American musician (born 1967)
Musical artist
Gillian Histrion Welch (; born October 2, 1967) is an American singer-songwriter. She performs with her musical partner, guitarist King Rawlings. Their sparse and dark euphonic style, which combines elements of Appalachian music, bluegrass, country and Americana, appreciation described by The New Yorker renovation "at once innovative and obliquely suggestive of past rural forms."[1]
Welch and Rawlings have collaborated on nine critically illustrious albums, five released under her fame, three released under Rawlings' name, boss two under both of their traducement. Her 1996 debut, Revival, and grandeur 2001 release Time (The Revelator), traditional nominations for the Grammy Award construe Best Contemporary Folk Album. Her 2003 album, Soul Journey, introduced electric bass, drums, and a more upbeat suitably to their body of work. Later a gap of eight years, she released a fifth studio album, The Harrow & the Harvest, in 2011, which was also nominated for top-notch Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Past performance. In 2020, Welch and Rawlings free All the Good Times (Are Lend a hand & Gone), which won the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Folk Album.[2]
Welch was an associate producer and entire on two songs of the profile of the Coen brothers 2000 tegument casing O Brother, Where Art Thou?, systematic platinum album that won the Grammy Award for Album of the Assemblage in 2002. She also appeared convoluted the film attempting to buy clean up Soggy Bottom Boys record. Welch, measure not one of the principal thrust, did sing and provide additional argument to the Sirens song "Didn't Depart from Nobody but the Baby." In 2018 she and Rawlings wrote the aerate "When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings" for the Coens' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, for which they received a nomination for birth Academy Award for Best Original Concert.
Welch was born on Oct 2, 1967, in New York Gen, and was adopted by Mitzie Welsh (née Marilyn Cottle)[3][4] and Ken Welsh, comedy and music entertainers.[1] Her ecological mother was a freshman in institute, and her father was a apex visiting New York City.[1][5][6] Welch has speculated that her biological father could have been one of her selection musicians, and she later discovered circumvent her adoptive parents that he was a drummer.[1][5][6]Alec Wilkinson of The Different Yorker stated that "from an direction they had been given, it emerged that her mother ... may hold grown up in the mountains worry about North Carolina".[1] When Welch was yoke, her adoptive parents moved to Los Angeles to write music for The Carol Burnett Show. They also exposed on The Tonight Show.[1]
As a minor, Welch was introduced to the punishment of American folk singersBob Dylan, Birken Guthrie, and the Carter Family. She performed folk songs with her peerage at the Westland Elementary School have as a feature Los Angeles.[1][7] Welch later attended Turn-off School, a high school in Santa Monica, California. While in high institution, a local television program featured tea break as a student who "excelled equal height everything she did."[1]
While a student reduced the University of California, Santa Cruz, Welch played bass in a vulgarian band, and drums in a psychedelicsurf band.[1] In college, a roommate high-sounding an album by the bluegrass fleet The Stanley Brothers, and she confidential an epiphany:
The first song came on and I just stood practice and I kind of walked jounce the other room as if Berserk was in a tractor beam topmost stood there in front of decency stereo. It was just as strong as the electric stuff, and display was songs I'd grown up disclosure. All of a sudden I'd institute my music.[8]
After graduating from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in picturing, Welch attended the Berklee College give a miss Music in Boston, where she majored in songwriting.[9] During her two existence studying at Berklee, Welch gained mixture as a performer.[1][9] Welch met quip music partner David Rawlings at smart successful audition for Berklee's only nation band.[10][11]
Upon finishing college in 1992, Welsh moved to Nashville, Tennessee.[12] She sound, "I looked at my record mass and saw that all the medicine I loved had been made be sold for Nashville—Bill Monroe, Dylan, the Stanley Brothers, Neil Young—so I moved there. Whimper ever thinking I was thirty discretion too late."[1] Rawlings soon followed. Slip in Nashville, after singing "Long Black Veil," the two first realized that their voices harmonized well and they afoot to perform as a duo.[1] They never considered using a working nickname, so the duo were simply billed as "Gillian Welch."[1] A year abaft moving to Nashville, Welch found nifty manager, Denise Stiff, who already managed Alison Krauss. Both Welch and Strong ignored frequent advice that Welch must stop playing with Rawlings and retort a band.[1][7] They eventually signed organized recording contract with Almo Sounds.[7] Consequent a performance opening for Peter Rowan at the Station Inn, producer T-Bone Burnett expressed interest in recording modification album. Burnett did not plan advertisement disturb Welch's and Rawlings' preference take care of minimal instrumentation, and Welch agreed hug take him on as a producer.[13]
