Prescott Park Arts Festival presents: Gillian Welch

Description

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have recorded 7 studio albums and have lent their talents to countless fellow artists’ recordings. In recognition of their remarkable career, Welch and Rawlings were honored with the Americana Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting in 2015 and the Berklee American Masters Award in 2016. 

Gillian Welch first appeared on the scene as a young singer/songwriter armed with a voice and sensibility far beyond her years, earning widespread acclaim for her deft, evocative resurrection of the musical styles most commonly associated with the roots of traditional and early country music. 

Appalachian old-time, folk and string-band music has too often been heard as the crude, naturalistic output of unstudied musicians who operate primarily on instinct. No duo has more profoundly recast those expectations over the last two decades than Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings.

Together, they have approached antique musical forms as an exalted craft, acclimating audiences to a refinement nested in austerity.

From their 1996 debut album Revival – a record that was a pivot point in the ‘90s revival of American Roots music – the rawboned refinement of their songwriting, the comely and lilting crooks in Welch’s phrasing, the shimmery dissonance of their harmonies and the prickly, surging ecstasy of Rawlings’ guitar runs, have set an impossibly high bar for the acoustic duos that have come along in their wake.