When Gilliam Welch sang Lord, Tear My Stillhouse Down in 1996 she could not have imagined that her creative musings would be literally interpreted by the powers-that-be some years later. For that is what occurred in 2020 when the studios she owns with her music partner David Rawlings would be badly damaged by a deadly tornado which swept through Nashville.
Now, some four years later, the pair have marked the building’s revival by titling their latest album Woodland after those very East Nashville studios. And, to no surprise, the album was recorded there.
At the time of the disaster, the pair recalled how - as the roof collapsed around them - they spent hours rescuing their entire music archive as well instruments, microphones and tape machines. Now, as the new album proclaims, the Woodland sound studio is back in business. It is seen as somewhat historic in the Nashville music scene, having been originally opened in the late 60’s by legendary sound engineer, the late Glenn Snoddy. Welch and Rawlings acquired it in 2002.
“Woodland is at the heart of everything we do, and has been for the last 20 some years,” Welch and Rawlings said in a promotional press release. “The past four years were spent almost entirely within its walls, bringing it back to life after the 2020 tornado and making this record.”
The pair then provide an apt description of their latest work: “The music is (songs are) a swirl of contradictions, emptiness, fullness, joy, grief, destruction, permanence. Now.”
Woodland was released on August 23. It is the first album of songs written by Welch in 13 years and the first Rawlings’ material since 2017. It is the tenth album the pair have collaborated on – five have been released under her name, three under Rawlings’ name and two - including the latest - are attributed to Gilliam Welch and David Rawlings. Confused? Well, it appears the albums are named to reflect who sings lead.
So yes, this latest 10-track album sees the pair sharing lead vocals. It is also the first time in two decades that Welch has recorded with a full band including bass and drums. Not so Rawlings, whose recent projects have indeed tended to light rock.
Welch gets first crack at the mic on the opening track “Empty Trainload Of Sky,” which was released in mid-July as the album’s promotional single. It is straight out of the old Welch/Rawlings songbook with some clever lyrical imagery:
Saw a freight train yesterday
It was chugging, plugging away
‘Cross a river trestle so high
Just a boxcar blue
Showing daylight clear through
Just an empty trainload of sky
The song takes a - somewhat confusing - contemporary twist with reference to Neil Young’s punk-influenced “Hey Hey My My”:
Pulled the curtain from my eye
I said hey hey, my my
“Hashtag,” the second pre-release, sees Rawlings take the lead in a quirky, sometimes sad but truly reflective ode to Americana legend Guy Clark. “We wrote ‘Hashtag’ for Guy Clark,” said Welch. “Guy taught us what it was like on the road. He took us opening for him all over the states, to our first shows in Texas, Oklahoma, California and South Carolina. He showed us the parallel universe of the troubadour.”
Welch and Rawlings do Guy proud with some wonderful lyrics very fitting for a song dedicated to the man known as a songwriter’s songwriter:
You laughed and said the news would be bad
If I ever saw your name with a hashtag
Singers like you and I
Are only news when we die
And the final verse gets innovative on the subject of mortality:
So here’s another song that’s over now
You’re another sun that done gone down
Put another good one in the ground
Good lord it’s going down
Rawlings is at his vocal best on the nostalgic lament “What We Had,” where the pedal steel competes with orchestral strings. This full backing – drums et al - provides a distinctive departure from the pair’s norm. Yet there is still something reassuring from such a sophisticated sound even though it seems a far cry from their acoustic purity. It is though they are celebrating what they’ve retrieved from Woodland Studio.
They do get back to basics on “Lawman” where Rawlings lets his trademark guitar riffs elegantly serenade Welch as she delivers yet another creative couplet:
And the preacher’s gonna preach from the Bible
Devil’s gonna laugh at what he said
“The Day The Mississippi Died” is also somewhat back to the future for the pair, helped by the fiddle playing of Americana star Ketch Secor. This social ramble has Welch at her unique singing best as she ponders an apocalyptic road of ruin for an America where madness goes unchecked. And there are times when the lyrics are frighteningly inventive:
I’m thinking that this melody has lasted long enough
The subject’s entertaining but the rhymes are pretty rough
There is some beautiful reflection – and reassurance for long-time Welch-Rawlings fans - on two longer numbers “North Country” and “Here Stands A Woman.” Both have an eerie familiar feel, reminiscent of Welch’s 2001 classic album Time (The Revelator).
“North Country” is hauntingly pure and, of course, makes one immediately think of the Bob Dylan classic of a similar name. And speaking of Dylan “Here Stands A Woman” proudly borrows lines from the songbook of Bob’s hero Woody Guthrie and his wonderful “Danville Girl.” The chorus is just magical:
Here stands a woman
Where there once was a girl
I come a long way from Danville
Where they wear that Danville curl
Such clever lyrical manipulation is a sure reminder that the best thing about Woodland is that new material by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings is back. And the fact that this means the Woodland Studio now fully works isn’t bad as well!
Paul Cutler
Editor Crossroads – Americana Music Appreciation
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