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Gillian Howard Welch (; born October 2, 1967) is an American singer-songwriter who performs with guitarist David Rawlings. Their spare, often dark sound, which The New Yorker calls "at once innovative and obliquely reminiscent of past rural forms", blends Appalachian, Bluegrass music, country music and Americana.
Welch and Rawlings have collaborated on nine critically acclaimed albums, five under her name, three under Rawlings', and two jointly. Her debut Revival (1996) was nominated for Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, as was Time (The Revelator), from 2001. Soul Journey (2003) introduced a fuller, more upbeat sound, with drums and electric guitar. After an eight-year gap, The Harrow & the Harvest (2011) was also nominated for a Best Contemporary Folk Album Grammy.
In 2020, Welch and Rawlings released All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone), which won the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Folk Album. In 2024, Welch and Rawlings released Woodland, which would win the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Folk Album, currently making Welch and Rawlings the only duo to win the award more than once.
Welch was an associate producer and performed on two songs of the soundtrack of the Coen brothers 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a platinum album that won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2002. She also appeared in the film attempting to buy a Soggy Bottom Boys record. Welch, while not one of the principal actors, did sing and provide additional lyrics to the Sirens song "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby." In 2018 she and Rawlings wrote the song "When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings" for the Coens' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, for which they received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
As a child, Welch was introduced to the music of American folk singers Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Carter Family. She performed folk songs with her peers at the Westland Elementary School in Los Angeles. Welch later attended Crossroads School, a high school in Santa Monica, California. While in high school, a local television program featured her as a student who "excelled at everything she did."
While a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Welch played bass in a goth music band, and drums in a psychedelic rock surf rock band. In college, a roommate played an album by the bluegrass band The Stanley Brothers, and she had an epiphany:
The first song came on and I just stood up and I kind of walked into the other room as if I was in a tractor beam and stood there in front of the stereo. It was just as powerful as the electric stuff, and it was songs I'd grown up singing. All of a sudden I'd found my music.
After graduating from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in photography, Welch attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she majored in songwriting. During her two years studying at Berklee, Welch gained confidence as a performer. Welch met her music partner David Rawlings at a successful audition for Berklee's only country band.
Welch gave a homemade copy of her demos to Tim O'Brien who then recorded two of Welch's songs with his sister Mollie O'Brien. "Orphan Girl" and "Wichita" are featured on Tim and Mollie's album Away Out On The Mountain (1994), standing as the first published songs of Welch's.
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 to artists of the past are obvious and clearly acknowledged, but there's a maturity, intelligence, and keen eye for detail in her songs you wouldn't expect from someone simply trying to ape the Carter Family." Bill Friskics-Warren of No Depression praised the album as "breathtakingly austere evocations of rural culture." The Arlington Heights, Illinois Daily Heralds Mark Guarino observed that Revival was "cheered and scrutinized as a staunch revivalist of Depression-era music only because her originals sounded so much like that era." He attributed this to the biblical imagery of the lyrics, Burnett's threadbare production, and the plainly-sung bleakness in Welch's vocals. Ann Powers of Rolling Stone gave Revival a lukewarm review and criticized Welch for not singing of her own experiences, and "manufacturing emotion." Robert Christgau echoed Powers: Welch "just doesn't have the voice, eye, or way with words to bring her simulation off."
The song, "Orphan Girl," from Revival has been covered by Emmylou Harris, Ann Wilson, Karin Bergquist of Over the Rhine, Mindy Smith, Patty Griffin, Linda Ronstadt, Tim & Mollie O'Brien, Holly Williams and Crooked Still.
Others who have recorded Welch's songs include Joan Baez, Grace Potter, Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, Punch Brothers, Mike Gordon, Bright Eyes, Calexico, Ani DiFranco, The Decemberists, Karl Blau, and Jim James.
Revival was nominated for the 1997 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, but lost to Bruce Springsteen's The Ghost of Tom Joad.
The album also received favorable reviews. Robert Wilonsky of the Dallas Observer observed that Welch "inhabits a role so completely, the fiction separating character and audience disappears". Thom Owens (Allmusic) stated that the album "lacks some of the focus" of Revival, but is "a thoroughly satisfying second album" and proof that her debut was not a fluke. No Depression's Farnum Brown commended the live and "immediate feel" of the album, Welch's clawhammer banjo, and Rawlings' harmonies. Similar to Revival, Welch was praised for reflecting influences such as the Stanley Brothers, but still managing to create an original sound, while Chris Herrington from Minneapolis's City Pages criticized the songs' lack of authenticity. He wrote "Welch doesn't write folk songs; she writes folk songs about writing folk songs."
