Gillian Welch

AKA: Gillian H. Welch and Gillian Howard Welch

About Gillian Welch

Hailing from sunny Los Angeles, California, Gillian Howard Welch will have you believing 2-3 songs in that she was born right on the dirty bare pinewood floor of her Grandpappy's cabin, nestled somewhere in the heart of rural Appalachia. Welch got her start in music at a very young age.

"...As a child, she played the piano and the drums but gave them up because she didn’t like being confined to whatever room the instruments were in. Onstage, during instrumental passages, she bends her head over her guitar, like a figure in a religious painting, and plays with a ruthless rhythmic precision. There is a sense of self-possession about her that seems more a matter of temperament than influence...[1]"

While attending Berklee School of Music in Boston circa 1990, Welch would meet fellow-student David Rawlings, who would later become the other half to the two person band called 'Gillian Welch.' It was during these years that Welch would begin performing original material alongside the traditional folk and bluegrass songs that she had been listening to since childhood.

In 1996, the pair had just begun regularly touring across the country. It was in Nashville, when they were the opening band for Peter Rowan, that they were scouted by legendary producer T- Bone Burnett. This would lead to the creation of their first album Revival, which along with later album Time (The Revelator) would go on to win Grammys for Best Contemporary Folk Album.

Welch would later go on to be an associate producer and a performer on the soundtrack to Coen Brothers film O Brother Where Art Thou, which would eventually go platinum and earn a Grammy for Album of the Year in 2002.

Throughout her career, Welch has collaborated and recorded with musicians such as Alison Krauss, Ryan Adams, Conor Oberst, Emmylou Harris, the Decemberists, and Ani DiFranco.

[1] The Ghostly Ones–The New Yorker

Popular Gillian Welch songs

Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby