Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are back with Woodland, the first album of songs written by the duo in seven years. The 10-track album was recorded entirely at the East Nashville studio that bears its name, which the duo has owned for more than two decades.
“Woodland is at the heart of everything we do, and has been for the last twenty some years,” Welch and Rawlings said. “The past four years were spent almost entirely within its walls, bringing it back to life after the 2020 tornado and making this record. The music is…a swirl of contradictions, emptiness, fullness, joy, grief, destruction, permanence. Now.”
Woodland begins with “Empty Trainload of Sky,” released on Friday, a full-band track featuring the first Welch lead vocals on a song released under her name since 2011’s The Harrow & The Harvest. “Empty Trainload of Sky” is a classic Welch/Rawlings number, mixing old-world rural American imagery (freight trains, river trestles) with a blurry, contemporary impressionism (at one point, Welch quotes Neil Young). The song also marks the first time Welch has performed to a full band (drums, bass) on record in over two decades.
Ever since Welch’s The Harrow & The Harvest, she and her creative partner Rawlings have released a semi-steady stream of records under various names: 2015’s Nashville Obsolete (under the moniker David Rawlings Machine), 2017’s Poor David’s Almanack (under David Rawlings), and 2020’s covers collection All the Good Times (as Gillian Welch and David Rawlings).
Woodland is not a Welch-billed follow-up to The Harrow & The Harvest. Though Welch and Rawlings tend to write, sing, and play on nearly every song they release, the way they name their records tends to reflect who sings lead. Their latest is the duo’s 10th studio album but only their second release under their joint names, so it’s safe to assume that, like on All the Good Times, the singers share lead vocal duties.
Woodland will be released on Aug. 23, with an extensive fall tour to follow. Next weekend, Welch and Rawlings will headline the Saturday night main stage at Newport Folk Festival.