Gillian Welch is an uncompromising musical renegade with four critically acclaimed albums and a Grammy Award under her belt. Writing and performing with her longtime partner, David Rawlings, they present their haunting songs like rock and roll chamber music, with two acoustic guitars and two voices welded together. Their tunes have been covered by such American legends as Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, and Solomon Burke. Their music defies easy categorization -- it embraces, and is in turn embraced by, the pre-eminent ambassadors of folk, bluegrass, R & B, punk, and rock and roll. With its unconventional guitar work, dissonant tones, and forceful simplicity, Welch’s music has a similar spirit to work by other primitive post-moderns. She has said, “I feel a kinship with the Velvet Underground and the Pixies, though it might not hit you over the head.” Though her first two albums, 1996’s debut Revival and 1998’s Hell Among the Yearlings (both produced by T Bone Burnett) captured a reminiscent, earthy Americana, it was her third album, 2001’s Rawlings-produced Time (The Revelator) that marked her divergence towards a skeletal kind of rock and roll. “The songs may have been boiled down and boiled down, and pretty much desiccated, but they’ve always been rock songs in my mind,” she says.

We are thrilled to welcome Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings to High Sierra for the first time!