Gillian Welch Q&A

Austin Chronicle: Hey Gillian, what's going on?

Gillian Welch: I'm excited to be coming back to Austin.

AC: Friday, June 8, at Stubb's! Now you've had a lot of memorable performances here. What's the highlight to you?

GW: That Bright Eyes show at Stubb's at the end of last year's ACL Festival. That was a really fun night because it was one those shows where it just felt like a party. I didn't realize that Conor had been playing our song "Wrecking Ball" in his set, so it was a crazy surprise for me when he asked if we wanted to get up and do it with them. It was very rollicking and fun.

But you know I also have a very vivid memory of playing South by Southwest right before we went into the studio to make the Revelator record. We played somewhere on campus, some small theater, and it was just this crazy show because, when I think about now, what were we doing there? We hadn't even made the record. This is spring 2001 I guess and we we're so raw we didn't even have skin. We'd just been writing these songs and they weren't even done and we went and we played this crazy show. I think it's one of the rawest, strangest shows that we've ever played.

I remember sitting on the edge of the bed at the hotel room – that La Quinta out on Oltorf – before the show and trying to finish "My First Lover." The songs were being born and I've seen pictures from that show and it doesn't look like we were eating or sleeping at that time.

AC: Do you feel like you have thicker skin now, musically? Are you more comfortable?

GW: It all depends what part of the process you catch us at. I feel like we were equally out of our minds and raw working on this record [The Harrow and the Harvest]. That's part of what's fun about coming back to Stubb's now. We're in pace with the record more than the first time through when we we're just learning to play these songs. I think this will be a little more comfortable and just different. We're going to be using the songs to say different things, which is one of the things that happens as time goes by.  Different things about the songs present themselves to you.

AC: You mean to say they have different qualities or a different meaning altogether?

GW: Both. It's kind of like you value different things in them and they do change, which is one of the great things. If they didn't I don't think we could still play "Barroom Girls" or "Orphan Girls," songs off our first record.

AC: I commend you on taking so much time between your last two albums. I hope you didn't catch too much shit from your fans.

GW: The worst thing is that I was just miserable about it. It's really nice that you think it worked out and I actually think it worked out as well, but it was just hellish. I didn't mean to do it. It just happened and ultimately it's all right because there are things that you gain by living that much more life between records and you can't fabricate it. We came into this record as different people, there's no other way around it and there's no shortcut to that.

But I’m not trying to do that again. We came off the first tour for this record – we were out for about seven months, which is a big tour for us; some bands go around the world twice, but that was the longest tour we've ever done – and when we got done with that chunk, the only thing we wanted to do was see if we could write more songs. So that's all we've been doing.

AC: Have songs been coming easier and are you happy with the quality of the new ones?

GW: Yeah, it's been easier and I don't really know why. When it was very difficult, I didn't know why, but we weren't really writing stuff we liked. It wasn't writer's block because stuff was getting written, but we just didn't like it. Things seem to be working better now.

The last record really rekindled my love of duets. We’d kind of been away from our duet for a while because my last record, Soul Journey, had a band, and then we made Dave's record, which also had a band, so it had been a while since we committed ourselves to our duet.

That was the joyful part of making the last record. We went into the studio with so much pent up excitement to just do our little thing that we do and that sustained us through this somewhat grueling tour we did when the record came out. The news is, it hasn't abated. Now Dave and I are both really interested in seeing how much more we can squeeze out of the duet.

AC: I think that's your core.

GW: It's a fascinating form for us. You're so hogtied. You couldn't be anymore penned-in and hampered. You've got no drums, no bass. You've got no other lead color instrument and we just love it. We just love the minimalism of that palate, and when each of us is forced to shoulder so much responsibility for the sound coming off the stage and the sound of the records, we really respond to be driven that hard – having to work that hard.

I think I've figured out over the last eight years that we're only happy when we're working hard. I know now that we're lifers because someone who didn't have to do this, someone who wasn't driven to do this, would have stopped. At some point in that eight-year gap, it was so unpleasant that if I could have done anything else, if I could have walked away, I would have.

AC: But making it though that period makes you stronger, right?

GW: There's something to realizing that you won't be turned away from it. There's a great strength in realizing that this is what you do. Even during the time when we weren't releasing any music, we didn't stop doing it. We never stopped and, at this point, I don't think we will.

AC: I have a Texas-specific question for you: did you ever play with Townes Van Zandt?

GW: Yeah, many times. When we first started playing in Nashville, Townes was at a bunch of our first shows at Douglas Corner, which was a place he liked to hang out and drink. I remember the first show of ours he was at. He sat by himself at a table in the front row, like four feet from me, and every time Dave and I would hit a harmony note just right and really make it buzz, he'd pound the table and howl like a dog. I took this as a high compliment.

Later we opened some shows for him. We had the same booking agent, a fellow named Keith Case who booked Townes for years, so we did some shows with him, some Writers in the Round with him. Nashville was founded on those, where writers sit in a circle, face each other, and play their songs. There were a couple parties, right at the end of Townes' life, when he couldn't really hold a guitar anymore or play. He would recite his songs because he couldn't sing.

I remember one particular party at Doug Dillard's house, where Townes had been passed out in a chair for hours. We just thought he was out and then I dropped my pick and it was down under his chair. As I was bending down to get it, I looked up at him and his eyes were open and he was looking right at me. He didn't move, he gave me that line: "There's just two kinds of music in the world. There's blues and there's 'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah'." Then he just closed his eyes again.

Later, the sun was coming up and I started to sing "Fraulein," the old folk song, and he kind of woke up and took over and sang "Fraulein" and that was that. I think that was the last time I ever saw him.