348. Gillian Welch, "Time (The Revelator)"

 

A while back, we talked about selling out.  Today let's touch on its close cousin, authenticity.  Although the concept is amorphous, it generally means that a certain group of fans expect you to be real to your roots.  So, for example, Vanilla Ice claimed to be from the mean streets of Miami but in fact grew up fairly well-off and privileged.  Not very authentic, people who care about that judged!  Personally I think it's all bullshit unless you make your mythical background central to your work.  

So here we have Gillian Welch, who produced this achingly beautiful and deeply felt album that is based heavily on the folk music of Appalachia.  Does it make it any less authentic that Welch was born in New York City and grew up in Los Angeles and her parents wrote music for TV and appeared on the Tonight Show?  And then she went to UC Santa Cruz and then Berklee in Boston?  No it does not.  This album, which to my mind is as gorgeous and heartfelt an album as you could hope to produce, stands on its own, whether or not Welch arrived in Nashville in 1992.

Sparse and quiet, the only instrumentation is (as far as I can tell) banjo and guitar, played by (and sung with) Welch's longtime musical partner David Rawlings.  The songs are concerned with matters personal ("My First Lover") and musical ("Elvis Presley Blues") but for me, the centerpiece of the album is "April the 14th Part 1," which ties historical events of that date to the singer's own memories, all stitched into the fabric of America:

When the iceberg hit
Oh, they must of known
God moves on the water
Like Casey Jones

So I walked downtown
On my telephone
And took a lazy turn
Through the red-eye zone

It was a five band bill
A two dollar show
I saw the van out in front
From Idaho

And the girl passed out
In the backseat trash
There was no way they'd make
Even a half a tank of gas

The iceberg is, of course, the one that the Titanic struck on April 14, 1912.  And our narrator is outside a dive bar during and after a show.  Historical events are important to history; personal events stick in one's memory in the same way.  

The album is also shot through with musical references to other songs. "April the 14th," for example, uses the phrase "staggers and jags" to refer to the drunk cooks in the kitchen of the dive bar, a phrase that will no doubt be familiar to almost every Canadian and any appreciator of folk music, as it appears in Stan Rogers' sea shantyish folk song "Barrett's Privateers," a song I first heard when Burrito Justice played it on his radio show and which I grew to love.  (Welch repeats the phrase later, in "I Dream a Highway".)  The entire song "Elvis Presley Blues" is, of course, musically based on Mississippi John Jurt's "Spike Driver Blues."  And in "I Dream a Highway," just to grab one other example, she sings "Now You Be Emmylou and I'll be Gram," a reference to the partnership (and ill-fated love) of Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons.  (And, in fact, Harris recorded an early song written by Welch and Rawlings, "Orphan Girl," which is lovely in its own right.)  These references feel natural and easy in an album that is meant to be a snapshot of Americana.

Anyway.  I could go on all day.  I only first heard this album a couple of years ago and wasn't paying attention at the time and I'm so glad it's come back to my life.  Listening to it a few times yesterday was a calming and almost moving experience.  Can music make you feel things?  Music can.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Do you have to ask?