Challenges come in many forms. For Gilliam Welch and David Rawlings one of the biggest was just surviving the hurricane that tore the roof off their Woodland Studio just as Covid was putting the world into a forced hibernation in 2020. By the light of an iPhone they moved boxes full of master tapes and recording gear again and again to keep things dry. Over the next four years they repaired the space, sorted through the tapes and came up with Woodland, an album as pure as a mountain stream, revealing the complications and contradictions, the scars and renewal at the heart of their music.
The two write with a sense of truth that rings through every phrase. ‘Hashtag’, a song written in tribute to Guy Clark, one of America’s most distinctive artists, features the kind of unvarnished truth and wit he was famous for, “You laughed and said the news would be bad/ If I ever saw your name with a hashtag/ Singers like you and I/ Are only news when we die.”
Yet much of the album sounds as if it emerged from songs written long ago. Welch and Rawlings have a way with words that seems to reanimate them for a new age. With a musical bed that features little more than the sounds of two guitars, they weave a spell that intoxicates. ‘Here Stands A Woman’ nods to ‘Danville Girl’ yet along the way it the tale has changed, both how it’s told and in perspective. “You told me that you loved me/ And that would never change/ But I’m looking in the mirror/ I know I’m not the same.” The shift is essential in understanding how Welch and Rawlings reflect a modern reality, while the music seems to preserve a bit of the past.
Quoting ‘Blue Tail Fly’ at the end of ‘The Day the Mississippi Died’ ties together strands of another age with emphatic struggle to reunite a country that seems to have lost its way. As brightly as the song begins, with guitars and violin, what comes in the end is something quite different. “I dug my hands deep into the black Mother Earth/ Tried to raise my spirits up for what it’s worth/ You laughed and said, “Aw honey, now what did you expect?”/Not these tears and nightmare years where madness goes unchecked.”
Spanning the metaphoric changes of the modern age while still nodding strongly to a past that still resonates. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings expose the heart of a world that doesn’t always pay tribute to the old days in their actions today. Woodland is a collection that exposes how hearts and actions don’t always match up. Something that needs to be examined in this day and age.
