“Well, we finally made it … Y’all have some really cool trees,” Gillian Welch drawls. Actually, it’s only just over a year since Welch and her musical partner David Rawlings were last in Australia, when they played sold-out residencies at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall and the Sydney Opera House. This, though, is the Empire Theatre in Toowoomba, the heart of Queensland’s Bible belt.
For this tour, Welch and Rawlings are road-tripping, taking in a few of the larger regional cities around the southern capitals. It’s not without commercial risk, because the 1,500-capacity Empire – a glorious heritage-listed art deco building dating back to 1911 – is barely half full. Maybe Toowoomba’s idea of country music hews closer to Tamworth’s.
No one leaves unsatisfied, though. Without a new album to plug, the queen and king of Americana are free to dive deep into their catalogue. Over two sets, the audience (a good chunk of which has travelled from Brisbane) is treated to songs the duo hasn’t played in years, alongside cuts from Woodland (released late in 2024), plus covers.
They open with Orphan Girl – the spiritual song covered by Emmylou Harris before Welch recorded it herself for her debut album, Revival, released 30 years ago. Then they flash forward to the near-present, with the easy lilt of Woodland’s Empty Trainload of Sky followed by Rawlings’ song Cumberland Gap.
The stage setup is now familiar: a rug, two microphones, a table, sympathetic but minimal lighting, two ancient guitars and a banjo. When Welch dons her harmonica, Rawlings cracks that “you’ve seen all our tricks now” – at least until her thigh-slapping, tap-dancing turn for the Appalachian folk of Six White Horses.
But the surprises are buried in the set. Rock of Ages, from Welch’s 1998 album Hell Among the Yearlings, comes early and is followed by the even more rarely performed Dear Someone, from 2001’s Time (The Revelator). Welch and Rawlings are mixing the material up well: travelling fans will be well satisfied.
One of the benefits of Welch and Rawlings now finally working under both their names, instead of Welch’s alone, is that the songs released by Rawlings (Cumberland Gap, Ruby, Airplane) now feel better integrated into the set. We’re also more used to Rawlings singing lead (on What We Had, Hashtag and Guy Clark’s Desperados Waiting for a Train).
More often, though, the pair seem to function like one organism, with harmonies so close they can barely be delineated. Often, the music appears to be not just playing, but shaking the life out of them – Welch instinctively following Rawlings as he unspools long, winding solos that colour well outside the lines of the recorded songs.
This is music for hard times, with songs populated by characters at their wits’ end or worse. But there is almost always hope: even The Way It Goes, which features a junkie, a jailbird and at least two funerals in its five verses, sees the circle of life continue: “Everybody’s buying little baby clothes,” Welch croons over a galloping rhythm.
The lyrics tread a fine line between narrative and abstraction, allowing enough space for listeners to graft their own stories on to these classic folk tales. The Bells and the Birds, a deep cut from Woodland, is three minutes of pinging harmonics and haunted vocals about how no one hears things in quite the same way: “Some hear a song, some hear a warning.”
At the end of their second encore, they walk to the lip of the stage and deliver a hushed rendition of Lefty Frizzell’s country standard Long Black Veil, sans microphones – briefly turning the Empire into a house concert. It’s a literal show-stopper, leaving the crowd to float out into the chilly night air.
• Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are touring Australia until 1 March; see here for all dates
