Tuesday, October 12, 2004 ... 7:18 PM
Suburban Hilltop Tent Conversion
(Hey Facebook folks -- thanks for the link, and the look-see. Here's a list of all Tent Revue posts about or mentioning Gillian Welch.)
I want to tell you about my first time with my darling Betsy.
Last month, I took her to see Gillian Welch & David Rawlings. It was my eighth time, but her first. Curious about my obsession, she'd picked up Time (The Revelator) -- the least accessible of their four records -- and felt appropriately ambivalent about it. She'd been listening for months to my dreamy, effusive tales of Dave's biblical flatpicking and Gil's majestic cracked-leather voice; she'd read my reviews and observed my exchanges with others of the faith, which can have an alienating effect on the uninitiated. I'd cobbled some roomy shoes for the Duo to fill before anyone -- but particularly an indie-rock girl, born'n'raised in the South, who isn't as readily bowled over by simple sweet twang as I am.
So I took her down to Lexington, and we sat beneath a tent in the rain and watched.
What did she think of her first time? Here's Betsy to tell us herself.
For two years, 70% of the shows I went to were based almost entirely on drunkenness. And not just regular "At the Show" drunkenness, either. I mean "Stumbling Backward into a Stack of Amps and Playing Two-Thirds of the Encore Lying Down" drunkenness.
I didn't know what to expect from myself at an intense, sober show, but I was afraid of what it would say about me if I didn't feel Something I'd never felt before. After hearing everything Boney and K. had said about seeing Gil & Dave live, I was expecting an epiphany, or transcendence, or levitation, and if I didn't get it, or maybe I should say "get it," then something must be wrong with me. It sounds silly now, but I was worried. I had no doubt I'd enjoy the show, because really fucking good music is still really fucking good music, but really, what would it mean if that's all it was?
There is something about watching the two of them that's like watching a movie or a hologram or something. I had this great image of a reel-to-reel projector, but couldn't figure out how to get it in here because neither of them looks crackly. They're both bright and clear and present, but it's almost as if they're coming from somewhere else, like they're just not actually on that stage. They were completely in sync, but it still seemed a few times like both of them were entirely unaware that the other was on the stage at all.
Dave plays guitar like he's making sweet sweet love to it. I know that's the biggest cliche ever, but there's something vaguely uncomfortable about watching the way he plays. It might be sexy to accidentally see in someone's bedroom window, but what if they see me watching? Will they be embarrassed, or will I? He's doing something I've never seen when he plays guitar, and it's sweet and sexy and amazing, but I didn't know whether to watch or look away.
I watched.
I've seen a whole lot of people play guitar. I've even seen a few people play guitar really well. But I have never seen anyone play a guitar the way David Rawlings plays guitar. I wouldn't have any idea how to explain it to someone who had never seen it, but I can not believe more people don't pass out watching him play. Anyone who's heard him play on a record knows that he plays notes you don't expect, but what I really didn't expect was to find myself trying so hard to expect something that I held my breath. I realized it during Revelator, because I started to get dizzy, but there were a couple few other times when everything but his fingers on the guitar neck started to fade out, so I may have been doing the same thing then, too.
Gil is a different thing entirely. Unless she was doing that thing, bent over her guitar and swaying, I could not stop watching her. Part of it was just fascination, I think, because onstage she doesn't look any particular age or height and doesn't seem to have any particular color hair or eyes, but it was impossible to stop looking at her. Sometimes she looked like she was in pain and sometimes she looked like she was afraid of something, and sometimes she just looked like Something Else.
I do wonder about the bent down swaying thing. Before I ever saw Gillian Welch, even on film, Boney told me about how she's getting off listening to Dave soloing, but I wonder if it's really that simple. I don't want to believe it's as calculated as her knowing that no one can stop looking at her, that no human being with a heart or a soul who is anywhere near her can stop watching her. But what if it is? I want to believe she's just getting off on Dave soloing, and God knows if I was embarrassed to watch it from fifteen feet back, then it must be really intense to be that close to him and the guitar, but I had to wonder when I realized that was the only time I could take my eyes off her.
