Before we go any further, before we address anything, I’d like you
to forget. Maybe forget what Gillian Welch shows you’ve seen, the
floorboards all sparking from the weight of these two souls, Gill and
Dave, and their four collective cowboy-booted soles... ...maybe forget
when you first heard “Orphan Girl,” that song that seemed to exist
outside of time and caused everyone who heard it to become the
itinerant, the loner, the longing; maybe forget the years that have
passed when last a new Gillian Welch record graced the hi-fi’s of
the music-listening world - forget the pop stars risen and erased in
those years, the administrations and regimes born and gone in those
years - forget, indeed, that there are eight of them, eight years,
since Soul Journey arrived into the world. The Harrow & The Harvest,
Gill and Dave’s new record, is both a product of and is unrelated to
those years in-between. Best to forget that. What it is, indisputably,
is the product of two people who have become so entwined in one
another that the songs and the singing and the playing on this record
seems to exude from a single voice. This is the sound of two people in
a room, playing to one another, with one another. This is the sound of
the room in which the two people are playing. This is the sound of two
voices, locked in unison, locked in harmony. The sound of two people
playing live, with no overdubs, and very few takes. Two people making
music together as if they were one soul combined. Now back up. This is
what we know: Gill and Dave met at Berklee College of Music; Gillian
was studying songwriting, while Dave studied guitar; they met at an
audition for a country band. Together, they moved to Nashville, TN
where most of their work together has been produced. Since then they
have influenced and inspired new generations of country and folk
singers, songwriters and players. They have earned the slavish
admiration of many of the most lauded and loved voices of the
Americana milieu now living – and some who have since deceased (rest
their souls). They’ve had their songs recorded by the likes of
Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, and Solomon Burke. Gill and Dave’s
body of work is deeply rooted in the world it has sought to portray in
song: the American South. “Yes, Tennessee figures rather prominently
in the new songs,” says Gillian. The record, however, has little of
the sweet sunny south; in fact, there’s a real dark pallor to the
thing – and the language in the songs seems to recall the shady
groves of Tennessee far more than anything that the duet has done in
recent memory. “The truth is, we absented ourselves from Nashville
for a while, to escape the weight of home and studio and record label.
But I think our thoughts turned back there with a newness and clarity
I hadn’t felt since I moved there almost 20 years ago.” And the
record they’ve made, tonally, is a new Southern sound, with the sort
of songs you wouldn’t be surprised to hear issuing from some
verdant, wooded hollow in Appalachia; the sort of songs you’d expect
to be sung to soothe unquiet babies. Songs you’d expect to hear
hollered from an Asheville grange hall, all too late in the evening.
Songs with the wry humor of the back porch. “Dave says this record
is ‘ten different kinds of sad’, but it’s not without humor. I
feel like there’s a maturity in it and a sense of place that only
comes with time.” Gillian continues, “We feel at home in the folk
tradition, and using its language combined with our own.”
“That’s the whole point of the folk tradition,” laughs Dave. And
the language is gorgeous. From the song “Tennessee”: I kissed you
cause I’ve never been an angel I learned to say hosannas on my knees
But they threw me out of Sunday school when I was nine And the sisters
said I did just as I pleased Even so I try to be a good girl It’s
only what I want that makes me weak I had no desire to be a child of
sin Then you went and pressed your whiskers to my cheek. The thing is,
the two of them, Gill and Dave, have arrived at a place in their music
where it seems to be impossible to attribute those words to one or the
other. That’s what I mean about their mindmeld. It’s not just them
performing and playing and singing together that is so uncanny, so
wholly of one voice – the songwriting itself seems to have arrived
at a similar apotheosis. “As a songwriting team,” says Dave, “we
are more seamless and fluid than ever before. It’s nearly impossible
to unravel who wrote what word, what line, what sentiment.” Gillian
adds: “It’s truly immaterial at this point. When Dave and I really
get down to work, it’s like we’re in a lifeboat, like we’re the
only two people in the world, and it is very quiet. I think some of
that quietness comes through on these recordings.” Listen to this
record with the lights low. Listen to it on an old radio, cradled next
to your ear. This is the sound of two people, singing and playing
their songs. Forget the years in between. “The way you made it.
That’s the way it will be.”
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18/08/2015 Last update