Time (The Revelator) received extensive critical praise, most of which focused on the evolution of lyrics from mountain ballads. For Michael Shannon Friedman of The Charleston Gazette, "Welch's soul-piercing, backwoods quaver has always been a treasure, but on this record her songwriting is absolutely stunning." Critics compare the last track, the 15-minute "I Dream a Highway", to classics by Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Zac Johnson of Allmusic described "I Dream ..." as akin to "sweetly dozing in the river current like Huck and Jim's Mississippi River afternoons". No Depressions Grant Alden wrote, "Welch and Rawlings have gathered ... fragments from across the rich history of American music and reset them as small, subtle jewels adorning their own keenly observed, carefully constructed language." Time finished thirteenth in the 2001 Village Voice Pazz & Jop music critic poll. Time (The Revelator) appeared in best of decade lists of Rolling Stone, Paste, Uncut, The Irish Times, and the Ottawa Citizen. The album was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, but lost to Bob Dylan's Love and Theft. Time peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard Independent Album Billboard charts.
The Revelator Collection DVD was released in 2002. It featured live performances and music videos of songs from Time, and some Cover version. The concert footage was filmed in 2001, and the music videos included Welch and Rawlings performing three songs at RCA Studio B. No Depressions Barry Mazor praised the DVD as an accompaniment for Time, calling it "one last exclamation point on that memorable and important project."
In three songs of Soul Journey, for the first time Welch and Rawlings recorded their own versions of traditional folk songs.
Soul Journey also garnered significant acclaim. John Harris of Mojo magazine described the album as "pretty much perfect", and Uncuts Barney Hoskyns favorably compared it to Bob Dylan and The Band's The Basement Tapes. Will Hermes of Entertainment Weekly wrote that Welch has "never sounded deeper, realer, or sexier." Soul Journey peaked at No. 107 on the Billboard charts, and reached No. 3 for Independent Albums.
On September 18, 2015, the duo released their second album under the band title Dave Rawlings Machine, Nashville Obsolete. The band includes Willie Watson, Paul Kowert, Brittany Haas, and occasionally includes Jordan Tice.
Released on August 11, 2017, Poor David’s Almanack was the first Welch/Rawlings collaboration to be released under the name David Rawlings, dropping the previous Dave Rawlings Machine moniker. The song “Cumberland Gap,” which features on the album, was nominated for the 2018 Grammy Award for Best American Roots Song. It was also utilized in the opening sequence of the 2019 Guy Ritchie film, The Gentlemen.
The Harrow & the Harvest was released on June 28, 2011. Welch attributed the long time period between releases to dissatisfaction with the songs they were writing. She explained: "Our songcraft slipped and I really don't know why. It's not uncommon. It's something that happens to writers. It's the deepest frustration we have come through, hence the album title." The writing process involved "this endless back and forth between the two of us," Welch said, stating that "It's our most intertwined, co-authored, jointly-composed album."
The album received praise from publications such as The Los Angeles Times, Uncut, and Rolling Stone. Thom Jurek of Allmusic wrote that the album "is stunning for its intimacy, its lack of studio artifice, its warmth and its timeless, if hard won, songcraft".
The album peaked at No. 20 on the US Billboard 200 and No. 25 on the UK Albums Chart. It was nominated for a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, as well as Best Engineered Album.
The instrumentation on their songs is usually a simple arrangement, with Welch and Rawlings accompanying their own vocals with acoustic guitars, banjos, or a mandolin. Welch plays rhythm guitar with a 1956 Gibson J-50 (or banjo), while Rawlings plays lead on a 1935 Epiphone Olympic Guitar. The New Yorkers Wilkinson described Rawlings as a "strikingly inventive guitarist" who plays solos that are "daring melodic leaps". A review in No Depression by Andy Moore observed that Rawlings "squeezes, strokes, chokes and does just about everything but blow into" his guitar.
When Welch's first two albums came out, critics questioned the authenticity of her music, as she was raised in Southern California, but performed themed songs. For Revival, Welch was criticized for "manufacturing emotion", and a review of Hell Among the Yearlings by Chris Herrington of City Pages stated, "Welch is someone who discovered old-time music in college and decided that her own sheltered life could never be worth writing about", and that she is "completely devoid of individuality". Other critics rejected the notion that her background affects the authenticity of her music. Music critic Mark Kemp defended Welch in a New York Times piece:
The Wall Street Journal's Taylor Holliday echoed this: "Stingy critics give Ms. Welch a hard time because she's a California city girl, not an Appalachian coal miner's daughter. But as Lucinda Williams or Emmylou might attest, love of the music is not a birthright, but an earned right. Listen to Ms. Welch yodel, in a tune about that no-good "gal" Morphine, and you know she's as mountain as they come."
