{"id":820,"date":"2011-09-28T09:51:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T16:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2011\/09\/colin-meloy-on-gillian-welch.html"},"modified":"2011-09-28T09:51:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-28T16:51:00","slug":"colin-meloy-on-gillian-welch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2011\/09\/colin-meloy-on-gillian-welch.html","title":{"rendered":"Colin Meloy on Gillian Welch"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>YESTERDAY I had this<\/a> story on country\/folk duo Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, who perform in LA Thursday night.<\/p>\n

One thing I did not have room for that in that article was a long quote given to me by Colin Meloy, who employed the two on The King is Dead<\/i>, his latest record by the Decemberists. Meloy turns out to be a longtime fan — here’s his entire thought. Thanks to Meloy, whose last Decemberists show for several years we caught in Portland a few weeks back.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/div>\n
I was introduced to Gillian at Rockin’ Rudy’s, a very fine record store in Missoula, MT. I think a friend turned me on to her first record right after it came out. I was immediately smitten. It happens that I also spent the summer of ’97 working in the vineyards of the Willamette Valley in Oregon and the song “One More Dollar” felt particularly auspicious.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Tucker Martine and I were wanting to create a kind of vibe on\u00a0The King is Dead<\/i>\u00a0that we had always loved in old country records — the idea of pairing a male and female vocal really hot in the mix, like every song was a duet. I’d always loved Neil Young’s record,\u00a0Comes a Time,\u00a0<\/i>and was really taken by the fact that the late, great Nicolette Larson sang on nearly every song, lending a tone and tenor to the record that just wouldn’t exist without her voice. We wanted to do something similar with\u00a0The King is Dead<\/i>.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Gill and Dave very clearly work in a completely different way than many people I know. I get the feeling for all their love of simplicity and clarity comes from a kind of insanely finicky place. Which is funny; so many of her songs feel so off the cuff, so underthought. But there’s a lot of thinking that goes on, I think, to get to that place.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Like all great artists and musicians, she and Dave, as far as I can tell, are just great lovers of music — of all sorts. Their collective voice tends toward the Americana\/country side of things, but their hearts don’t necessarily hew to just one thing. And it all makes perfect sense to me — they are the bridge between Robyn Hitchcock and the Louvin Brothers. And if you think about it, that bridge isn’t necessarily that long.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YESTERDAY I had this story on country\/folk duo Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, who perform in LA Thursday night. One thing I did not have room for that in that article was a long quote given to me by Colin Meloy, who employed the two on The King is Dead, his latest record by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[66,40,146,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-alt-country","7":"category-indie","8":"category-portland","9":"category-west-coast","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}