Gillian Welch and David Rawlings headed for the Uptown March 15
It’s difficult to find artists who more completely exemplify the musical category ‘Americana’—the merging of folk, country and bluegrass—than Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Performing and recording for three decades, the popular duo has been nominated or won virtually every award bestowed in their genres, even an Oscar nomination for Welch for her singing in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. Last month they took the Grammy for the Best Folk Album of 2025. It’s title Woodland honored Woodland Studios, their long-time workplace which was nearly destroyed in the 2020 Nashville tornado.
If one combs through descriptions of their recordings and performances, the words that repeatedly appear are austere, bleak, dark, sparse, slow, etc. And it’s true. Their tempos are slow, with content often expressing a dark side of the human experience. But other words that often appear are gorgeous, elegant and breathtaking. This listener experiences their music as something akin to a beautiful string quartet—four voices, two vocal and two instrumental, pitch perfect with creative and at times surprising harmonies and counterpoint.
Welch is a contralto singer whose voice has been variously described as mournful and solemn and without artifice. She plays guitar, banjo and drums. She met Rawlings when they were both students at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Rawlings voice has been described as twangy, nasally and Dylanesque. He has a broad vocal range, occasionally singing high above Welch’s melody. Welch typically sings lead. On Woodland, for example, Rawlings sings lead on only two of the ten songs.
Instrumentally, Welch is accomplished while Rawlings is extraordinary. As a guitarist, his accompaniment and fills are as complex and satisfying as his solo breaks. His flat-picking style has been described as daring and strikingly inventive. One reviewer wrote that “Rawlings squeezes, strokes, chokes and does about everything but blow into his guitar.”
The songs on Woodland were mostly created amid two crises, the Nashville tornado and its aftermath, and the Covid pandemic. Fifty songs were recorded and ten made the cut for the record. In a September 2024 interview for The Bluegrass Situation, the duo talked about how they chose the songs for the album.
“They seemed, in a way, to address the present moment,” Welch said. “They were the most clearly about now and because of that, they seem to all fit together. Even though there’s plenty of contradiction within the album, there are these crazy undercurrents of loss, destruction, resurrection and perserverance, sadness, joy, emptiness, and fullness. It’s ripe with contrast. That’s just how we were feeling.”
Rawlings added that it was a “collection of ten songs that felt like they amplified each other. I think all of the records that we’ve made that feel the best to me, one song sort of affects the way you think of the next and the whole album has a feeling that you’re not going to get if you just listen to your three favorites. I think that that feeling is heavier, or better. That, to me, is the benchmark of what you’re aiming for when you’re trying to make a record.”
Later in the same interview, they went on to talk at length about their development and longevity over their thirty years as recording and performing artists.
“There are things we can do now that we couldn’t do when we were kids,” Welch said, “and certainly there are things that we can’t do now that we did in our early 20’s. But I’m just so glad that there’s still a lot to explore. Musically, topically, I definitely don’t feel stale or tired of this. I feel like we both have a crazy sense of adventure.
“I feel like I’m able to listen while we play now, in a more elevated way. I can both listen to the smallest nuances of what I’m playing and singing, and I can listen to what Dave’s playing and singing. I can make all these micro-adjustments to our four instruments, but at the same time I can hear the sum of what we’re doing. I can also just listen to the whole sound and adjust for the whole thing. I’m not sure I used to be able to do that, or it didn’t occur to me to do it.
“I still want to write a song that people will be singing for a long time. I still keep trying to do good work. Each song that we write is something that hasn’t existed before. So each time we start a song, I want to fulfill that inspiration.”
Rawlings remarks were laden with humility. “I just always think that I want to get good at this,” he said. “I really love the process of writing and performing in front of people, and have since the very first time I was able to get up on stage and play guitar. That was winning the lottery. When we started writing our own material and having people respond to it, there’s nothing really better. It’s a question of longevity. How long can we keep doing things and keep thinking of things that people feel are meaningful in their lives? How long can we stay relevant?
“I don’t think that I’ll ever have a feeling of arrival. It’s all pushing forward. How can I play guitar better? How can we write better songs? How can I sing better? How can we record things better? It’s the learning that’s fun, it’s not even necessarily about getting better. It’s about wanting to explore and the pleasure in that process and the doing of it. I’m not real goal-oriented, there’s never been a statue I wanted to win. We’ve gotten some lifetime achievement awards over the past few years, and I’m like, ‘Are you kidding? We’re just starting to do this! I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ It’s not memoir time, and it never will be.”
Welch and Rawlings will perform at Napa’s Uptown Theatre on Saturday, March 15. See uptowntheatrenapa.com for details and ticketing.
David Kerns is a Napa-based music journalist and novelist.
