Crowd erupts as 2 legends abandon setlist at San Francisco concert

SFGate ^ | March 14, 2025 | Silas Valentino

[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.

[abigkahuna]

Well, the Gillian and David recording from SF on Wednesday has yet to pop up, but here is from last Friday down in LA:

https://ia800608.us.archive.org/10/items/GillianWelshDavidRawlings2025-03-07WilternTheatreLosAngelesCA/GillianWelshDavidRawlings2025-03-07WilternTheatreLosAngelesCA.mp3?cnt=0

https://tela.sugarmegs.org/latestadditions.aspx Scroll down to Gillian and David for setlist etc...

[IncPen]

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.”

I hate what Rolling Stone’s writers did to the universe…