On September 16, 2015, the duo was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting by the Americana Music Association.
In addition to the strong country influence, Welch also draws on a repertoire of such rock 'n' roll artists as Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Neil Young, the Grateful Dead and the Velvet Underground. She has noted alternative rock bands Throwing Muses, Pixies and Camper Van Beethoven "don't directly inform my music, but they're in there." Her cover of "Black Star" by Radiohead became well-known and was released as a single in 2005.
Welch has recorded songs with a variety of notable artists, including Ryan Adams, Ani DiFranco, Emmylou Harris, Jay Farrar, Alison Krauss, Old Crow Medicine Show, Bright Eyes, Robyn Hitchcock, Steve Earle, Ralph Stanley, Sara Watkins, The Decemberists, Solomon Burke and Mark Knopfler. Welch and Rawlings' contributions on Hitchcock's album Spooked was described by Christopher Bahn of The A.V. Club as "subtle but vital". She later created the cover art for Hitchcock's 2014 album The Man Upstairs. Mark Deming of Allmusic wrote that their work on Ryan Adams' album Heartbreaker "brought out the best in Adams".
Artists who have recorded songs written 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 and ZZ Top.
The Dave Rawlings Machine have toured North America, with the band originally composed of Rawlings, Welch and three members of Old Crow Medicine Show. The band is currently composed of Rawlings, Welch, Wilie Watson, Paul Kowert, and Brittany Haas. Welch and Rawlings also participate in group tours with notable musicians. In 2004, they were part of the Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue, a three-week US tour with Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller and Emmylou Harris. In 2009, The Dave Rawlings Machine joined Old Crow Medicine Show, the Felice Brothers and Justin Townes Earle for the Big Surprise Tour, a US tour described as a "roots-music extravaganza". In 2011, Welch was a support act for Buffalo Springfield, who performed and toured that year.
Boots No 1: The Official Revival Bootleg
Boots No 1: The Official Revival Bootleg, was released on November 25, 2016. It received the status of "universal acclaim", receiving a Metacritic score of 79 out of 100, based on reviews from 8 critics. The album celebrates the 20th anniversary of Welch's debut album, Revival, and includes outtakes, alternate versions, and demos of the songs featured on the original, as well as eight new unreleased tracks.
All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone)
In July 2020, Welch and Rawlings announced All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone), an album of covers and traditional songs recorded at their home during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020. All the Good Times is notably the first album in their decades-long history of collaboration to be released jointly in both of their names. The album won the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Folk Album.
Woodland
On July 19, 2024, Welch and Rawlings announced Woodland, to be released August 23, 2024 through Acony Records, and shared its first single, "Empty Trainload of Sky." The album is the first collection of original material from Welch since 2011's The Harrow & the Harvest, and the first from Rawlings since 2017's Poor David's Almanack. The album won the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Folk Album, marking Rawling's second win of the award and making him and Welch the only two people to have won the award more than once.
Musical style
Welch and Rawlings incorporate elements of early twentieth century music such as old-time music, classic country, gospel music and traditional bluegrass with modern elements of rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll, jazz, and punk rock. The New Yorkers Alec Wilkinson maintained their musical style is "not easily classified—it is at once innovative and obliquely reminiscent of past rural forms".
Themes
Many songs performed by Welch and Rawlings contain dark themes about social outcasts struggling against such elements as poverty, drug addiction, death, a disconnection from their family, and an unresponsive God. Despite Welch being the lead singer, several of these characters are male. Welch has commented, "To be commercial, everybody wants happy love songs. People would flat-out ask me, 'Don't you have any happy love songs?' Well, as a matter of fact, I don't. I've got songs about orphans and morphine addicts." To reflect these themes, Welch and Rawlings often employ a slow pace to their songs. Their tempo is compared to a "slow heartbeat", and Cowperthwait of Rolling Stone observed that their songs "can lull you into near-hypnosis and then make your jaw drop with one final revelation".
