Later this month, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings will release their 10th studio album together, Woodland – named after and recorded at their studio of the same name in Nashville. In 2020, the space was damaged in the tornado that hit the city; the couple have spent the last four years rebuilding it and honouring the space by making this new album there, which they call “a swirl of contradictions, emptiness, fullness, joy, grief, destruction, permanence”.
Woodland follows their first album billed as a duo, 2020’s covers album All the Good Times – though the couple’s music has been intertwined for nearly 30 years, since Rawlings played on Welch’s solo debut Revival; Welch’s 1998 album Hell Among the Yearlings was effectively a duets album. Between them, they have since made a number of landmark Americana records – all self-produced and released on their own independent label, Acony – with Welch’s 2001 album Time (The Revelator) standing as an all-time classic in the genre. Rolling Stone magazine has called the pair “protectors of the American folk song”; in 2000, Welch jointly won the Grammy for album of the year for her work as associate producer, performer and songwriter on the soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou?
You can ask Welch about the work of this garlanded pair of songwriters, their recent archival releases, collaborating with the likes of Nanci Griffith, Ani DiFranco, Bright Eyes, Tom Jones and Barry Gibb, or indeed anything else when she sits for the Guardian’s reader interview next week. Post your questions in the comments by 10am BST on 6 August and we’ll put the best to her.
