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GILLIAN WELCH
Gillian Welch is an uncompromising musical renegade with four
critically acclaimed albums and a Grammy Award under her belt. Writing
and performing with her longtime partner, David Rawlings, they
present their haunting songs like rock and roll chamber music,
with two acoustic guitars and two voices welded together. Their
tunes have been covered by such American legends as Willie Nelson,
Emmylou Harris, and Solomon Burke. Their music defies easy
categorization -- it embraces, and is in turn embraced by, the
pre-eminent ambassadors of folk, bluegrass, R & B, punk, and
rock and roll.
With its unconventional guitar work, dissonant tones, and forceful
simplicity, Welch’s music has a similar spirit to work by
other primitive post-moderns. She has said, “I feel
a kinship with the Velvet Underground and the Pixies, though it
might not hit you over the head.” Though her first
two albums, 1996’s debut Revival and 1998’s Hell
Among the Yearlings (both produced by T Bone Burnett) captured
a reminiscent, earthy Americana, it was her third album, 2001’s
Rawlings-produced Time (The Revelator) that marked her
divergence towards a skeletal kind of rock and roll. “The
songs may have been boiled down and boiled down, and pretty much
desiccated, but they’ve always been rock songs in my mind,” she
says.
“How can I explain it?” Welch continues, warming to her theme. “Let’s
say you’re listening to a rock band and they have this whole wall of
sound going on, and it’s completely unhinged and it sounds crazy. If
you pulled four notes out of that whole mess and played them on acoustic guitars,
that’s what Dave and I do. We’re highly selective deconstructionists.”
On the other
hand, Welch considers her most recent album, 2003’s Soul Journey,
as “more like little R&B songs that have been pared down to the bone.” The
album, with its elegant flat-picking, languid tempos, and flawless harmonies,
recalls the roots-rock of Bob Dylan and The Band, (“Wrecking Ball,” “Wayside/Back
In Time”), as well as autobiographical, minimally adorned numbers (“No
One Knows My Name,” “One Little Song”). Upon its release,
British music bible Mojo praised Soul Journey’s “compelling,
mesmerizing quality: somber, mournful, and melodic,” while the Wall
Street Journal noted the music’s “depth and mystery that
invites many interpretations.” Overall, the Los Angeles Times has
summed up Welch’s allure best: “At every turn, she demonstrates
a spark and commitment that should endear her to anyone from country and folk
to pop and rock fans who appreciate imagination and heart.”
It’s
not hard to see, however, why the public has perceived Welch as a traditionalist.
She has professed her love for bluegrass legends Bill Monroe, The Carter Family,
and Ralph Stanley, the latter with whom she appeared on the Grammy-winning
multi-platinum soundtrack to the Coen Brothers 2000 film O Brother Where
Art Thou? She and Rawlings also served, along with Emmylou Harris, as
Elvis Costello’s band for his 2006 debut on the Grand Ole Opry in
Nashville. But the duo’s broader appeal is evidenced by their recent
appearances with Norah Jones (as special guests on her latest concert DVD),
at premiere rock festivals Coachella and Bonnaroo, and on singer-songwriter
Conor Oberst’s 2007 Bright Eyes album, Cassadaga.
“We
love playing with other musicians,” Welch says. “Our own stuff
is so tightly focused and intense that it’s a real pleasure for us to
break out once in a while.” Welch has appeared on records by Ryan Adams,
Mark Knopfler, Robyn Hitchcock, Sam Phillips, Emmylou Harris, Jay Farrar, Old
Crow Medicine Show, and Ani DiFranco, among others, and her songs have been
covered by a truly eclectic group of artists that includes the aforementioned
Solomon Burke, Emmylou Harris, and Willie Nelson as well as Joan Baez, Nick
Cave, David Byrne, David Johansen, Jimmy Buffett, Alison Krauss, and New York
alt-rock trio Secret Machines. The stylistic variety of all of the above proves
that the timelessness and quality of her songwriting shines, no matter what
genre it’s filtered through.
Welch and
Rawlings have been so busy playing with other musicians that four years have
passed since Soul Journey was released. “We’re writing
songs for the new album now,” Welch says. “We’ll start recording
once we have almost all of them written.” The album will be released
on the duo’s own label Acony Records, which they set up in 2001 for Time
(The Revelator), as a way to own their master recordings and control their
musical output. “We’re very independent musically, and this means
that our business can actually be in line with our aesthetic,” Welch
says.
And what do the new songs sound like? “The stuff is feeling
spookier and more panoramic than Soul Journey,” she
says. “The bottom line is, we’ll do whatever
the music calls for, because we are always slaves and servants
of the song.”
(July 2007)
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For more information, please contact:
Ken Weinstein at Big Hassle Media – 212-619-1360
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