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".
Wayside / Back In Time
Gillian Welch Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
With a nickel or a dime
There use to be a rail car
To take you down the line
Too much beer and whiskey
To ever be employed
And when I got to Nashville
Wasted on the wayside
Wasted on the way
If I don't go tomorrow
You know I'm gone today
Back, baby, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
Back, baby, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
Black highway all night ride
Watching the times fall away to the side
Clear channel way down low
Is comin' in loud and my mind let go
Peaches in the summertime
Apples in the fall
If I can't have you all the time
I won't have none at all
Oh, I wish I was in Frisco
In a brand new pair of shoes
'Cause I'm sittin' here in Nashville
With Norman's Nashville blues
So come all you good time rounders
Listenin' to my sound
And drink a round to Nashville
Before they tear it down
Back, baby, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
Back, baby, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
Hard weather, drivin' slow
Buggies and the hats in town for the show
Oh darlin', the songs they played
All I got left is the love we made
Back, baby, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
Back, baby, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
The song "Wayside / Back In Time" by Gillian Welch is a nostalgic piece that harks back to a simpler time. The first verse speaks about standing on the corner with only a nickel or dime, remembering the rail car that took one down the line. The singer then laments about being too intoxicated with alcohol to ever be employed, and upon arriving in Nashville, finding it hard to cope with the soldiers' joy because of the excess use of alcohol. The chorus of "wasted on the wayside, wasted on the way," speaks about perhaps having wasted one's life away in pursuit of hedonistic pleasures.
The second verse speaks about the singer taking a Black Highway all-night ride, perhaps reminiscing about past times long forgotten. The mention of peaches in the summertime and apples in the fall sets the tone for pastoral imagery. The third verse speaks about the singer's desire to be in San Francisco, in a brand new pair of shoes, and how they feel stuck and stagnant in Nashville. The song ends with a plea to fellow good time rounders to drink a round to Nashville, before they tear it down, as the singer desires to go back in time when they had their one true love.
Overall, the song is a lament for a time long gone, a yearning to go back to a time when things were simpler and one's true love was by their side. It speaks to the universality of nostalgia and a sense of longing for simpler times.
Line by Line Meaning
Standing on the corner
With a nickel or a dime
There use to be a rail car
To take you down the line
I stand on the corner with very little money wishing that a rail car was still available to take me where I want to go.
Too much beer and whiskey
To ever be employed
And when I got to Nashville
It was too much soldiers joy
I've consumed too much alcohol to work, but even when I got to Nashville, there was too much excitement to get anything else done.
Wasted on the wayside
Wasted on the way
If I don't go tomorrow
You know I'm gone today
I've been wasted many times and missed my opportunities, but if I don't take advantage of tomorrow's chance, then I'm gone today.
Back, baby, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
Back, baby, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
I want to go back in time when we were together, and I wish I could go back to those moments when you were mine.
Black highway all night ride
Watching the times fall away to the side
Clear channel way down low
Is comin' in loud and my mind let go
I'm on a dark highway late at night, and as the times pass me by, the clear channel of music from the radio is enough to make me lose my mind.
Peaches in the summertime
Apples in the fall
If I can't have you all the time
I won't have none at all
There's nothing like peaches in summertime and apples in the fall, but if I can't have you with me all the time, I don't want any part of them.
Oh, I wish I was in Frisco
In a brand new pair of shoes
'Cause I'm sittin' here in Nashville
With Norman's Nashville blues
I wish I could be in Frisco with a new pair of shoes instead of in Nashville with Norman's Nashville blues.
So come all you good time rounders
Listenin' to my sound
And drink a round to Nashville
Before they tear it down
All of you who live life to the fullest while listening to my music, let's drink a toast to Nashville before it's destroyed.
Hard weather, drivin' slow
Buggies and the hats in town for the show
Oh darlin', the songs they played
All I got left is the love we made
It's been hard driving in rough weather and dealing with many obstacles, but I remember the lovely hats and buggies in town during a show, and the only thing I have left is the love we made.
Back, baby, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
Back, baby, back in time
I wanna go back when you were mine
Once more I wish to go back in time when we were together, and I want to relive those precious moments when you were mine.
Lyrics © Wixen Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: David Todd Rawlings, Gillian Howard Welch
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind