Posted on 03/14/2025 4:29:18 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Just two songs into Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’ sold-out set at the Masonic on Wednesday, the mainstays of San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival declared an early demise in their show.
“It’s already happened,” Welch deadpanned. “We chucked the setlist.” The auditorium swelled with applause as the audience inched forward in their seats with eager ears to hear what the Americana duo would play next.
Rawlings, clutching his signature small archtop guitar, teased out the first few notes of “Empty Trainload of Sky,” which opens their latest album, “Woodland.” As he canvassed the fretboard with a dialed precision, dropping morsels of melodies along the way, Welch sang of something more mystifying: “Was it spirit? Was it solid? Did I ditch that class in college?” she wonders about a vision she said had spun from “unimaginable destruction.” The veteran bluegrass duo said the album — their seventh collaboration and named after Woodland Studios, which they’ve co-owned in Nashville since 2001 — is conceptually centered around the song. Following the 2020 tornado that violently ripped over 60 miles of Nashville, Welch’s and Rawlings’ lives were disrupted by chaos. (Welch said that when the tornado passed overhead, since the couple’s house didn’t have a basement, she was in a bathroom “hugging the toilet” while protecting their guitars.) “Empty Trainload of Sky” touches on the aftermath of unthinkable loss and tries to parse the meaning of devastation.
As adept songwriters, Welch and Rawlings used their alchemy to transform the tornado’s wreckage and emotional impact into their strongest project in years. “Woodland” has a beguiling effect, arresting listeners, but its powers grow even more compulsive when the pair perform the collection live.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
This should have been BREAKING news.
It’s on chat, under music.
Couldn’t it still be BREAKING?
BTW, I like your reporting on music related news!
I am going to see Alice Cooper on my birthday in May. I’m pretty stoked even though I have seen several hundred concerts over many years. I guess my first concert was in 1974.
Thanks.
It’s nice to see live music, but it’s expensive these days.
Yea, no kidding. The wife and I have been going to some smaller regional locales. They are usually maybe $150-200 for both of us to see a big names from 50 years ago. These are the well known oldies that are still touring. Of course, most groups only have one or two original members left. We saw about ten of them last year.
ZZ Top tickets came up for sale, but the tickets were $220 a person. These tickets were all bought by a reseller. No way. I’ve seen ZZ Top several times before probably spending $15 a ticket.
Thanks for the post, Nick. I just listened to “Empty Trainload of Sky” for the first time. Very nice (but a bit repetitious).
I remember my first-ever concert in high school was at the old Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. I’m pretty sure it was Iron Butterfly and cost $2.00 or so. I had a $1.60/hour job at the time, so it took about 1-1/4 hours of work to snag a ticket.
I just paid a stupid amount of money to go see...
Weird Al Yankovic
How long was the drum solo?
I just looked up at that concert and found this at “concertarchives.” I don’t remember all those acts being there. What a lineup. Look at the Notes at the end. Maybe I saw Duane and Greg before they formed the Allman Brothers Band.
Band Line-up
Janis Joplin
Big Brother And The Holding Company
Iron Butterfly
Spirit
Hourglass
Concert Details
Date: Friday, August 09, 1968
Venue: Kiel Auditorium
Location: St. Louis, Missouri, United States
Notes: Hourglass was an early band of Duane & Gregg Allman
LOL...don’t recall if it was long or short version. I do remember the cheesy 1960 light show with light projected through oils.
> These are the well known oldies that are still touring. Of course, most groups only have one or two original members left. <
I read an interesting article about that. Whoever owns the rights to a famous group’s name will often license the name out.
So you could have, for example, the Four Tops touring up and down the east coast. And another Four Tops touring in the Midwest. And another Four Tops performing in California.
All have some resemblance to the original group. And they’ve all paid the licensing fee. But there’s no original members in any of them.
So you dared to be stupid?
The first concert I saw was Harry Chapin on June 8, 1974.Harry had just written Cat’s in the Cradle,and he played it acoustic. He had not yet written the band parts. Night to treasure! ❤️
I wanted to go to AC/DC this spring in Vancouver, but Ticketmaster wants $1800 for FLOOR tickets! Not gonna happen.
Nothing like a Duane Allman concert!
A good band from that era seldom mentioned these days is Wet Willie. They opened for another band in Athens, Georgia once back in the mid 70s. I can’t remember who the band was because Wet Willie was so good. Within a few minutes of the feature band starting, the audience was yelling “Bring back Wet Willie”. In hindsight, that was rude, but heck we were young!
Athens, Georgia had a great southern rock scene! You could buy a few gallon jugs of cheap beer and go to Legion Field at UGA, spread out your blanket, and listen to music all day for free. No fights, no hassle, just everyone having a great time.
I saw Jefferson Airplane in 1969 for $6 at the Orlando Sports Stadium. Great show.
I was on the Concert Committee at Mizzou from fall of ‘69 to (maybe) spring ‘72. We did all the production work for the concerts, advertising, set up, picking up band members at the Columbia - Jeff City airport, arranging food and drinks for the performers, booking hotels, taking tickets. You name it!
We had some big name acts, too. Beach Boys, Allman Brothers Band, Three Dog Night and lots of others I don’t remember any more. Good times.
I think my three years on the Concert Committee had some effect on my hearing — I still have tinnitus!
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