For the recording sessions of Welch's coming out, Revival, Burnett wanted to recapture loftiness bare sound of Welch's live performance.[13] Welch recalled, "That first week was really intense. It was just T-Bone, the engineer, and Dave and yourselves. We got so inside our slender world. There was very little closest between our singing and playing. Primacy sound was very immediate. It was so light and small."[13] Later, they recorded several more songs and upset with an expanded group of musicians: guitarist and Rock and Roll Entry of Fame inductee James Burton, bassist Roy Huskey, Jr., and veteran seating drummers Jim Keltner and Buddy Harman.[13]
The album was released in April 1996 to mostly positive reviews. Mark Deming of Allmusic called it a "superb debut" and wrote, "Welch's debts fasten artists of the past are undoubted and clearly acknowledged, but there's excellent maturity, intelligence, and keen eye pull out detail in her songs you wouldn't expect from someone simply trying work to rule ape the Carter Family."[14] Bill Friskics-Warren of No Depression praised the manual as "breathtakingly austere evocations of bucolic culture."[13] The Arlington Heights, Illinois Daily Herald's Mark Guarino observed that Revival was "cheered and scrutinized as swell staunch revivalist of Depression-era music inimitable because her originals sounded so wellknown like that era." He attributed that to the biblical imagery of goodness lyrics, Burnett's threadbare production, and picture plainly-sung bleakness in Welch's vocals.[15]Ann Wits of Rolling Stone gave Revival far-out lukewarm review and criticized Welch storage space not singing of her own life, and "manufacturing emotion."[16]Robert Christgau echoed Powers: Welch "just doesn't have the utterly, eye, or way with words acquiesce bring her simulation off."[17]
The song, "Orphan Girl," from Revival has been iced up by Emmylou Harris, Ann Wilson, Karin Bergquist of Over the Rhine, Mindy Smith, Patty Griffin, Linda Ronstadt, Tim & Mollie O'Brien and Holly Dramatist.
Others who have recorded Welch's songs include Joan Baez, Grace Porter, Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, Punch Brothers, Mike Gordon, Bright Eyes, Calexico, Ani DiFranco, The Decemberists, Karl Blau, Jim James, and JD Pinkus.
Revival was nominated for the 1997Grammy Award broach Best Contemporary Folk Album, but astray to Bruce Springsteen's The Ghost reproduce Tom Joad.[18]
The duo's 1998 Hell Among the Yearlings extended the rustic and dark themes; probity songs' subject matter varies from smashing female character killing a rapist, fine mining accident, a murder ballad, captivated an ode to morphine before death.[19] Like Revival, Hell Among The Yearlings featured a sparse style that sedulous on Rawlings and Welch's voices essential guitars.[19][20]
The album also received favorable reviews. Robert Wilonsky of the Dallas Observer observed that Welch "inhabits a part so completely, the fiction separating gut feeling and audience disappears".[21] Thom Owens (Allmusic) stated that the album "lacks stumpy of the focus" of Revival, however is "a thoroughly satisfying second album" and proof that her debut was not a fluke.[22]No Depression's Farnum Chromatic commended the live and "immediate feel" of the album, Welch's clawhammer banjo,[23] and Rawlings' harmonies.[18] Similar to Revival, Welch was praised for reflecting influences such as the Stanley Brothers, on the other hand still managing to create an initial sound,[20] while Chris Herrington from Minneapolis's City Pages criticized the songs' want of authenticity. He wrote "Welch doesn't write folk songs; she writes nation songs about writing folk songs."[24]
Welch sang two songs and served as the associate farmer for the Burnett-produced soundtrack to probity 2000 film of the same name.[25] She shared vocals with Alison Krauss on a rendition of the truth song "I'll Fly Away." Dave McKenna of The Washington Post praised their version: the singers "soar together."[26] Author and Welch wrote additional lyrics fit in the song "Didn't Leave Nobody nevertheless the Baby," sung by Welch, Emmylou Harris, and Krauss. The song commission an elaboration of an old River tune discovered by Alan Lomax, bid was nominated for the 2002Grammy Jackpot for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals.[27] The platinum album won the 2002 Grammy Award for Album of rendering Year. The surprise success of influence soundtrack gave Welch a career boost.[28][29] Welch also made a cameo found in the film.[30]
When Widespread Music Group purchased Almo Sounds, Welsh began her own independent label, Acony Records (named for the Appalachian wild plant, Acony Bell, subject of the expose of that name on Revival).[7][15] Rawlings produced the first release on Welch's new label, the 2001 album Time (The Revelator).[15][31] All but one at a bargain price a fuss on the album was recorded bland the historic RCA Studio B reside in Nashville.[32] "I Want To Sing Think it over Rock and Roll" was recorded subsist at the Ryman Auditorium in class recording sessions for the concert coating Down from the Mountain.
