviews. I’d usually skip the country albums though. For years, I was one of those people who would say things like “I like every genre except country.” My understanding of the genre then was limited to Lee Ann Womack’s ear worm ballad “I Hope You Dance,” and that cringy Toby Keith song about putting American boots in asses. Gillian Welch changed all of that for me just as she did for so many others. She made me a country music fan.
I remember reading a review of Soul Journey in 2003 that sounded interesting, but my local Tower Records (RIP) was out of copies, so I picked another Welch album at random to buy instead. It was Hell Among the Yearlings (1998). From the opening notes of the rape revenge tale “Caleb Meyer” – a song where the protagonist kills the man who assaults her, but is haunted by his ghost for the rest of her days – I was hooked. Other standouts include “Good ‘Til Now,” a relaxed-sounding ditty about getting wasted, and the album’s final track “Winter’s Come and Gone,” possibly the catchiest song about tiny birds that’s not “I Like Birds” by the Eels.
Welch, along with her partner David Rawlings, has been releasing uniquely composed, gorgeously sung, and thoughtfully written country, bluegrass, and/or Americana albums since the mid-90s, and it’s not hard to see what makes their music so compelling to people who might not be otherwise well-versed in those genres. Of course there is the instrumentation: these two are masters at the guitar. There is always at least one moment during my favorite Welch and Rawlings songs where I think “I didn’t realize that a guitar could sound like that.” The interplay between their voices, too, is consistently surprising. There is something about Gillian’s voice, and David’s backing vocals, that transcends time. Their music sounds groundbreaking and vintage at once.
Hell Among the Yearlings made it into my regular listening rotation almost immediately, along with Soul Journey soon after and then my favorite album of theirs Time (The Revelator) from 2001.
Time (the Revelator) still nails that groundbreaking and vintage quality decades after its release. Acoustic ballad “The Revelator” opens the album, wasting not one second of its 6:22 runtime. It’s a song, I think, about how time itself explains and unfolds who a person is. What all things are for that matter. To quote Annie Dillard “how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” But the melody and harmonies on this one are so stunning that I simply do not need to know what it’s actually about. “My First Lover” is a jaunty-sounding, banjo-heavy song about what happens when two people realize that their relationship is not meant to last. “Dear Someone” beautifully imagines a fulfilling romantic relationship from the perspective of someone who is waiting for the right person to love; this one might as well have been my anthem back in high school, since my gender nonconforming self (complete with mental health issues!) could not get a date if their life and/or grades depended on it.
Then there’s “April the 14th (Part 1),” which might be my all-time favorite Welch and Rawlings song. This ballad ties together the seemingly disparate events of the sinking of the Titanic, the Lincoln assassination, the 1935 Black Sunday dust storm, and a set that Welch and Rawlings once played as part of a “five-band bill” at what sounds like the skeeviest venue ever. It all comes together for a sort anti-holiday she dubs Ruination Day. “Everything is Free,” which Welch was inspired to write during the just-download-music-for-free (instead of paying for it) era of the early 2000s, sounds spookily prescient in the age of social media influencers, content creation as a career path, and music streaming services not paying independent musicians nearly enough.
Welch and Rawlings’ music has, as you might expect, soundtracked some of my life’s weirdest moments. Sometimes I get stuck on listening to certain songs on repeat when I am going through a difficult time; chalk that up to neurodivergence. “Everything is Free” is the song I’ve listened to the most this year, as my freelance writing career has slowed to a crawl. Although that’s not for a lack of trying, it can feel demoralizing to keep doing the thing you’ve been doing, mostly successfully, for years and then have it suddenly stop working for reasons beyond your control. I’ve had to initiate some tough conversations with myself lately, namely, do I want to keep trying to do this as a career? Is any of this worth it?
There’s a lyric from “Everything is Free” that I keep coming back to.
“And I’m gonna do it anyway/even if it doesn’t pay.”
Last year, I started posting Instagram reels as a challenge to myself to explore a different method of self-expression; I also had to reboot my newsletter after the publishing platform I was using got discontinued. Neither of these pay a stable wage, although I do get occasional donations from newsletter subscribers. If I have to work for free, at least in part, to keep building my career, I need to do it on my own terms.
Waiting years between new Welch and Rawlings material has become expected amongst fans at this point; last month, the duo released Woodland, their first album of original material since 2020’s multiple Boots: The Lost Songs anthologies. Woodland has all of the things that, as a fan, I’ve come to love from Welch and Rawlings’ music—vivid lyrics, guitar virtuosity, affecting vocals, and stunning harmonies—but there are enough left turns here to reward longtime fans and (hopefully) interest some new ones. The instrumentation here is more beefed-up, which is not a bad thing. Opening track “Empty Trainload of Sky” features subtle drums, a slide guitar, and an organ in the background; “Turf the Gambler” has just the right amount of harmonica in it to add depth without also making said harmonica annoyingly front and center. A string quartet makes an appearance on “Hashtag,” the duo’s superb, emotional tribute to the late musician Guy Clark. Rawlings also takes on lead vocal duties on several songs, and this works especially well when Welch harmonizes with him. The duo’s vocal harmonies are beautifully utilized on the outstanding “Lawman,” a harrowing tale of poverty and police brutality. I am not surprised that this is a fantastic album. I hope that it is recognized as such on end-of-year “best of” lists.
My country music fandom, even post-Welch, still tends to be heavy on musical styles that aren’t in the mainstream. While I’ve tried to give the more popular stuff a fair shake, I still gravitate to bluegrass, Americana, and whatever “alternative country” means. Without Welch and Rawlings’ music as a gateway, I might not have discovered the vocal prowess and dense lyricism of Neko Case, the gothic psychedelia of Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter, the joyful country-pop of Yola, or the queer twang of Orville Peck. Welch and Rawlings’ music opened my ears and brain, and my musical taste is better because of it. I’m more willing to listen to stuff I’ve never heard of, in all genres. More open and willing. The worst that could happen is that I won’t like a song or band. But I no longer consider that kind of trying wasted time. The best case scenario is what happened when I took a chance on listening to Welch and Rawlings: I’m still here, decades later, still wowed by their music.
As they sing on “Empty Trainload of Sky”:
“Just a boxcar blue/Showing daylight clear through/Just an empty trainload of sky.”
Anna Hamilton (they/them) is a writer and comedian based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Their work has appeared in various publications around the internet. You can read their newsletter, Citizen Cane, or follow them on Twitter/X, Bluesky, or Instagram.