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Something I learned June 25: This city loves Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
To be fair, I love them too—or their music (I don’t know them personally, but they seem very nice). Welch and Rawlings were the first concert I reviewed as a journalist back in 2005. I played some of Welch’s sun-bleached country songs on my first tours as a musician. So I came into the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on June 25 feeling a little sentimental. The feeling was both buoyed and walloped out of me by the audience’s overwhelming affection for the pair. There was a standing ovation before Welch and Rawlings even played a note. When Welch picked up the banjo? Thunderous applause. When she made a few softball jokes in between sets? The crowd couldn’t get enough. Portland audiences can sometimes be lukewarm and reserved, especially during live music—but it was hot as hell in the Schnitz.
It’s not to say the praise wasn’t deserved, even if a bit overzealous. What Welch and Rawlings do together is a wonder. Their collective sound sits somewhere in the middle of Americana, bluegrass, country, and folk, guitar lines crawling over one another, almost like legs tangled in crumpled bed sheets—well-worn and soft, slightly sensual. The tempos swung and slowed on some of the hits, and Rawlings’ voice went slightly reedy at times. But the three decades of collaboration showed in their ease, their anticipation of each other’s vocal inflections for perfect harmony, Rawlings’ exploratory guitar solos climbing and jumping as Welch smiled (with special guest Paul Kowert on standup bass). They really dug their feet into the earth for the second encore—“Revelator” felt like an eruption, something unfurling from deep in the ground, growing over the crowd’s heads, stretching right before our eyes. When the song ended, everyone stood to reach it again, to cheer even louder.
