Gillian Welch – Boots No 2: The Lost Songs, Vol 2
Acony – 18 September 2020 (Digital)
The second batch of the 48 demos laid down by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings over a single weekend to fulfil a publishing contract, generally just voice and guitar, the fifteen hitherto unissued songs contained herein are, as with Vol 1, all buried treasure. It opens in reflective mood with Wouldn’t Be So Bad, a rumination on continuing to make the same mistakes (“I remember now how I made you mad/Thought the next time ‘round/Wouldn’t be so bad”), then switches to folk-blues for the gospel-limned Didn’t I about doing everything for your lover to no avail.
From blues to bluegrass with the two-minute moody banjo-flecked Appalachian tones of weary mother’s lament Good Baby (“tears upon your breast/Hush now your mama is trying to rest”), though it’s hard not to read a more ominous undertone in the final verse.
The fingerpicked Hundred Miles is a more straightforward weary traveller returning home number (“Got a dusty neck and a bent back low/Feel the heat rise up off of red dog road”), slipping into the traditional folk styling of Rambling Blade, her variation on Newry Town also known as Rake And Rambling Boy and Rake And The Rambling Blade and variously recorded by Baez, Norman Blake and Martin Carthy.
It’s followed by a brace of break-up songs, the waltz-time old school country of I Only Cry When You Go (“though you call me a hard-hearted woman/It just isn’t so/But I only cry when you go”) and, cast in the period folk sound of O Brother, Lonesome Just Like You (“Go on and find you another love/I’m gonna get me a turtle dove/And when they both have fallen through/I’ll be lonesome just like you”), another track clocking in at under two minutes.
Another old-time waltzer, You Only Have Your Soul offers cautionary wisdom about selling your soul to the devil, and, given the circumstances under which these songs were recorded, the line “Be careful what you sign on the line/Give them silver and your gold” likely has a very specific resonance.
At slightly under four minutes with its circular fingerpicked pattern, finally on disc after having figured in her live set for many years, [Go Away] Picasso casts the painter as a man “brown as a railroad bum” who comes to her door and “painted a picture, made me green and blue” and how, subsequently, “Since I seen your picture everything looks wrong to me”. The throwaway closing line, “I’m gonna go get a hotel and try to get my laundry done” is pure early Dylan.
It’s back to relationship anxiety and the willfulness of love with the aching sadness of the gorgeous Beautiful Boy (“I’m afraid of everything/Everything that romance brings/The freely given gifts that you can’t repay/The sad goodbyes in darkened halls/And telephones most of all/I’m scared I’m gonna break your heart someday”).
A couple of family-themed numbers follow, the jauntily picked Happy Mother’s Day basically a greeting card in song while, on a downbeat note, comes another folk-blues Townes Van Zandt-like song with Papa Writes To Johnny about a prodigal son, alone in the city but who can’t go home because there’s “Been too much time now, too many nights on the road”.
The traditional folk trope of visits by ghostly lovers to bid farewell gets a turn with Fair September (“I remember you as beautiful rose/Out in the morning light/But now your cheek is so silent and pale/And you only walk at night”), before the collection winds up with, first, the good time chat up blues of Wella Hella (“I can shimmy and shing-a-ling/Bunny hop and shake a thing alright/If you take a chance”). Then, finally, comes the slow waltz sadness of the ‘I’ll be here for you’ themed I Just Want You To Know, the underpinning R&B influences calling to mind Bring It On Home To Me. As with the previous volume, it’s hard to believe she’s kept a lid on the bulk of these songs for well over a decade, I can’t wait to hear what further nuggets will be revealed in Vol 3.
Vol. 3 follows on November 13th.
Also: Today, Welch also announces a physical box set for Boots 2: The Lost Songs which can be preordered here. The box set will be a deluxe package consisting of a 12-inch “old-school, tip-on” style box made by Stoughton Printing and will include a special 66-page songbook with photos, lyrics, and guitar chords for all 48 tracks. The box set will be available in two separate formats. The CD box will have the three volumes of Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs on three CDs in jewel cases. The LP box will include the three volumes on three 150 gram LPs housed in printed paper sleeves. Both box sets will be available exclusively from the Acony webstore. According to their website Boxsets are expected to ship by December 11th, 2020.
Photo Credit: David Gahr