O Gillian, Where Art Thou?
She was the voice of a new generation of country singers, a breed that valued authenticity over record sales or bums on seats. Then, for reasons nobody understands, the songs stopped flowing. Gillian Welch discusses a long dark night of the soul that seemed it might never end – and the difficult road back.
Ed Power, 10 Jan 2012
Sequestered deep in the concrete-bunkeresque bowels of the Grand Canal Theatre’s backstage area, Gillian Welch is talking in a low, intense whisper, a sweet lilt full of the same southern gothic cadences as her singing voice.
“We had written all these new songs but felt absolutely nothing towards them – nothing,” says the singer considered by many to be the first lady of alternative country. “Even if we played them live and people liked them, they didn’t ring true to us. If you feel empty doing it, what’s the point?”
She is discussing the torturously long delay that preceded her acclaimed 2011 LP, The Harrow And The Harvest. Having released six albums in a little over half a decade, in 2004 Welch and her musical partner Dave Rawlings were struck down with a strange sort of writer’s block. It wasn’t that they had lost the ability to compose. It’s just that, so far as they could tell, the new material didn’t pass muster. It didn’t feel like it mattered. Maybe they’d said all they needed to say. For a few scary months, they feared their careers might be at an end.
“Were we becoming perfectionist?,” muses Rawlings, an amiable chap who wears the largest stetson you’ve ever seen and, accent-wise, is a deadringer for movie star Owen Wilson. “I don’t know. I did worry we were demanding too much of ourselves. So I went back and listened to older material, stuff we hadn’t quite finished or hadn’t gotten around to releasing. And it sounded better. It just did. I don’t think it was a case of us losing sight of the wood from the trees.”
Somehow – and to this day they’re still not sure how – the pair managed to sweat and worry the mediocre streak out of their system (a break touring Rawling’s solo project helped). The results of all the turmoil, toil and soul-searching can be heard on The Harrow And The Harvest, the title a reference to the spells of creative famine and plenty that led up to the record’s completion.
Released a few months ago, it was immediately acclaimed as one of the finest of Welch’s career, a haunting synthesis of her old timey melodies and story-telling sensibilities. Several hours before a sell-out performance at the Grand Canal she admits to feeling gratified and surprised there was still an audience waiting around to listen to what she had to say.
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