Saturday 21 March 2015

EVENSONG, COME ON, GIMME SOME OF THAT NOVOCAINE. SETTING THE BLUEGRASS ON FIRE. Dave Rawlings & Gillian Welch - Sweet Tooth


He says he can't, on his own, play worth a damn and it is true he is no Richard Thompson; even so, I wish I could think the way David Rawlings plays, in perfect dissonance; notes which played by another would jangle, ring so true, so pretty on his old Epiphone. This is an homage to John Hurt's Candy Man, maybe a meditation on addiction and for those with a liking for the bluegrass and the jugband, a lot of fun. Much of what they do, these two, is sombre, elegiacal, that Presbyterian Ulster-Scot via Appalachia stuff, which so coloured Brother, Where Art Thou? - Death and More Death, and Mourning, Sorrow and Guilt and more Death, sitting by graves, singing to their occupants; this, laughing in the face of Life and Death, is different, pure good-time, foot-stomping, couldn't-give-a-fuck Americana.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can't play worth a damn??

At the 2012 Americana Honors & Awards in Nashville,Dave Rawlings, won 'Instrumentalist Of The Year' in the ceremony at The Ryman Auditorium.

I wish I couldn't play like that...

call me ishmael said...

I think the stress was "on my own." As I said, mr rwg, I wish I could even think like that.

Bungalow Bill said...

Looks like a man you'd want to drink with.

Bungalow Bill said...

In an entirely heterosexual, Harris-like way, I hasten to add.