I like the songs to appear very simple and to flow by without any kind of hiccup, but there has to be this impression of other currents underneath. Like if the songs aren’t, on some level, multidimensional, we lose interest in them. azquotes
Gillian Howard Welch (b. 10/2/67) is an American singer-songwriter. She performs with her musical partner, guitarist David Rawlings. Their sparse and dark musical style, which combines elements of Appalachian music, bluegrass, country and Americana, is described by The New Yorker as “at once innovative and obliquely reminiscent of past rural forms.“
Jedediah Purday wrote in The New Yorker:
Welch takes from her mountain and Southern sources a set of metaphysical intuitions. We are not made for satisfaction. To be a person is often to feel exiled, alone, and predestined.
Early Life:
Welch was born on 10/2/67, in New York City, and was adopted by Mitzie and Ken Welch, comedy and music entertainers. Her biological mother was a freshman in college, and her father was a musician visiting New York City. Welch has speculated that her biological father could have been one of her favorite musicians, and she later discovered from her adoptive parents that he was a drummer… that may have grown up in the mountains of North Carolina.” When Welch was three, her adoptive parents moved to Los Angeles to write music for The Carol Burnett Show. They also appeared on The Tonight Show.
Musical Beginnings:
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 band, and drums in a psychedelic surf 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. Upon finishing college in 1992, Welch moved to Nashville, Tennessee. She recalled,
I looked at my record collection and saw that all the music I loved had been made in Nashville—Bill Monroe, Dylan, the Stanley Brothers, Neil Young—so I moved there. Not ever thinking I was thirty years too late.
Discography:
|
Studio albums |
6 |
|---|---|
|
Music videos |
4 |
|
Soundtrack albums |
4 |
|
Tribute albums |
5 |
|
Archival releases |
4 |
|
Other appearances |
29 |
Filmography
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.
Some things to share:
Welch has collaborated and recorded with Alison Krauss, Ryan Adams, Jay Farrar, Emmylou Harris, Mark Knopfler, the Decemberists, Sam Phillips, Conor Oberst, Ani DiFranco, Robyn Hitchcock, Barry Gibb and Molly Tuttle.
She’s won 10 Grammys!
Official website: here
We lease 20 acres
And one Ginny mule
From the Alabama Trust
For half of the cotton and a third of the corn
Get a hand full of dust
We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we’ve all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why
I had a daughter
Called her Annabelle
She’s the apple of my eye
Tried to give her something like I never had
Didn’t want to ever hear her cry
We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we’ve all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why
When I’m dead and buried
I’ll take a hard life of tears
From every day I’ve ever known
Anna’s in the churchyard
She got no life at all
She only got these words on a stone
We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we’ve all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why
Written by: Gillian Howard Welch
Album: Revival
Released: 1996
And just because I can, I am sharing this song where Gillian sang with The Decemberists on this excellent song on this excellent album:
Source: wikipedia where there is a bunch more info on Gillian
Tao Talk 
Nice post 🌹
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Thanks!
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I haven’t listened to her much and mostly know of her by association with other Bluegrass artists. Interesting to learn her background and honesty I thought she was from Appalachia.
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She is in her heart <3
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She’s been on my musical radar for a while now. Her and Dave Rawlings put out some good tuneage. Thanks for the background, I thought she was from the mountains of North Carolina and just got off the turnip truck. She’s quite educated in music. She is in the same Americana vein as Mary Gaither and Molly Tuttle I’ve got one of her CDs somewhere around here, going to dig it up and spin it.
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Glad you know her and have one of her CDs. You’re welcome on the background. I became aware of Molly Tuttle last year or so when she did a duet with Billy Strings. Billy was born and raised a couple hours from here, but you would swear he came from bluegrass country.
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Lovely, but give me Dolly anyday :)
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Bernie, you music snob! Good to “see” you :) Are planning on doing A-Z this year?
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Haha, I love all music. From Andrè Reu to Bananarama 🤣🤣🤣Not sure yet about A-Z
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Yet another coincidence, as ‘Revival’ is the only album I have :)
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Very cool, Glyn. Happy to know she is known across the pond :)
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Another great choice.
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:)
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Another one of those genuine voices that I like…great pick.
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Thanks, Max.
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She does not sound like a Santa Monica/Santa Cruz kid, and I mean that in a good way. I think whoever transcribed the lyrics made a small mistake. A “jenny” is a female donkey, so I think that’s what “Ginny” should be. (Then again that still doesn’t make sense, since a mule is a cross between a horse (mare) and a donkey (jack). A hinny is a cross between a jenny and a stallion.)
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I am basically cutting and pasting from wiki so have no idea. If you have clearance to edit wiki you could change it or make a note maybe?
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I never bothered to try to get that clearance. I know my son used to edit there. I don’t know if he still does.
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I’ve thought about it, but it would be me searching for other data on the internet, not from any knowledge base, except on maybe a few topics? I’d have to start doing it to know how it would go. Cool that your son has edited there.
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I LOVE this type of music. I didn’t know her, though I did, if you know what I mean.
Bonus – I love the Decemberists so this is a double special :)
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Mighty pleased to hear it, Dale :)
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:D
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Nice post. Gillian Welch is another artist whose name I’ve heard various times but whose music I don’t know. I like both “Annabelle”, as well as the song with The Decemberists.
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Thanks, Christian. TMATLT (too many artists…)
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:-)
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One of my favorite Decembrists songs. I never knew she sang on the album.
Revival is the album of hers I’m most familiar with–it’s great. And I can feel her touch on the music from O Brother which is uniformly excellent. Thanks as always for all the information you dig up. (K)
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Glad you know her and enjoy her music. My pleasure to do this every year. It makes me aware of how many female musicians are out there!
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Yes there are.
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p.s. I went over to my friends house that has my collage stuff and picked out stuff for a new collage today.
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That’s good! But she should give it all back.
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Lots to say about it but will say it in an email rather than here.
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Another new artist to me, she’s amazing, I will definitely be checking out more from her!
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Great, Carol Anne. Part of my hope for the series is that people will look more into the artists presented.
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Yeah, she’s good!
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:)
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