It's really fucking weird to look at Gillian Welch and hear her sing and watch the way she is onstage and know that this woman is a deadhead from California. How does she write the stuff she writes? How does she sing it That Way? I know at least during the first half of the first set I was trying to find a seam, or a crack, or a tear, or something. I don't know if I was officially satisfied or just forgot about it entirely, but she's fucking seamless. Combine that with the whole not-quite-there projector thing, and seamless became flat-out otherworldly.
I don't know what to say other than that, but I need to see them again. I don't mean I need to see them again to form an opinion, I mean I NEED to see them again.
So there you have it -- a skeptic converted before your eyes. Amen, friends. Go in peace.
And thanks to my blue-eyed daisy for writing me a terrific review.
Brendan
1 Comments:
i Gillian and David in Hartford, and it was perfect. Absolutely perfect.
I especially enjoyed that they don't "plug in" their instruments, and that, during one part of the performance, Gillian asked that the air conditioner be turned off.
We all got hot and uncomfortable, but the music took our minds off of that.
David's new improvisions on "Revelator" are genius.
I really enjoyed the back and forth from Old Crow Medicine Show. They were wonderful. As I drove away after the show, I spotted a group of girls lingering near their truck.
"See, I told my friend. Roots music will get you laid, too."
By 
, at
12/15/2005 1:17 PM
Making Notes: Music of the Carolinas
(Novello Festival Press, April 2008)
includes my essay, "Link Wray"
MUSIC
Flop Eared Mule
The Celestial Monochord
HickoryWind.org
Modern Acoustic Magazine / Blog
Faking It
Honey, Where You Been So Long?
whiskey-girl
Porchlight
Charlotte-related
Emily A. Benton
Laurie Koster's Charlotte & Area Events
Evening Muse
Neighborhood Theatre
OTHER THAN MUSIC
Rusty Barnes
Mixed Animal
Cans and Jars
Night Train
Cat and Girl
Tom Drury
Ian Frazier
Film Freak Central
November 9, 2007
Eilen Jewell
The Evening Muse, Charlotte, NC
***review!***
June 16, 2007:
Carrie Rodriguez w/ Tim Easton
The Evening Muse, Charlotte, NC
***review!***
June 2, 2007:
Mt. Airy Fiddlers Convention
***review!***
July 10, 2005:
Chris Scruggs
The Evening Muse, Charlotte, NC
***review!***
July 8, 2005:
Tim Easton
The Evening Muse, Charlotte, NC
***review!***
February 19, 2005:
Neko Case and The Sadies w/ Visqueen
Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, GA
***review!***
September 17, 2004:
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings w/ Old Crow Medicine Show
Theater At Lime Kiln, Lexington, VA
***review!***
August 17, 2004:
Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue
Wolf Trap, Vienna, VA
***review!***
August 7 & 8, 2004:
Newport Folk Festival
Newport, R.I.
***review!***
July 11, 2004:
Cowboy Junkies
Wolf Trap, Vienna, VA
***review!***
Various Artists:
Friends of Old Time Music: the folks arrival 1961-1965 (at HickoryWind.org)
Neko Case:
Live From Austin TX DVD (at HickoryWing.org)
Old Crow Medicine Show:
Big Iron World
Sampson Pittman:
"Highway 61 Blues"
Baby Boy Warren:
"Stop Breakin Down"
Nina Nastasia:
The Blackened Air
Ryan Adams:
Jacksonville City Nights
Robert Wilkins:
"Rolling Stone"
Neko Case:
Furnace Room Lullaby
Etta Baker:
One Dime Blues
Steve Earle:
The Revolution Starts Now
Grey DeLisle:
The Graceful Ghost
