gillian welch, ‘boots no. 1, the official revival bootleg’

for the first time, gillian welch and dave rawlings have reached back into their archives and released older material. the first one is focused on their initial collaboration, ‘revival’. that album essentially put them on the map, at least as far as the burgeoning americana movement was concerned. they had a met a few years before at the berklee college of music in boston, where they discovered they had a mutual adoration for early bluegrass and country music, specifically the carter family and the stanley brothers. after leaving berklee, they headed west to nashville where they did odd jobs and worked the night club circuit, trying to establish a name for themselves. opening for the likes of emmylou harris, townes van zandt, and lucinda williams, they soon caught the eye of a publisher, who liked their simple and sparse songwriting style. gillian was soon signed to write songs for other artists, and then soon thereafter landed a record contract. she was whisked away to los angeles with about thirty songs in her pocket. produced by t bone burnett, the arrangements were a little different than what she envisioned. dave rawlings at that time was considered just the boyfriend who came to play guitar on some of the tracks. dave and t bone clashed a bit, but they backed off, conceding this was their first foray into the record business. and in the end, what they came up with is one of the groundbreaking albums of the americana era. indeed, it would be t bone burnett who would use much of the knowledge he had learned from these recording sessions to develop the soundtrack for ‘o brother where art thou’, on which gillian was prominently featured.

what struck me when i first heard them was how ancient their duets were, steeped in appalachia and naturally evoking the high lonesome sound first popularized by bill monroe and his gang. they were truly students of the genre, and it just sounded so genuine. and they really haven’t strayed from that for twenty years. since they recorded this album, dave has of course become more of a force on the records, and his guitar work is in high demand on like minded artists’ works. interestingly, the guitar that he is most associated with – the epiphone archtop – was first played on ‘revival’. he had found it in an old guitar shop, and had it cleaned up with new strings. he allegedly only played one chord on it before putting it in a guitar case and shipping it to the california studios. his usual guitar wasn’t cutting through the t bone mix, and so he switched, never looking back.

the bootleg release has some great alternate takes, but more importantly there are about 6-7 outtakes that never made the cut. some really good material that would be first class songs on any album from this period. this pair is well known for taking their sweet time in releasing new material. and so for now, consider this retrospection of their classic debut.