This is the opening track from Gillian Welch’s debut album, presaging the revival of old-time music and the emergence of Americana.
It’s 28 years since I saw Gillian Welch perform live in the unlikely location of the Groucho Club. I haven’t seen her since, except on film, but I have followed her career.
I have seen her described, rather well, as “the queen of gothic hillbilly alt- folk” and I can’t improve on that.
She grew up in LA with adoptive parents but her biological mother comes from the mountains of North Carolina – and some of those Appalachian roots seem to be in her blood.
I remember when I saw Welch that time in 1996 – probably her first UK visit – she wore a vintage polka-dot dress that made her look like she had walked out of a black-and-white photo from the 1920s or ’30s and she maintained that illusion with her music.
She enchanted the small audience with her take on old-time Americana, which had yet to experience its subsequent revival but may well have helped prompt it.
She writes her own songs but she’s inspired by ghosts of the past like the Carter Family and the Stanley Brothers, and once said of her influences: “By and large, I listen to people who are dead. I let 50 years go by and see what’s relevant.”
Her set, which she had performed the previous night at the Royal Albert Hall, was drawn mostly from her debut album, the aptly titled Revival, and I’ve followed her progress ever since, usually with her partner David Rawlings, who played on that first album too.