David Rawlings and Gillian Welch
It’s been a year since Grammy-winning folk duo Gillian Welch and David Rawlings released their acclaimed album Woodland. The record is named after the historic East Nashville recording studio the pair owns, with which they have an extensive history.
“[We’ve] resurrected that landmark twice with our own four hands,” says Welch, almost with a laugh.
Before the purchase, they had a temporary recording setup in their home, but like many other musicians, their goal was to have a dedicated studio space where equipment could be ready to go when inspiration struck. Welch remembers it was Rawlings’ idea back in 2002 to look into buying Woodland, since they’d been driving by its big “For Sale” sign for two years at that point. It took two loans and a considerable amount of elbow grease deployed over a couple of months to get it up and running.
“We worked around the clock,” she recalls. “Dave and I rebuilt it with our own hands. We installed the studio glass, we did the upholstery work and the control room. We did all the wiring ourselves, crawling around on our hands and knees and pulling cables down into the basement. I’ll get out the pictures and prove it. … It was really hard work. But if you do it right, the hope is you only have to do it once, you know?”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for Woodland. The studio sits in the middle of Five Points, and it was in the direct path of the tornadoes that tore across Middle Tennessee right before COVID lockdown started in March 2020, suffering serious damage as a result.
“If we hadn’t been in town, I shudder to think — I just can’t even barely talk about it,” says Welch. “We would have lost everything. All of our master tapes, all of our guitars — everything, our entire life. I know other people go through catastrophic loss like that. We have friends out in Los Angeles who pretty much lost everything like that in that last fire. And there they are, they’re still kicking and making music. We were just so grateful with all the help we had, and the community really rallied around us.”
Equipment for cleanup and helping hands to operate it kept rolling in through the week after the storm. Even Jack White appeared and, in Welch’s recollection, spent hours with Rawlings running a ShopVac. Chef and restaurateur Sean Brock sent a different kind of support.
“After, like, 36 hours of hell, the first food that showed up on our doorstep was this enormous pan of biscuit sandwiches from Sean,” Welch says. “Oh my goodness — showed up on the steps! This is Nashville, people.”
She knows Nashville well, having moved to Music City in the early 1990s before striking up the partnership with Rawlings that precipitated their career taking off. They’ve worked together all along — the long-running gag was that they were members of “a two-person band called Gillian Welch,” and Rawlings also has a few solo records under his name. But they began releasing music under both their names only recently. According to Welch, the decision was primarily a matter of convenience.
“It just seemed easier and it seemed truer to how things really are with us,” says Welch. “It’s always been collaborative, right from the very beginning. And I think we just got tired of trying to decide whose name would go on what. It seemed kind of like an artificial distinction. Then we put out All the Good Times under both of our names, and nobody seemed to bat an eye. So we said, ‘Well, that’s that.’”
Released in August 2024, Woodland is the duo’s first album of original material released under both names, following All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone), a collection of covers and classic traditional tunes released in 2020. After all the work done to restore the studio, the name was a natural fit. During the 2020 renovations, the studio was restored to its original 1960s floorplan and styling. Welch and Rawlings are constantly writing, but felt a record coming on while the world slowed down during the pandemic shutdown. Despite the change of pace and setting, the physical world isn’t where their inspiration comes from. That starts in a different place, internal but no less real.
“I sometimes think of it as that we go deep into this kind of internal landscape that very often looks like Tennessee,” Welch says. “There’s mules, there’s whiskey, there’s dirt, there’s the devil, you know — there’s redemption. I think we were just ready to move on to the new songs. And again, there was this feeling of, ‘We may not always have this opportunity.’ So I think we felt like we had to seize it. We had rebuilt the studio, we were alive and well, and we could make another record, so we thought we’d bloody well better.”
By all measures available, it’s a good thing they did. Woodland is classic Welch-Rawlings fare, full of the heart and harmonies the duo is known for with a minimal acoustic-instrument-driven sound that’s somehow timeless and completely refreshing. All the Good Times won Best Folk Album at the Grammys in 2021, and Woodland followed suit this year, making the duo the first to win the award more than once. The LP keeps making an impact with listeners, and Welch and Rawlings are up for two awards — Album of the Year and Duo/Group of the Year, a third of the member-voted categories — at this year’s Americana Honors and Awards, happening Sept. 10 at the Ryman. Welch says she and Rawlings find themselves in good company on the slate of nominees, and while they don’t expect to win in either category, they’re glad to be off the road and able to attend the ceremony this year. Most of all, they are grateful that after all this time, people are still listening.
“David and I have just been so overwhelmingly thankful that people have heard the record and like the record. I guess I’m surprised and heartened that we just keep going around. We’ve been touring the record for a year, and I’m really glad that it’s still sitting really well with people. I keep hearing from folks that it’s meaningful to them and they like spinning it. So that’s all you can ask for.”
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