Gillian Welch – Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs, Vol. 3
Acony Records – Out Now
This is the third and final volume Boots No. 2 – 40 demos recorded over the space of one weekend (all three to be gathered together for a physical single edition collection). Of the 17 tracks here, only two ever surfaced as actual album tracks, both the optimistic One Little Song and Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor appearing on 2003’s Soul Journey, here to be heard in far more stripped-back acoustic versions. Of the others, Welch (and, of course, Dave Rawlings) variously travel the roads of old school country, blues and gospel, first up being the harmonica coloured, lazy rolling blues, Sin City, each verse repeating the first line (sometimes slightly truncated) a further two times as she sings “I’ve been good till now but I’m going down to Sin City”, more Dylan than Parsons.
An early highlight arrives with Peace in the Valley, another bluesy number featuring their twin guitars that refers to the surrender of the iconic Indian chief Geronimo because, as the lyric sagely and resonantly notes, “You can’t raise up your children/And watch them grow/Without peace in the valley down below”.
Belying expectations from the title, Cowboy Rides Away doesn’t set out across the rolling prairies but is, rather, a ruminatively fingerpicked, resigned and weary account of being stood up and deciding the time’s come to move on rather than waiting on what used to be. More countrified, however, is dobro-shaded honky-tonk Patsy Cline-like (or maybe even Jim Reeves) slow waltzer There’s A First Time For Everything which charts a romance from the first “brave hellos” to “the first time you lied and said you were true”.
She stays country for the circling fingerpicking of Wanted Man and a tale of a gambler with a temper, the narrator observing that, when the cards don’t fall right, “you take it hard/As your alcohol” and “You got a wounded past/And a bloody hand”.
There’s a hint of Bobby Gentry country blues to Put Your Foot Upon The Path with its hard-bought Southern advice to, basically, rise up after adversity strikes and to, metaphorically, “Put your hand upon a plow/Never be afraid to laugh” rather than try to drive against the wind and “never laugh again”.
Old-time religion and thwarted romance join hands for the resonator guitar accompanied gently bittersweet Garden Of Love (“If God made little roses/Of heartbroken blue/I’d wear one at my collar/To remind me of you”), following turn, by the double-tracked vocals of Streets Of St Paul, a beautifully sad snapshot of being worn down by life (“Too much wrist at the end of his coat/Too much bitter at the back of his throat/Too much winter coming after the fall”) that shares a kindred spirit with the humanity etched in the very best of Mary Chapin Carpenter and Gretchen Peters.
All this and the album’s only just at the halfway mark, heading into the second half with the rockabilly bluesy 112 seconds stomp of Turn It Up and the echoey strum and plucked mandolin of the starting over Strangers Again. Further highlights lineup with the relaxed jazzy smoke curling groove of What Can I Do, a jangly Emmylou-like City Girl, the old-time Guthrie social comment folksiness of the pessimistic How About You (“I used to have a dollar/I’m gonna have a dime someday”), the only-cowrite on the album, and the testifying Southern country gospel Changing Ground (“no one was at my side/And no hiding place I found/Till I moved one step onto glory/And off of that changing ground”).
It ends on another old-time religion note with brief forlorn harmonica notes accentuating the slow funeral march mourning blues lament If I Ain’t Going To Heaven, capturing the final hope of the downcast and dispossessed because “If you ain’t got religion/You are dead always”. It took a hurricane wrecking their studio to jolt them into finally making these demos, originally recorded to just fulfil a publishing contract, available. Who said it’s an ill wind that blows no good?
Pre-Order via https://gillianwelch.com/
Photo Credit: David Gahr