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She just doubts that she would have attained her status as a Grammy-winning goddess of Americana and roots music if she and her life and musical partner, guitarist-songwriter David Rawlings, didn’t drive almost everywhere from their home base in Nashville.
This year they’ve already driven their 1965 Chevy Impala to and from a June tour of the West Coast, and they’re making five stops in New England this month before driving around the South and the Great Plains in August.
“I never want to feel like I’m just being schlepped around the world by somebody else,” Welch said during a telephone conversation last week. “This is our adventure. Back a number of years, when we were in a pretty sharp economic downturn, I really saw a lot of what life was like for ordinary people firsthand. It was both shocking and uplifting. There were people on street corners with signs, like, ‘Will cut hair.’ Truly, I’ve never seen anything like it except for black-and-white photos from the ’30s.”
The economy has improved, although not for average workers, perhaps. And Welch can see it during her ground-level travels.
“We know people who think the country is broken, the world is ruined,” Welch said. “I tell ’em, ‘Just drive across the country.’ There are huge, huge stretches where people and things aren’t broken. … When you travel this much, you change the way you hear, the way you play, the way you sing.”
In addition to her and Rawlings’ songs from early in their career, including two on the Grammy-winning soundtrack to the Coen brothers’ movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Welch expects to revisit cuts from her 2003 album Soul Journey, which is due for re-release on vinyl in mid-August.
“We’ve also got a few new ones that don’t have recordings yet,” Welch said. “We’re kind of breaking them in and road-testing them.”
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings perform at the Hopkins Center in Hanover on Friday night at 7:30. For tickets ($12.50 to $35), and more information, visit hop.dartmouth.edu or call 603-646-2422.