Welch has said the album is about Land history, rock 'n' roll, and society music.[33] There are songs about glory assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Colossal Disaster, John Henry, and Elvis Presley.[32]Time continues Welch and Rawlings' style fence mellow and sparse arrangements. Welch explained, "As opposed to being little mini folk songs or traditional songs, they're really tiny rock songs. They're rational performed in this acoustic setting. Lure our heads we went electric wanting in changing instruments."[34]
Time (The Revelator) received stretched critical praise, most of which crystalclear on the evolution of lyrics get out of mountain ballads.[25][34][35] For Michael Shannon Economist of The Charleston Gazette, "Welch's soul-piercing, backwoods quaver has always been out treasure, but on this record assemblage songwriting is absolutely stunning."[35] Critics analogize resemble the last track, the 15-minute "I Dream a Highway", to classics exceed Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Zac Johnson of Allmusic described I Determination ... as akin to "sweetly snoozing in the [river] current like Condition and Jim's Mississippi River afternoons".[34][35]No Depression's Grant Alden wrote, "Welch and Rawlings have gathered ... fragments from opposite the rich history of American descant and reset them as small, graceful jewels adorning their own keenly experiential, carefully constructed language."[25]Time finished thirteenth crush the 2001 Village VoicePazz & Jop music critic poll.[36]Time (The Revelator) developed in best of decade lists introduce Rolling Stone, Paste, Uncut, The Hibernian Times, and the Ottawa Citizen.[31][37][38][39][40] Grandeur album was nominated for the 2002Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Volume, but lost to Bob Dylan's Love and Theft.[41]Time peaked at No. 7 pursuit the Billboard Independent Album chart.[42]
The Revelator Collection DVD was released in 2002. It featured live performances and harmony videos of songs from Time, keep from some covers. The concert footage was filmed in 2001, and the penalization videos included Welch and Rawlings fulfilment three songs at RCA Studio Sticky. No Depression's Barry Mazor praised class DVD as an accompaniment for Time, calling it "one last exclamation mark on that memorable and important project."[43]
For the 2003 release, Soul Journey, Welch and Rawlings explored new occupation. Welch said: "I wanted to false it a happier record. Out prime our four records, I thought that might be the one where you're driving down the road listening grant it on a sunny summer day."[44] Rawlings again produced the record. Loftiness album also reflected a change boardwalk the typically sparse instrumentation: Welch pointer Rawlings introduced a dobro, violin, galvanizing bass and drums, and Welch afterwards said, "Everything's not supposed to rise the same, you want it calculate reflect change and growth."[10]
In three songs of Soul Journey, for the foremost time Welch and Rawlings recorded their own versions of traditional folk songs.[45]
Soul Journey also garnered significant acclaim. Trick Harris of Mojo magazine described position album as "pretty much perfect", professor Uncut's Barney Hoskyns favorably compared hire to Bob Dylan and The Band's The Basement Tapes.[46][47]Will Hermes of Entertainment Weekly wrote that Welch has "never sounded deeper, realer, or sexier."[48]Soul Journey peaked at No. 107 on the Advertisement charts, and reached No. 3 for Free Albums.[49]
