Gillian Howard Welch (born October 2, 1967) is an American singer-songwrite… Read Full Bio ↴Gillian Howard Welch (born October 2, 1967) is an American singer-songwriter. She performs with her musical partner, guitarist David Rawlings. Their sparse and dark musical style, which combines elements of Appalachian music, bluegrass, country and Americana, is described by The New Yorker as "at once innovative and obliquely reminiscent of past rural forms."

Welch and Rawlings have collaborated on seven critically acclaimed albums, five released under her name, and two released under the name Dave Rawlings Machine. Her 1996 debut, Revival, and the 2001 release Time (The Revelator), received nominations for the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Her 2003 album, Soul Journey, introduced electric guitar, drums, and a more upbeat sound to their body of work. After a gap of eight years, she released a fifth studio album, The Harrow & The Harvest, in 2011, which was also nominated for a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album.

Welch was an associate producer and performed on two songs of the soundtrack of the Coen brothers 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a platinum album that won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2002. She also appeared in the film attempting to buy a Soggy Bottom Boys record. Welch, while not one of the principal actors, did sing and provide additional lyrics to the Sirens song "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby." In 2018 she and Rawlings wrote the song "When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings" for the Coens' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, for which they received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Welch has collaborated and recorded with Alison Krauss, Ryan Adams, Jay Farrar, Emmylou Harris, the Decemberists, Sam Phillips, Conor Oberst, Ani DiFranco, and Robyn Hitchcock.

Gillian Howard Welch was born on October 2, 1967 in New York City, and was adopted by Mitzie Welch (née Marilyn Cottle) and Ken Welch, comedy and music entertainers. Her biological mother was a freshman in college, and her father was a musician visiting New York City. Welch has speculated that her biological father could have been one of her favorite musicians, and she later discovered from her adoptive parents that he was a drummer. Alec Wilkinson of The New Yorker stated that "from an address they had been given, it appeared that her mother ... may have grown up in the mountains of North Carolina". When Welch was three, her adoptive parents moved to Los Angeles to write music for The Carol Burnett Show. They also appeared on The Tonight Show.

As a child, Welch was introduced to the music of American folk singers Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Carter Family. She performed folk songs with her peers at the Westland Elementary School in Los Angeles. Welch later attended Crossroads School, a high school in Santa Monica, California. While in high school, a local television program featured her as a student who "excelled at everything she did."

Welch and Rawlings incorporate elements of early twentieth century music such as old time, classic country, gospel and traditional bluegrass with modern elements of rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll, jazz, and punk rock. The New Yorker's Alec Wilkinson maintained their musical style is "not easily classified—it is at once innovative and obliquely reminiscent of past rural forms".

The instrumentation on their songs is usually a simple arrangement, with Welch and Rawlings accompanying their own vocals with acoustic guitars, banjos, or a mandolin. Welch plays rhythm guitar with a 1956 Gibson J-50 (or banjo), while Rawlings plays lead on a 1935 Epiphone Olympic Guitar.The New Yorker's Wilkinson described Rawlings as a "strikingly inventive guitarist" who plays solos that are "daring melodic leaps". A review in No Depression by Andy Moore observed that Rawlings "squeezes, strokes, chokes and does just about everything but blow into" his guitar.

Many songs performed by Welch and Rawlings contain dark themes about social outcasts struggling against such elements as poverty, drug addiction, death, a disconnection from their family, and an unresponsive God. Despite Welch being the lead singer, several of these characters are male. Welch has commented, "To be commercial, everybody wants happy love songs. People would flat-out ask me, 'Don't you have any happy love songs?' Well, as a matter of fact, I don't. I've got songs about orphans and morphine addicts." To reflect these themes, Welch and Rawlings often employ a slow pace to their songs. Their tempo is compared to a "slow heartbeat", and Cowperthwait of Rolling Stone observed that their songs "can lull you into near-hypnosis and then make your jaw drop with one final revelation".

Ruination Day Part 2
Gillian Welch Lyrics

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And the great barge sank.
And the Okies fled.
And the great emancipater
Took a bullet in the head.

In the head,
Took a bullet in the back of the head.

It was not December.
Was not in May.
Was the 14th of April.
That is ruination day.

That's the day,
The day that is ruination day.

They were one.
They were two.
They were three.
They were four.
They were five hundred miles from their home.

From their home,
They were five hundred miles from their home.

When the iceberg hit
Well they must have known
That God moves on the water Casey Jones.

Casey Jones,
God moves on the water Casey Jones.

Overall Meaning

Gillian Welch's song Ruination Day Part 2 is an evocative tribute to the tragic events that occurred on April 14, 1865. The song is beautifully written with a haunting melody that perfectly matches the mournful lyrics. The opening lines describe the sinking of a great barge and the Okies fleeing, which can be interpreted as symbolic of people fleeing from danger and the sinking of hope itself. The lyrics then turn to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the great emancipator who took a bullet in the back of the head, a moment that forever changed the course of American history. The repetition of the phrase "ruination day" emphasizes the sense of loss and despair that accompanied these events.

The second verse continues with a juxtaposition between the assassination and the sinking of the Titanic, describing how even on the mighty ocean, God moves in mysterious ways as exemplified by the death of railroad engineer Casey Jones. The last verse is a refrain, repeating the idea that all the people in the song were far from their homes when disaster struck. Overall, the song is a powerful meditation on the tragic events that seem to mark the turning points in American history.

Line by Line Meaning

And the great barge sank.
A significant boat sank.

And the Okies fled.
People from Oklahoma fled.

And the great emancipater
Honest Abe Lincoln was mentioned.

Took a bullet in the head.
He was shot in the back of his head.

It was not December.
The event did not occur in December.

Was not in May.
It did not happen in May.

Was the 14th of April.
The actual date was April 14th.

That is ruination day.
This day marks the beginning of the end.

They were one.
They were together as one.

They were two.
They were also two.

They were three.
There were three of them.