Gillian Welch and David Rawlings

There’s a song nagging at me. And just because I’m walking out the door of a Gillian Welch/David Rawlings concert, don’t go imagining some old timey slow-waltz. I’m not caught in a purist country lament, or a fingerplucked bluegrass number. No, the song just out of reach in my head is more . . . ragged rock ‘n’ roll. Some people don’t believe much in Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. She grew up in L.A., they met at, of all things, a professional music school. So the critically inclined ask, where do they get off playing Appalachian Blues? The naysayers say, carpetbaggers! Some complain that Welch is an urbanite pretending and stealing, unfairly reaching into the aural traditions of rural America. Two words, I say: Robert Zimmerman. Others — writer-musician-types perhaps — simply don’t care for Gillian Welch’s music, don’t connect with it, don’t respect it. Instead of saying that, you’ll find hyperbolic ultimatums in U.S. weeklies and alt-rock magazines: leave the fictional tales behind, they say, dig down deep, drop the role-playing. O Brother Where Art Thou? did gangbusters, and in some ways Gillian Welch doesn’t have to pay the critical noise any mind. Ralph Stanley sang “O Death” at the Grammys and now that she’s got her own label, her leap from 800 to 1,500 seat venues is complete. So now Welch and Rawlings are an iconic pair: Carter Family aficionados still broken-hearted about Elvis and his Vegas years (“He was all alone / in a long decline”), Stanley Brothers fans remembering a back-seat seduction by the Steve Miller song (“Quicksilver Girl / and she’s free”) on the radio. In early press coverage, Welch tried to convince us of her rock roots, of her affection for college radio/indie rock, like 1980s R.E.M and the Pixies. And then there were the Esquires — the duo’s side project — with Welch on electric bass, Rawlings on electric guitar, and the Dylan songbook open-wide. Until now, the “Gillian Welch & David Rawlings” shows steered clear of that devil’s music, of the backbeat. When Welch sang, “I wanna hear that rock ‘n’ roll / I wanna ‘lectrify my soul” — maybe we didn’t quite believe her. But looming large on this night in Portland, Oregon, is Gillian Welch’s love of Levon Helm and Garth Hudson and Neil Young and John Fogerty. It’s not exactly the sound — the stage is still spare, two people and two guitars (and the occasional banjo). But the rock reverence is in the approach, and the landing; in tone and in narrative arcs. A new song like “Lowlands” — recorded in the studio with a full band — plays live like a huge rock anthem turned down on an AM radio. It’s Neil Young circa- Tonight’s the Night: which is not to suggest that David Rawlings has gone and reached for his electric guitar. He hasn’t. Not yet anyhow. Some things about tonight are standard fare for anyone who’s seen these two over the past few years. Rawlings is still in a suit and his guitar solos are still sprawling — and flawless. The audience is attentive, nearly silent. The onstage banter is restrained, self-effacing, and hilarious. Rawlings gets to grab the lead vocal on a song in the middle of the second set (tonight it’s A.E. Beddoe’s “Copper Kettle (The Pale Moonlight)” — the night before last it was “Big Rock Candy Mountain”). But something is definitely changing. It’s not just that Welch is now a competent banjo player (she learned the instrument onstage), or that Rawlings is stepping back to allow room for Welch’s new solo material. No, there’s definitely a loose comfort easing out of them both, as if they can finally let their hair down and play all the music they love, to hell with what people are expecting. The autobiographical bluntness of the new material may or may not be a reaction to the critical throng. If anything, Welch seems to be dancing the line between fiction and non-fiction — she’s turned one ear deaf to the doubters and the other in sly deference to them. Some of the newer lyrics read like truth (especially in “No One Knows My Name” and “Wrecking Ball”). Some of the melodies reveal personal sonic affections (“Brokedown Palace” from the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty, and Neil Young’s “Albuquerque”). She’s still keeping her distance, but we’re a little bit closer now. So now when Welch announces that she’s going to let her partner take one, the crowd is calling out, “Springsteen!” “Hendrix!” Which brings us back to that damn song that I can’t shake. It’s not “Look at Miss Ohio” — the first song played tonight and the opening track on Soul Journey — although the kick-off line is an easy sing-a-long (“Oh me, oh my, oh / Look at Miss Ohio”). No, the wisp of song I’m hearing is less obvious, it’s a fleeting moment, a reference to another place, another time. For days I dig through my records: Neil Young’s Zuma, The Band’s Music From Big Pink, Springsteen’s Nebraska. And then, from seemingly nowhere, I begin to sing a refrain: “Who is burning? Who is burning?” There it is. It’s “Wrecking Ball”, an epic album-closer with six verses of wide-open landscape. Gillian Welch asks, “Who is watching?” and I hear “Effigy” from Credence Clearwater Revival’s 1969 album Willy and the Poorboys. I hear a band playing loud and big, and I can see Gillian Welch telling her story, and giving everyone the finger, a little bit Johnny Cash, a little bit Dylan, a little bit Joe Strummer. She’s playing the music she wants to play, and she has an audience. And Gillian Welch is learning how to bring the small details of her 21st century life into her beloved mountain sound. And I’m sitting here stuck with a song in my head.