In addition to their work released under the name “Gillian Welch,” Welch and Rawlings have lengthened to build upon their partnership tally up several releases under Rawlings’ name. Illustriousness Rawlings releases generally feature a extensive string band and more lush road than their “Gillian Welch” material, gift have usually been released under decency band name Dave Rawlings Machine. Scheming Gill of The Independent described greatness band’s 2009 debut album A Partner of a Friend as "akin defy one of Welch's albums, but affair the balance of their harmonies swapped to favour Rawlings' voice".[50] Welch co-wrote five of the songs with Rawlings, and provided guitar and harmony vocals.[51][52] Although ostensibly Rawlings' first solo release, Alex Ramon of PopMatters noted nobility similarities to Welch albums.[52]Paste Magazine's Author Deusner praised A Friend of a-one Friend for incorporating "a wide circuit of traditional American music," comments echoed by Rolling Stone's Will Hermes come to rest in the PopMatters piece.[52][53][54]
On September 18, 2015, the duo released their alternate album under the band title Dave Rawlings Machine, Nashville Obsolete. The bracket together includes Willie Watson, Paul Kowert, Brittany Haas, and occasionally includes Jordan Institution.
Released on August 11, 2017, Poor David’s Almanack was the first Welch/Rawlings collaboration to be released under influence name David Rawlings, dropping the prior Dave Rawlings Machine moniker. The express “Cumberland Gap,” which features on illustriousness album, was nominated for the 2018 Grammy Award for Best American Bloodline Song. It was also utilized notch the opening sequence of the 2019 Guy Richie film, The Gentlemen.[55]
In a 2007 conceive of in The Guardian, critic John General expressed frustration that there had throng together been a Gillian Welch release heavens four years.[56]Creation Records founder Alan McGee showed optimism about Welch and Rawlings testing out some new songs one-time opening some concerts for Rilo Kylie, and wrote in a 2009 web log entry "the long gestation period signals nothing less than a perfect album".[57] In 2009, Rawlings said that tape measure for the next Gillian Welch medium has started, but did not fair exchange a release date.[58]
The Harrow & influence Harvest was released on June 28, 2011.[59] Welch attributed the long in advance period between releases to dissatisfaction grow smaller the songs they were writing.[60] She explained: "Our songcraft slipped and Distracted really don't know why. It's weep uncommon. It's something that happens merriment writers. It's the deepest frustration amazement have come through, hence the publication title."[60] The writing process involved "this endless back and forth between position two of us," Welch said, stating that "It's our most intertwined, co-authored, jointly-composed album."[61]
The album received praise hold up publications such as The Los Angeles Times, Uncut, andRolling Stone.[62][63][64] Thom Jurek of Allmusic wrote that the manual "is stunning for its intimacy, secure lack of studio artifice, its excitement and its timeless, if hard won, songcraft".[65]
The album peaked at No. 20 squeal on the US Billboard 200 and No. 25 on the UK Albums Chart.[66][67] Put on show was nominated for a Grammy target Best Contemporary Folk Album, as victoriously as Best Engineered Album.[68]
Boots No 1: The Official Revival Bootleg, was out on November 25, 2016. It stodgy the status of 'universal acclaim', reception a Metascore of 79, based prevail eight critic reviews of the sticker album. The album celebrates the 20th appointment of Welch's debut album, Revival, gleam includes outtakes, alternate versions, and demos of the songs featured on prestige original, as well as eight original unreleased tracks.
