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".
Scarlet Town
Gillian Welch Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Never been there before
Well you slept on a feather bed
I slept on the floor
I don't mind a little town
Or drinking my coffee cold
But the things I seen in Scarlet Town
Look at that deep well
Look at that dark ray
Ringing that iron bell
In Scarlet Town today
I spent some time in New Orleans
And ?
A Scarlet Town brought me down
Low as I ever been
Look at that deep well
Look at that dark ray
Ringing that iron bell
In Scarlet Town today
On the day I came to Scarlet Town
You promised I'd be your bride
You left me here to rot away
Like holly on a mountainside
Look at that deep well
Look at that dark ray
Ringing that iron bell
In Scarlet Town today
Now you may hide in Scarlet Town
For a hundred years or more
But the man who knows what time it is
Is knocking at the door
So fare you well, my own true love
If you ever see me around
I'll be looking through a telescope
From hell to Scarlet Town
Look at that deep well
Look at that dark ray
Ringing that iron bell
In Scarlet Town today
In Gillian Welch's song Scarlet Town, the singer visits a small town called Scarlet Town for the first time. The town appears to be quite different from the places she's visited before, and she feels uncomfortable there. The town and its surroundings seem to be gloomy and depressing, with a deep well, a dark ray, and the sound of an iron bell ringing ominously. The singer has been to New Orleans, but she feels that Scarlet Town is even worse, bringing her down lower than she's ever been.
The song seems to be about feeling trapped and hopeless, as if one is caught in a cycle they cannot escape. The singer refers to a promise made to her in Scarlet Town, but she has been left behind to rot away like holly on a mountainside. The man who made that promise may think he can hide in Scarlet Town forever, but time is running out. The singer bids farewell to her true love, stating that she will be looking at him through a telescope from hell to Scarlet Town, meaning that even after death, she'll still be able to observe him in that dreadful place.
Line by Line Meaning
Buddy I went down to Scarlet Town
I ventured to a town called Scarlet Town
Never been there before
It was a new experience for me
Well you slept on a feather bed
You had a comfortable sleep
I slept on the floor
But I had to make do with sleeping on the ground
I don't mind a little town
I don't really care about the size of the town
Or drinking my coffee cold
Or even drinking my coffee cold
But the things I seen in Scarlet Town
But what I witnessed in Scarlet Town
Did mortify my soul
Left me deeply disturbed
Look at that deep well
Take a look at that deep well
Look at that dark ray
Observe that dark cloud hovering over
Ringing that iron bell
Hear the sound of the iron bell tolling
In Scarlet Town today
In the current state of Scarlet Town
I spent some time in New Orleans
I've spent some time in New Orleans
And ?
But nothing I saw there compared to what I saw in Scarlet Town
A Scarlet Town brought me down
Scarlet Town got the best of me
Low as I ever been
The lowest I've ever been
On the day I came to Scarlet Town
The day I arrived in Scarlet Town
You promised I'd be your bride
You made a promise to marry me
You left me here to rot away
But instead you abandoned me here, to waste away
Like holly on a mountainside
Left me alone and neglected like holly on a mountainside
Now you may hide in Scarlet Town
You might attempt to hide in Scarlet Town
For a hundred years or more
For an extended duration of time
But the man who knows what time it is
But someone who is aware of the truth
Is knocking at the door
Will eventually come to confront you
So fare you well, my own true love
So I bid you farewell, my real love
If you ever see me around
If you ever come across me
I'll be looking through a telescope
I'll be watching through a telescope
From hell to Scarlet Town
Observing everything from a distance between hell and Scarlet Town
Lyrics © Wixen Music Publishing, BMG Rights Management
Written by: David Todd Rawlings, Gillian Howard Welch
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind