In March 2020, When a deadly tornado hit East Nashville just days before an even more devastating pandemic struck, the iconic Woodland Sound Studios — home to the likes of Tammy Wynette — soft touchIndigo girls Ophelia's Swamp, Jimmy Buffett A1AAnd dozens of other darlings—stood tall in the eye of the storm. Its roof had been blown away, but its foundations held together as if by divine intervention. And ready to pick up the pieces were Grammy-winning folk duo Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.
There, the talented songwriters, singers, and their longtime collaborators not only stored all of their original recordings and equipment—precious items that were nearly destroyed by the hurricane—but also created a vast catalog of tender, transcendent honesty. And for the better part of the past four years, they’ve paid for Mother Nature’s hell-raising in the form of a partial rebuild and the production of a resonant new album. forestwhich was named in honor of the studio. It is the duo's first collaboration in seven years.
Rich in melancholic vocals and heart-wrenching ballads—from the mournful “What We Had” to the deeply moving admission of aging, “Here Stands a Woman”—the result is a record that sounds sonically, but thematically, like two people taking inventory after a less literal storm. On the final track, for example, Welch sings with determination: “You told me you loved me / And that will never change / But I look in the mirror / I know I’m not who I was.”
“For all the loss and sadness and devastation on this album, there is an enormous amount of joy and relief to be working and making another record in our beloved studio that was almost destroyed,” Welch says during a phone interview with Rolling Stone“That's what runs through all the songs… this feeling of, 'Maybe I took some things for granted and didn't realize they might disappear.'”
Much has already been written about the damage wrought by the 2020 storm. But it was different, as Welch recalls in conversation. In 1998, a mile-long tornado destroyed the studio, severely damaging its structure and, once again, part of its roof. By 2001, the abandoned studio was condemned, not to mention the site of a particularly contentious lawsuit. This is what Welch recalls as the most critical moment at Woodland—the first moment that pushed her and Rawlings to ensure its survival.
“The only people looking to buy it were major national chains that were looking for a city block and a location to tear it down and turn it into a pharmacy,” she says.. After taking out two loans, Welch and Rawlings bought the studio the same year to maintain it as sound engineer Glenn Snoddy had planned in 1968.““We were the crazy people who bought the company to make it a studio, which made no sense at all. I'm really glad that Dave and I, as silly as it sounds, were able to do it.”
One might think that Woodland’s evolution is an apt metaphor for Welch and Rawlings’s evolution—both creative and not. Now in their mid-fifties, they are thinking more than ever about the passage of time. Neither is intoxicated by nostalgia, but neither is entirely immune to sentimentality, especially given their current situation. It is therefore not surprising that many of the American species mourn the loss, forest It is a humble offering on the altar of what remains; a poem about the sadness inherent in preserving the past. For every look back, there is another look at what lies ahead. For every loss, a new discovery.
In “Hashtag,” a tribute to Guy Clark, a mentor and friend to Welch and Rawlings, Rawlings cleverly uses social media symbolism: “I laughed and said it’d be bad news/If I saw your name with a hashtag,” Rawlings sings. “Singers like you and me/They’re only news when we’re dead.”
“All the songs that were chosen had two sides that were connected through the lyrics,” says Rawlings. Rolling Stone“I mean, definitely, very clearly in something like ‘Bells and Birds,’” he adds, before quoting the lyrics of the album’s fourth track. “‘Some people hear a song and some people hear a warning.’ It’s like, ‘Which one?’ It’s both.”
“I definitely feel like the album is full of contradictions, even contradictions within one “It's a song,” Welch says. “There's a lot of change, there's a lot of conflict, but there's also calm.”
Longtime fans of Welch and Rowling know that when it comes to their creative process, “good enough” is not in the vocabulary of blatant perfectionists. “That’s never been our experience,” Rowling jokes when asked if satisfaction comes easily. “I wish it did… It sounds like fun.” Welch similarly compares the deluge of writing, recording, improvising, rewriting, and rerecording to the extensive editing Peter Jackson did on his album Now We’ll See What Happens. Lord of the Rings. For example, Rawlings wrote so many songs—about a hundred—that he initially considered recording a double album. forestThe undeniable narrative thread in this book and the way the tracks flowed in an easy sequence made it stop for a moment.
In moments of such abundance, one might imagine it would be difficult to know when to stop. Given how adept Welch and Rawlings are at navigating the passage of time, how do they know when each story is over? “I don’t know,” Rawlings initially responds angrily, but they eventually agree that it all boils down to instinct and an innate trust built up over the past few decades.
Currently, the duo is gearing up for a 34-date tour that will take them from La Vista, Nebraska, to the Evanston Folk Festival to Tysons, Va. When we spoke, they were both relieved about their latest performance—the first live appearance of much of their work. forestLast month, they performed eight of their new songs at the Newport Folk Festival to a standing ovation. Zach Bryan even commented on the festival post: “My queen, my hero, we love you and pray you keep making music.”
Rawlings recalled playing the first line of “What We Had,” only to see several people in the crowd greet her as an old friend and begin singing along as if they had been listening to her for years already.
“I felt like, 'Here we go,'” he says, referring to all the years they played in Newport. “I don't feel any different.”
“People were amazed that we were still the same,” Welch says. They hope everyone who listens feels the same way. But more than anything, Welch says she hopes this will prompt people to develop a sense of comfort with all the nuances of life—to embrace the wrinkles and the wisdom with gratitude, to taste the bitter with the sweet, to really listen to the song and the warning.
“You know…the painful experience is… only “It’s a real experience,” Welch says, “and that’s where the real growth and transcendence happens. You may wish it didn’t happen, but why would you wish it? I mean, don’t you want the spectrum of life? I think you do.”
