Grammy-Nominated Gillian Welch To Play OKC By David Schultz For The Transcript "It wasn't like I sat down and said, 'I want to make a darker more aggressive record.' That's just kind of the material that started getting written," says Gillian Welch, comparing her new album Hell Among the Yearlings to her 1996 Grammy-nominated debut Revival. Her music evokes the hard life of growing up in Appalachia, Dust-Bowl Oklahoma, and Steinbeck's California. "Caleb Meyer", the first song written for Yearlings, opens the album and is the story of a woman who slits the throat of a drunkard trying to rape her. Several songs later, "One Morning", a mother opens her door to find a horse carrying her dead son, his body riddled with bullet holes and stained black with dried blood. Is that dark enough for ya? The album's title was taken from an old fiddle tune and foreshadows the somber tone of the album. "We bumped into the title and really liked it. The funny thing is, most fiddle tunes have about six titles. Alternate titles for that tune include "Trouble amongst the Bovine", "Ox in the Mud", and "Rats in the Fence Corner". We thought about those," she jokes, "but we thought Hell Among the Yearlings was most appropriate." Hell Among the Yearlings was recorded in less than three weeks. Sparsely produced, with Welch and musical partner David Rawlings playing all of the instruments, save piano and Hammond B3 organ work by producer T-Bone Burnett (Bob Dylan, Counting Crows, Elvis Costello). Burnett also produced Revival and encouraged the duo to record themselves at home any time they felt like singing. One result was the spontaneously fun rockabilly of "Honey Now", the album's sole departure from dispair. "It was this rainy-day project we thought might be a good demo, but T-Bone really dug it, and it ended up on the album as is." Even onstage, Welch appears to personify the characters she sings about, intensfying the image with her gingham dresses and lank hair. Given the topics of Welch's songwriting, you'd think she grew up poor on an Oklahoma homestead, miles from any major town, living the life she performs. Nothing could be further from the truth. She grew up in Southern California, the daughter of parents who wrote music for The Carol Burnett Show. Her introduction to the Carter Family and Woody Guthrie came about by her attendance in a "hippie grade school", where the students sang old folk songs. Attending college at University of California at Santa Cruz was when her passion for bluegrass was born. While attending Boston's prestigous Berklee College of Music, she met Rawlings and the two moved to Nashville in 1992. It didn't take long before the duo's unique style of music began reaching a broader audience. They played the Grand Ole Opry ("Playing the Opry was totally out of this world. I know we had that deer-in-the-headlights look."), with Mark Knopfler at the Royal Albert Hall, and, most recently, on PBS's Austin City Limits. Their songs have been recorded by Emmylou Harris, Nashville Bluegrass Band, Salamander Crossing, and Tim and Mollie O'Brien and have appeared on the soundtrack for The Horse Whisperer. The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, and even the Wall Street Journal have sung their praises. Categorized as everything from neotraditional country to American Primitive, to bluegrass to folk, Welch defies categorization. According to the record industry, Welch's music is classified as contemporary folk, the category in which Revival was nominated for a Grammy. "I have mixed feelings about the word folk," Welch confesses. "I just don't feel like a folk singer. I take heart though. I bumped into a list of the last couple of records to win the Contemporary Folk category and it was something: Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, and then Bob Dylan won it last year." She laughs and adds, "I guess I'm feeling okay with the folk category. I'm not going to complain. If they put them in as contemporary folk, you know, maybe I AM contemporary folk." Gillian Welch and David Rawlings perform 8 pm Saturday November 21 at the City Arts Center at the State Fairgrounds in Oklahoma City. Guitarist and sister of Steve Earle, Stacy Earle, opens the show, presenting her own style of Texas songwriting. Tickets are available at CD World at 207 E Main Street (579-ROCK) or at the door. Call 528-4527 for further information.
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