4 Exquisite Songs from Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’ New Album ‘Woodland’

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings released Woodland on August 23, their seventh studio album.

The duo’s rootsy music nearly predates the “Americana” label. However, since Revival, Welch and her partner Rawlings have created haunting acoustic music that borrows from traditional, yet holds onto the present with want, desperation, and the growing anxiety of unavoidable loss.

Woodland formed in the wake of a tornado that ripped through Nashville on March 3, 2020. When the storm reached the duo’s East Nashville studio, they risked their lives trying to save instruments and recording masters. A lifetime of work, accumulation, legacy, history.  

Below are four exquisite songs from Woodland, each of which neatly details both zoomed-out persistence and the harrowing moments of near-total loss and devastation.

“What We Had”

Rawlings sings in a high voice like Neil Young, missing his lost love. Like many, he once dreamed of the things he didn’t have. Now he yearns for what’s lost—“what we had.” The human condition seems conditioned to prioritize things out of reach. What’s in front of you is easy to touch, to hold, and easy to take for granted. This could also be the metaphor for the things Welch and Rawlings nearly lost as a tornado raged through their city, their recording studio, and their lives in East Nashville.

“Here Stands a Woman”

Welch and Rawlings document aging in front of the mirror. One’s love may never change, but Welch sees profound physical changes, and the melancholy folk song contemplates the sped-up years of fading youth. They echo both Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan with references to “that Danville curl.” Singing about lost parents, tender spirituality, and natural order movement gives momentum to the here-and-then-gone reality of existence.

“Hashtag”

Obituaries are now reduced to introductions by hashtag. When you see someone’s name next to a hashtag, one of the first things you think is, “Oh no, I hope they didn’t die.” Rawlings sings about his late musical hero, Guy Clark, joking, You laughed and said the news would be bad / If I ever saw your name with a hashtag. You don’t often hear Americana artists sing about modern conveniences (or curses) like social media platforms. But Welch and Rawlings sing from the physical place that shaped Woodland—lightly referencing the pandemic and a new form of the flu.

“Empty Trainload of Sky”

For a while, this was the working title of Woodland. It’s a reference to the failing ceilings of Woodland Studios, where Welch and Rawlings moved frantically to save a life’s work beneath the wrath of Nashville’s 2020 tornado. They, along with archivist Glen Chausse, raced against time—and nature—as the studio’s roof gave way above them. They pushed guitars on dollies through six inches of water and grabbed armfuls of master tapes, desperate to find a safe and dry corner of the building. Ultimately, they settled on Woodland for the album title. It’s the place they fought so hard to save.

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