{"id":146442,"date":"2024-12-29T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-29T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=146442"},"modified":"2024-12-29T11:48:49","modified_gmt":"2024-12-29T19:48:49","slug":"inside-the-songwriting-and-guitar-craft-of-gillian-welch-and-david-rawlings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/inside-the-songwriting-and-guitar-craft-of-gillian-welch-and-david-rawlings\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Songwriting\u00a0and Guitar Craft of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Woodland, <\/em>the new album by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, takes its name from Woodland Sound Studios in East Nashville, a place with deep significance to the duo. Back in the \u201970s, Woodland hosted sessions for albums like the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band\u2019s Will the Circle Be Unbroken<\/em> <\/a>and Neil Young\u2019s Comes a Time<\/a> <\/em>that helped lay the groundwork for what eventually became known as Americana\u2014and for Welch and Rawlings\u2019 own musical world. In the mid-\u201990s, Welch and Rawlings recorded their debut, Revival<\/a>,<\/em> at Woodland with producer T Bone Burnett. In 2002, Welch and Rawlings purchased the studio, which was shuttered following a dispute over damage from a tornado, and brought it back to life. But then in early March 2020, they nearly lost Woodland, and all its instruments and recording archives, when the building took yet another direct hit from a tornado\u2014just a few weeks before the Covid pandemic broke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out of these strange and trying times, and from the rebuilt studio, comes Welch and Rawlings\u2019 first set of new original songs since 2017. Woodland<\/a> <\/em>both extends and deepens their 30-year quest to create new music with the clarity, economy, and staying power of traditional folk. While half the album features band backing and even some string arrangements by Rawlings, at the core of the music\u2014as always\u2014is the extraordinary braiding of their voices and acoustic guitars. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the lead-up to the album release, I caught up with Rawlings and Welch in separate conversations to learn more about the writing and recording of their latest songs, and the vintage guitar discoveries that helped shape them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Rawlings
Rawlings and Welch with Paul Kowert on bass at the 2024 Newport Folk Festival. Photo: Emilio Herce<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tuning Up at Home<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the aftermath of the tornado, which left Woodland with collapsed ceilings and major flooding, Rawlings devoted himself to salvaging the studio. \u201cI\u2019ve been in this building for 14 to 16 hours a day for the last five years,\u201d says Rawlings, speaking on a summer afternoon from Woodland, on a break from cutting lacquers for the album\u2019s vinyl master. \u201cI mean, really nowhere else, literally every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During this lengthy rehabilitation, and the pandemic pause in Welch and Rawlings\u2019 touring life, they realized that their writing and music needed to continue. \u201cWhen we bought Woodland, we were both over there, pulling wire and installing the control room glass and putting it all together,\u201d Welch recalls. \u201cBut this time around in the reconstruction from the tornado, it was really Dave. We decided to divide and conquer. So he would go over there, and I would stay at the house and write. And when he would knock off and come home, we would work on whatever I had done that day.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This division of labor worked well because of the difference in their writing styles, she says. \u201cI\u2019m more the sit-on-the-couch-for-six-hours, meditative sort of writer, and he\u2019s the five-minutes-brushing-his-teeth-in-the-bathroom writer. Certain people would perhaps be jealous that he works so much faster. But really, I enjoy the meditative aspect of the work I do. I mean, what else would I want to do? I really like sitting on the couch with my guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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