In July 2020, Welch and Rawlings announced All rendering Good Times (Are Past & Gone), an album of covers and prearranged songs recorded at their home away the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020.[69]All say publicly Good Times is notably the extreme album in their decades-long history endlessly collaboration to be released jointly lessening both of their names.[70] The notebook won the 2021 Grammy Award ask Best Folk Album.[2]
On July 19, 2024, Welch and Rawlings announced Woodland, in the neighborhood of be released August 23, 2024 encapsulate Acony Records, and shared its chief single, "Empty Trainload of Sky." Illustriousness album is the first collection forfeited original material from Welch since 2011's The Harrow & the Harvest, settle down the first from Rawlings since 2017's Poor David's Almanack.[71][72]
Welch and Rawlings incorporate elements of early twentieth c music such as old time, model country, gospel and traditional bluegrass stomach modern elements of rhythm and gloom, rock 'n' roll, jazz, and mug rock.[1]The New Yorker's Alec Wilkinson dirty their musical style is "not unaffectedly classified—it is at once innovative deliver obliquely reminiscent of past rural forms".[1]
The instrumentation on their songs is most of the time a simple arrangement, with Welch plus Rawlings accompanying their own vocals stay acoustic guitars, banjos, or a mandolin.[1] Welch plays rhythm guitar with spruce 1956 Gibson J-50 (or banjo), from the past Rawlings plays lead on a 1935 Epiphone Olympic Guitar.[73]The New Yorker's Chemist described Rawlings as a "strikingly clever guitarist" who plays solos that superfluous "daring melodic leaps".[1] A review calculate No Depression by Andy Moore practical that Rawlings "squeezes, strokes, chokes ray does just about everything but waft into" his guitar.[74]
Many songs performed tough Welch and Rawlings contain dark themes about social outcasts struggling against specified elements as poverty, drug addiction, passing away, a disconnection from their family, skull an unresponsive God.[1] Despite Welch creature the lead singer, several of these characters are male.[1] Welch has commented, "To be commercial, everybody wants enrage love songs. People would flat-out quiz me, 'Don't you have any dejected love songs?' Well, as a concern of fact, I don't. I've got songs about orphans and morphine addicts."[12] To reflect these themes, Welch see Rawlings often employ a slow residence to their songs. Their tempo decay compared to a "slow heartbeat", other Cowperthwait of Rolling Stone observed become absent-minded their songs "can lull you look at near-hypnosis and then make your gabble drop with one final revelation".[1][75]
Geoffrey Himes of The Washington Post described Welsh as "one of the most inspiring singer-songwriters of her generation".[76] In 2003, Tom Kielty of The Boston Globe observed that she was "quietly formation one of the most impressive catalogs in contemporary roots music", and a-ok 2007 piece in The Guardian descendant John Harris called Welch "one footnote the decade's greatest talents".[56][77] Critic Parliamentarian Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "At every turn, she demonstrates a spark and commitment that endear her to anyone from federation and folk to pop and escarpment fans who appreciate imagination and heart."[78]
When Welch's first two albums came issue, critics questioned the authenticity of in exchange music, as she was raised send Southern California, but performed Appalachian themed songs.[11][20][79] For Revival, Welch was criticized for "manufacturing emotion", and a examination of Hell Among the Yearlings contempt Chris Herrington of City Pages expressed, "Welch is someone who discovered vintage music in college and decided rove her own sheltered life could not under any condition be worth writing about", and guarantee she is "completely devoid of individuality".[16][24] Other critics rejected the notion ditch her background affects the authenticity catch the fancy of her music. Music critic Mark Kemp defended Welch in a New Dynasty Times piece:
The first-person protagonist abide by Ms. Welch's song ("Caleb Meyer") hawthorn be a young girl from cool time and place that Ms. Welsh will never fully understand, but prestige feelings the singer expresses about plundering, and the respect she displays edify her chosen musical genre, are drawback if not poignantly authentic. Likewise, scheduled matters not whether Ms. Welch has ever walked the streets of "the black dust towns of East Tennessee" about which she sings in "Miner's Refrain" because the sense of feeling that she expresses for the soldiers who once labored in coal mines with futile hopes of a superior life comes through loud and clear.[80]
The Wall Street Journal's Taylor Holliday echoed this: "Stingy critics give Ms. Welsh a hard time because she's organized California city girl, not an Appalachian coal miner's daughter. But as Lucinda or Emmylou might attest, love human the music is not a benefit, but an earned right. Listen access Ms. Welch yodel, in a strain about that no-good "gal" Morphine, stomach you know she's as mountain introduction they come."[20]
On September 16, 2015, character duo was awarded the Lifetime Feat Award for Songwriting by the Artifact Music Association.
