Gillian Welch – Boots No.2: The Lost Songs, Vol.1
Acony Records – Out Now
Boots No.2: The Lost Songs, Vol.1 is the second collection of previously unreleased material dusts off and delves into Gillian Welch and David Rawling’s storage cupboard for 16 demos (the first batch of three volumes totalling 48). Primarily just voice and guitar, the album was recorded over a weekend in December 2002 following the release of Time (The Revelator) to fulfil a publishing contract she wanted to be free of before making 2003’s Soul Journey.
For whatever reason, they felt the recordings weren’t up to scratch for actual release, clear evidence that they have incredibly high standards because other artists would surely sell their children to come up with material like this.
Being a digital-only release, there’s no background information on the songs, but they mine such familiar territory as lost souls, broken dreams, fractured or ungerminated relationships with the couple’s signature emotional aching and affection for the traditional roots of American music. Opening with the Johnny Dear (“don’t take a wife, I’ll be coming home soon”), a pleading letter infused with sadness, the tempo picks up for First Place Ribbon, a Southern country blues which tells of the rebellious Kathy, flirting with the boys and breaking hearts in the kissing booths of the visiting county fairs. Later in the album, they introduce a kindred spirit in the banjo accompanied Little Luli, a Louisville exotic dancer who uses dances to earn coins (and her independence) from the men travelling through her town.
Brooding blues and gospel tones infuse the sparse Give That Man A Road and the sprightlier old school folk-country Mighty Good Book which plays like a rural soapbox preacher talking to the local hicks about the Bible (“Are you gonna wish you read the story/Of when Jesus paid it all?”).
Chinatown is another downcast narrative, a world-wearied picture of a woman at home alone, love lost, the mailman and the sun passing her by, “always upside down in Chinatown” where it’s too dark for the flowers to grow and “there’s a poison in the air” and a “bad haze hangs around”.
Elsewhere, again anchored by spectral banjo, the spooked blues Honey Baby tells of a female outlaw betrayed by her lover outlaw who’s bought his freedom from the gallows, but not her, while more worn-down outlaws are to be found in the country rolling slide guitar flavoured Apalachicola where the protagonist has been sentenced to pick fruit (“Oranges in the summer/Oranges in the fall/Oranges in the wintertime/But they’re tough and small”) and the fingerpicked Shotgun Song where the singer dreams of being on a pony, pockets full of silver, “an outlaw to my foes, a hero to my friends” but all they have is a hammer on a chain gang.
Everything here has a magic to it, but I’d also especially direct you to the ‘hard times come a calling’ of Fly Down with its desperate call for comfort, the poignant fingerpicked sketch of Strange Isabella who “never had a coat to wear” but declares “what do I care about the cold, it’ll never freeze my tongue” and the brief but joyous country dance tune Back Turn and Swing as a way to forget our troubles.
It ends with the dobro soothed melancholia of a controlling relationship Here Comes The News as the protagonist asks “what can I do, I have to prove myself to you …you treat me like a child… friends wanna know why they don’t see me anymore”, but, another Welch woman taking her life into her own hands, finds self-liberation as she announces “I’ve got the big old highway blues….with a need I can’t explain”. The equivalent of being gifted all those Dylan and Springsteen songs hitherto locked away unknown and unheard in the vaults, delivering the pleasures in controlled dosages Vol 2 and Vol 3 follow in the months ahead, I’m already itching for the next fix.
Order via Bandcamp: https://gillianwelch.bandcamp.com/album/boots-no-2-the-lost-songs-vol-1
Website: http://gillianwelch.com/
Photo Credit: David Gahr