Are we in golden age for acoustic music? You just have to think about it, if you are interested in a couple of significant tours coming through California right now, one of the duo of Gillian Welch and David RawlingsAnother of solo artist Jason Isbell, who deals with coastal cities such as Capos on a guitar pull. Isbell has been in the review’s headlines and shines a light on how well lonely finger picking can sound on the disc with its first bandless album, “Foxes in the snow.” But the Los Angeles arrangement of Welch and Rawlings-which is more than six months to tour behind their excellent 2024 joint effort, “Woodland”-is a reminder not only what influence they have certainly been on someone like Isbell, but how they remain the unkind queen and the king of this idiom.
Of course, while Isbell and some of their other contemporaries can dip their toes in and out of a purely acoustic position, Welch and Rawlings have kept it quiet for almost 30 years now. Each time in a while they threaten to become electric, in their own even brave way, but thankfully it never seems to really take completely. Because the mystery of the timeless stories they tell in general works best on a lower boil, although nothing is electrified like Rawlings’ Epiphone in 1935, when he really lets his fingers make the reinforcement.
Their sold out Friday night at The Wiltern was an exercise in how long a grip two very unassuming people can have on a imprisoned audience during the better part of two and a half hours, with not much more arsenal at their disposal than talent, a distinct sense of shared personal identity and a fantastic knock for vintage. (And on some of the songs, for a real turbo boost, a guest bassist.) Even generously divided into two sets with a break, their 23 song show seemed almost too fast, but it is a proof in general for their bell-topping magic formula. It seemed almost appropriate that they performed the same weekend as the US transition to summer time, so the audience had multiple Chances to wonder where time went by.
For as many years as these two have been on this now, this tour marks the first time as the formatting of the new album matches the formatting of their live show. Previously, concerts would find rawlings and Welch alternating songs from the respective albums that came out under their individual names (each one they both worked with anyway). Last year’s “Woodland” found that they were also co-invited on records for the first time, the trade in making head song (with a temporary true duet or pure harmony number) just as they always have live. It is a welcome synchronization of studio and stage modes, without disadvantages for the audience; Although “Gillian Welch” has been more of a household name in the 90s and 2000s, it is safe to say that everyone who is a fan of one is a fan of both at this late date.
The dynamics of having a “band” with two effective singers keeps things from always becoming outdated, even with an almost comical lack of watches and whistles, musically or visually. (“Dave might remove his jacket,” warned Welch. “It’s about it, for the show industry.”) And when their voices blend together in length, as they did during the timed slow burner “how it will be”, the effect is creepy, for lack of a better word-not real blood harmony, but something beautiful and quite spooky.
At present, they have a third wheel on stage for a majority of the songs: upright Bassist Paul Kowrt, who is also a long -lasting member of Punch Brothers and Hawktail. His presence only gives a kind of variation to the material, as there are numbers like “Bells of Harlem” where he starts by playing the base with an arc and switches to pick it up to pick up the pace, or vice versa, or go from not playing at all to creating a beaten crescendo under the other half of a song. When not so much else happens on stage, these small changes create more excitement or movement within a song than you would originally think about possible.
Welch switches effectively between guitar and banjo. The Whoops she got to pick up the latter led her to comment, “Some people think Banjo is unsurpassing sexy.” Rawlings were about to pick up their own banjo at a time when there was a high snap, followed by the shocked comment, “Everyone knows that sound” – and after a little previewing, as there was no roadie who would ride out to the rescue with a new one, a change back to guitar and a change of setlist. “We would play a happy number,” informed the Welch audience, “but instead we will play a Really sorry a. “As on a Welch/Rawlings show is like suddenly announcing that you will earn dessert. It was when the audience received” that it will be “like an audible and thanked God for broken strings.
As a guitarist, Rawlings is not only a master technician but a monster of people like solar around his partner’s rhythm guitar or head song as someone caught up in a sweet delirium, even though he knows when to hide out the madness. If you appreciate people, you probably already have these people as heroes, but if you are more a rock person, there are intuitive features here that make the music feel that it almost hears just as much in that design language as well. Rawlings were at Peak Flex when he moved from Virtuo’s skill to just banging hard on the strings during the seven -minute last number, “Revelator”, which can usually count as a climax when they play it. (They don’t always.) He does that on his trademark epiphon, and maybe for a moment you wish that the person who carefully made the instrument back in 1935 can be brought back from the dead, just so you could see the appearance of their faces when they witnessed the wild things that rawlings do with it.
Other highlights included two Rawlings-Sung songs that the duo has not even released on a disc, but sometimes take out tour anyway, as well as their habit. One of these, “Lazarus,” seems to be from a friend or lover of the biblical resistor, and wondered if it was too painful to be worthwhile to be worth to be worth it. I wondered during the performance of this was a cover for a grateful Dead song that I had not heard; I was happy to see fans comments afterwards indicate that I was not alone in the crazy view. Another new song appeared in the codes, “Goodnight”, such a sweet broadcast as you can imagine that the couple would eventually assume it to a farewell number every night.
At some point, someone who is a newcomer for all this may wonder: is this all a period piece? It would be a difficult question to answer, which is part of what has done the whole Welch/Rawlings Ethos so before. Melodies or lyrics’ old Timey-Ness seems to throw the songs in a nostalgic light … if you are nostalgic for the good days of depression. But then Welch will sing something like “hashtag”, a tribute to their late songwriter friend Guy Clark who clearly does not try to draw any time -traveling tricks from his title. (“When will we be ourselves?” They wonder, in the choir, and raise the song from an anecdotal tribute to a famous, fallen friend to some kind of larger cosmic question.) These songs are really mostly unauthorized from the time in a wonderful way, with the help of the fact that Welch’s voice in particular seems neither modern or antique. There is warmth for her song, and also room for ambiguity, as if she may be skirting the boundary between friendly insurance and tells a ghost story.
Chris Willman/Variety
She gives a sense of hope to even some of the more sad stories, such as “difficult times”, which are not Stephen Foster -song of the same name, although it sounds about as old, but one of her own. “Hard times are not Gona to control my mind, Bessie,” she sang, and in the difficult times we are currently experiencing it was difficult not to let, endeavor. Although, at the end of the melody, the plow man who sings it has lost its farm and Bessie probably buried on it somewhere.
The Wilner audience was in a final treatment before it was over. Rawlings started playing some circular guitar parts that sounded suspicious as the opening for Jefferson Airplanes “White Rabbit”, but no, it probably wasn’t … and then Welch finally broke into Grace Slick’s opening line, while he broke into a small smile. The two partners really do not make so many covers, and they had only been raising this about a dozen times over the past 20 years. But something with LA got them in a surreal mood, and we got a version that sounded about as cool as the aircraft. You can say that everyone who left the building had been transformed into a fed head.
Setlist for Gillian Welch & David Rawllings, The Wiltern in Los Angeles, March 7, 2025:
(Set 1)
Elvis Presley Blues
Midnight train
Empty train load of sky
Gap
Nordland
Howdy Howdy
Brewery bells
As it goes
Ruby
Wayside/Back in Time
(Set 2)
Lawyer
What we had
Difficult times
Hashtag
The day Mississippi died
As it will be
Lazarus
Red clay gloria
(Encore 1)
Look at Miss Ohio
I fly away
(Encore 2)
Good night
disclosure
White rabbit
