Review: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
One doesn’t often attribute the word “necessary” to a musical performance. But from the instant Gillian Welch & David Rawlings stepped out onto the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium stage on April 5, the evening took on a sense of…not “mandatory” in the sense of the artists’ requisite participation, but in terms of the audience taking it all in and taking a huge step towards healing.
Rescheduled from its original Oct. 19 date, three weeks after Tropical Storm Helene ravaged the area, the show inspired some of the loudest, most passionate, and longest sustained reactions from any local concert this writer has attended. And it wasn’t just the insanely talented Americana duo’s stunning musicianship that elicited such a response. Their mere presence brought out visceral reactions from the gathered faithful, as if fans had been holding in various aches and pains for the past six months in anticipation of a proper cathartic release that only their heroes could achieve.
Despite the accurate billing, one couldn’t help imagine some sort of full-band accompaniment — not necessarily the complete David Rawlings Machine experience, but something to populate the generous stage and fill the 2,400-seat venue. However, the degree to which additional support proved unnecessary became apparent early and often in set opener “Annabelle” and dashed such silly notions from the brain.
One of the true queens of folk music, Welch remains a force 30-plus years into her illustrious career. Whether on guitar, banjo, or harmonica, she’s the bedrock of the duo’s sound and the main vocal attraction. And she can dance, too, as evinced throughout a throwback second-set performance of “Six White Horses” full of traditional Appalachian hoofing that brought forth some of the night’s most raucous whoops.
And there’s no way someone of sound mind could see Rawlings live and not come away thinking he’s one of our greatest guitarists. Armed with a small, borderline toy-like guitar that allows him to move around the frets with virtuosic flat-picking aplomb, he delivers a unique style of soloing further augmented by his animated body language, which resides somewhere between an especially active marionette and peak Muhammad Ali butterfly-floating/bee-stinging. It’s a sonic and visual charm similar to The Milk Carton Kids, but his energy and grit are far more elevated, resulting in an even more impressive showcase.
Complementary to an extent that the word feels inadequate, the duo combined their exceptional gifts to thrilling ends in the service of such stunners as “Cumberland Gap,” “The Way it Goes,” and “Look at Miss Ohio.” But few moments that night compared with the truly magical wonder they conjured three songs into the second set.
Welch’s delivery of the line “So come all you Asheville boys and turn up your old-time noise” in “Hard Times” was met with soul-lifting gratitude, and its chorus “Hard times ain't gonna rule my mind” carried new layers of emotional heft — as if Welch wrote the song specifically as a balm for tragedies that awaited her ancestral home nearly 15 years in the future. Her subsequent cheer-inducing recollection of being unprepared for the reception that awaited that line the first time she sung it at The Orange Peel wove in yet more communal connection, particularly for the vocal attendees who were likewise present for that moment.
But it was far from their last Asheville nod. Kicking off the second (and seemingly last) encore, the pair paid tribute to dearly departed local legend Malcom Holcombe — whom Rawlings noted became one of his first friends after moving to Nashville in the early ’90s — with a loving rendition of “Who Carried You” that received a smattering of “thank you”s from the crowd.
Fairly certain that “Revelator” would be the last song on the bill, a show-cumulative expression of appreciation issued forth from devotees who clearly did not want this special evening to end. And, it turns out, neither did the guests of honor.
Following a brief pow-wow, the stars launched into a fiery take on Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” — the perfect hippie parting gift for the perfect hippie crowd (that had already been treated to The Grateful Dead’s “China Doll,” that is).
It and the previous 22 selections might not have returned Western North Carolina to its pre-Helene condition or restored the nation’s hopes about its future to pre-November levels. But for a couple of hours, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings reminded us witnesses that there is still plenty of good in this world and that building community over something as basic as music just might be our best path forward.
(Photo by Edwin Arnaudin)