Reception
Geoffrey Himes of The Washington Post described Welch as "one of the most interesting singer-songwriters of her generation". In 2003, Tom Kielty of The Boston Globe observed that she was "quietly establishing one of the most impressive catalogs in contemporary roots music", and a 2007 piece in The Guardian by John Harris called Welch "one of the decade's greatest talents". Critic Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "At every turn, she demonstrates a spark and commitment that should endear her to anyone from country and folk to pop and rock fans who appreciate imagination and heart."
The first-person protagonist of Ms. Welch's song ("Caleb Meyer") may be a young girl from a time and place that Ms. Welch will never fully understand, but the feelings the singer expresses about rape, and the respect she displays for her chosen musical genre, are nothing if not poignantly authentic. Likewise, it 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 foreboding that she expresses for the men who once labored in coal mines with futile hopes of a better life comes through loud and clear.
Influences and collaborations
Welch emphasizes music from a previous era as her major influence. She said that "by and large I listen to people who are dead. I'm really of the tried-and-true school. I let 50 years go by and see what's really relevant." Welch has acknowledged inspiration from several traditional country artists, including the Stanley Brothers, the Carter Family, the Louvin Brothers, and the Blue Sky Boys. She explained her relationship with traditional music by saying, "I've never tried to be traditional. It's been a springboard for me and I love it and revere it and would not be doing what I do without the music of the Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers and the Carter Family. However, it was clear I was never going to be able to do exactly that; I'm a songwriter."
Performances
Welch and Rawlings have played many music festivals, including The Newport Folk Festival, Coachella Festival, The Telluride Bluegrass Festival, The Cambridge Folk Festival, Bonnaroo, MerleFest, The Austin City Limits Festival, and Farm Aid. They have toured North America extensively, and have played in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Concert reviews have praised the chemistry between Welch and Rawlings on stage. Tizzy Asher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote "there was a startling unspoken intimacy between them. They anticipated each other's movements and shifted when necessary to fit each other." On August 6, 2022, they performed on the Grand Ole Opry.
Discography
Awards and nominations
1997 Grammy Awards Best Contemporary Folk Album Revival 2001 International Bluegrass Music Awards Gospel Recorded Performance of the Year "I'll Fly Away" (with Alison Krauss) Recorded Event of the Year Clinch Mountain Sweethearts (with Ralph Stanley and various artists) Album of the Year O Brother, Where Art Thou? (with various artists) Academy of Country Music Awards Country Music Association Awards Vocal Event of the Year "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby" (with Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris) "I'll Fly Away" (with Alison Krauss) 2002 Grammy Awards Album of the Year O Brother, Where Art Thou? (with various artists) Best Country Collaboration with Vocals "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby" (with Alison Krauss and Emmylou Harris) Best Contemporary Folk Album Time (The Revelator) Americana Music Honors & Awards Album of the Year Song of the Year "I Want To Sing That Rock & Roll" (with David Rawlings) Artist of the Year Gillian Welch and David Rawlings International Bluegrass Music Awards Album of the Year Down from the Mountain (with various artists) 2012 Americana Music Honors & Awards Artist of the Year Gillian Welch Grammy Awards Best Folk Album The Harrow & the Harvest (with David Rawlings) 2015 Americana Music Honors & Awards Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting Gillian Welch and David Rawlings 2018 Grammy Awards Best American Roots Song "Cumberland Gap" (with David Rawlings) Thomas Wolfe Prize won 2019 Academy Awards Best Original Song "When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings" (with David Rawlings) 2021 Grammy Awards Best Folk Album All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone) (with David Rawlings) 2025 Grammy Awards Best Folk Album Woodland (with David Rawlings) Americana Music Honors & Awards Album of the Year Duo/Group of the Year Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
External links
Categories: 1967 Births, Living People, American Acoustic Guitarists, American Adoptees, American Bluegrass Guitarists, American Country Guitarists, American Women Country Singers, American Country Singer-songwriters, American Women Singer-songwriters, American Folk Guitarists, American Folk Singers, Berklee College Of Music Alumni, Grammy Award Winners, Americana Music Honors & Awards Winners, Musicians From Nashville, Tennessee, Singers From New York City, Musicians From Santa Monica, California, University Of California, Santa Cruz Alumni, Almo Sounds Artists, Crossroads School Alumni, Singer-songwriters From California, Singer-songwriters From Tennessee, Guitarists From California, Guitarists From Tennessee, Guitarists From New York City, 20th-century American Guitarists, Country Musicians From California, Country Musicians From New York, Country Musicians From Tennessee, 20th-century American Women Guitarists, Singer-songwriters From New York, 21st-century American Women
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