Those who are only passingly familiar with the music of Gillian Welch tend to classify her music as bluegrass, or old-time, or Appalachian. But as she demonstrated on this night, Gillian Welch plays rock music, sometimes disguised as all of the above.
Those in the know also know that "Gillian Welch" is a duo consisting of Welch and her collaborator David Rawlings. The two are an uncanny pair, their voices twining around each others in such close harmonies that they sometimes sound like one person somehow singing two parts. And Rawlings is one of the best and most original acoustic guitar players anywhere, his deceptively simple-looking technique bringing forth a sound that perfectly frames the songs. For much of 2004, "Gil and Dave" as their hardcore fans call them, toured with the Old Crow Medicine Show, a young, manic band that plays old-time and jug-band music with the passion and verve of a punk band. Typically on this tour, Rawlings sat in on the Crows' opening set, providing a second banjo or second guitar and harmony vocals, and the Crows joined the headliners for a rousing encore song or two.
Welch and Rawlings have been touring behind their 2003 release, Soul Journey for more than a year now, so they've had plenty of time to find suitable live arrangements for the songs, some of which were recorded with the two playing as a full rock combo, and some with just Gillian and her guitar at the kitchen table. And they've honed some of their older material into sure-fire crowd-pleasers.
Their show in the hippie-and-Baby-Boomer bastion of Eugene, Oregon, came between a triumphant two-night bill at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore and the final nights of the tour in Portland and Seattle. The multi-generational crowd being suitably warmed-up by the openers (whose most solid song, tellingly, was Bob Dylan's little-covered "Rock Me Mama"), the Nashville-based duo took the stage energized, and opened with a Dylan classic, "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You," from Nashville Skyline. It was a sign of much more to come from the catalogs of Dylan and other roots-rock icons.
Welch was talkative and clearly enjoying herself from the opening notes. She introduced her "Elvis Presley Blues" by recalling how bowled-over she was to hear Joan Baez's cover version. That song's evocation of the American folksong "John Henry" knocked loose another memory, and Welch went on to reveal a tale never before told in print. A verse in her enigmatic "Ruination Day, Part 2" from Time (The Revelator) was taken directly from a gig they played in Eugene before they were famous, at a small club named John Henry's. The bluegrassy "Ruination Day" they went on to play differed sharply from the languid recorded version. And their "Red Clay Halo" has now been boosted in tempo until it's truly a bluegrass song.
The autobiographical "Wrecking Ball," which closed Soul Journey, was recorded as a Crazy Horse-style rocker, and it took a while to adapt it to the duo's acoustic stage show. This night it worked brilliantly, with a two-guitar attack and Rawlings playing a harmonica that'd make Neil Young proud. Welch strapped on the mouth harp a little later, on her touching "No One Knows My Name," on which she also played banjo. They finished the second half of the regular set strongly, with a series of powerful songs that included "Revelator," featuring a guitar excursion by Rawlings that stood out even in a night of his amazing fretboard fireworks; the goose-bump-inducing harmonies of their gospel song "By the Mark;" Rawlings' lead vocals on Peter Rowan's harrowing "Ruby Ridge;" their ethereally beautiful (and still un-recorded) "The Way It Will Be;" and Welch's brutal death ballad "Caleb Meyer," which saw Rawlings wielding his guitar like a weapon.
After two solid numbers to open the encore session, "Everything is Free" and the singalong-inducing "I'll Fly Away," they brought Old Crow Medicine Show back on stage. Following a hurried huddle, Welch announced that, since their lengthy tour with the Crows was nearing its end, and it sometimes doesn't work to save all those fun songs they've been wanting to do until the very last night, "This kind of feels like it might be the right place... If you have to leave, we'll understand, but we'll be here a while."
With that, the sextet launched into The Band's classic "The Weight," with Welch and Rawlings sharing lead vocal duties with Crows Ketch Secor (fiddle) and Willie Watson (guitar). They followed with a splendid cover of Neil Young's dark ballad "Tonight's the Night." Then it was back to Dylan, with a rollicking take on "Goin' to Acapulco" and a hard-rocking, four-part-harmony-drenched "Odds 'n' Ends," both from the Dylan and The Band's classic Basement Tapes. The night appropriately ended with a fast and faster take on the "New John Henry Blues" by Bill Monroe, before the house lights came up nearly three and a half hours after they first went down.