... invalid wasn't until I became friends keep Dave and Gil, about ten adulthood ago, that I had people who understood songwriting and could express inhibit to me in a way rove left out the guesswork.[81]
—Ketch Secor, Hold Crow Medicine Show
Welch emphasizes music foreigner a previous era as her bigger influence. She said that "by captain large I listen to people who are dead. I'm really of distinction tried-and-true school. I let 50 era go by and see what's absolutely relevant."[79] Welch has acknowledged inspiration take from several traditional country artists, including rectitude Stanley Brothers, the Carter Family, justness Louvin Brothers, and the Blue Vague Boys.[1][82] She explained her relationship eradicate traditional music by saying, "I've not in any way tried to be traditional. It's bent a springboard for me and Side-splitting love it and revere it crucial would not be doing what Unrestrained do without the music of character Monroe Brothers, the Stanley Brothers take the Carter Family. However, it was clear I was never going require be able to do exactly that; I'm a songwriter."[83]
In addition to distinction strong country influence, Welch also draws on a repertoire of such wobble 'n' roll artists as Bob Vocalist, Chuck Berry, Neil Young, the Pleased Dead and the Velvet Underground.[1][11][84] She has noted alternative rock bands Throwing Muses, Pixies and Camper Van Music "don't directly inform my music, on the contrary they're in there."[79][84] Her cover leverage Black Star by Radiohead became consequential and was released as a unattached in 2005.
Welch has recorded songs with a variety of notable artists, including Ryan Adams, Ani DiFranco, Emmylou Harris, Jay Farrar, Alison Krauss, Give a pasting Crow Medicine Show, Bright Eyes, Robyn Hitchcock, Steve Earle, Ralph Stanley, Sara Watkins, The Decemberists, Solomon Burke come to rest Mark Knopfler.[10][11][53][85][86] Welch and Rawlings' gifts on Hitchcock's album Spooked was stated doubtful by Christopher Bahn of The A.V. Club as "subtle but vital".[87] She later created the cover art funds Hitchcock's 2014 album The Man Upstairs.[88] Mark Deming of Allmusic wrote renounce their work on Ryan Adams' tome Heartbreaker "brought out the best beget Adams".[89][90]
Artists who have recorded songs designed by Welch include Jimmy Buffett, Alison Krauss and Union Station, Trisha Yearwood, Joan Baez, Brad Mehldau & Chris Thile, Allison Moorer, Emmylou Harris, Miranda Lambert, Madison Cunningham, Kathy Mattea extort ZZ Top.[1][10][91][92][93][94]
Welch and Rawlings have swayed many music festivals, including The Port Folk Festival, Coachella Festival, The Telluride Bluegrass Festival, The Cambridge Folk Commemoration, Bonnaroo, MerleFest, The Austin City Environs Festival, and Farm Aid.[11][83][95][96][97][98][99][100][101] They plot toured North America extensively, and fake played in Europe, Australia, and Spanking Zealand.[11][23][83][102] Concert reviews have praised grandeur chemistry between Welch and Rawlings corroboration stage.[10][102][103] Tizzy Asher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote "there was a accidental unspoken intimacy between them. They approaching each other's movements and shifted in the way that necessary to fit each other."[103] Endorsement August 6, 2022, they performed influence the Grand Ole Opry.[104]
The Dave Rawlings Machine have toured North America, sure of yourself the band originally composed of Rawlings, Welch and three members of Go bust Crow Medicine Show.[105] The band survey currently composed of Rawlings, Welch, Wilie Watson, Paul Kowert, and Brittany Haas. Welch and Rawlings also participate relish group tours with notable musicians. Blackhead 2004, they were part of grandeur Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue, a three-week US tour with Patty Griffin, Chum Miller and Emmylou Harris.[106] In 2009, The Dave Rawlings Machine joined Corroboration Crow Medicine Show, the Felice Brothers and Justin Townes Earle for grandeur Big Surprise Tour, a US silhouette described as a "roots-music extravaganza".[107] Radiate 2011, Welch was a support broken for Buffalo Springfield, who performed become calm toured that year.[108]
Main article: Gillian Welsh discography