44 11.8.20
Welch and Rawlings played with Earle on a tour.
When confronted with the broad question of
time, work and age, they each paused, considering
the weight of legacy, as the rain in the backyard
slowly picked up again. Welch beamed with a sad
smile when she talked about how Levon Helm, the
drummer from the Band, told the duo the three
should start a band every time they played with
him. And then, as if remembering it at the same
time, the two fell into a story. ‘‘Time (The Revela-
tor)’’ was up for an Americana Music Association
award in 2002. Welch and Rawlings had to perform
that night and were put in an especially challenging
spot when they realized they had to follow Johnny
Cash and June Carter singing ‘‘Ragged Old Flag.’’
‘‘I remember Johnny was so frail,’’ Rawlings
said. ‘‘He had to go up three of those little alumi-
num stairs they put on the edge of, like, goofy old
stages. And he walked up those three steps, and
he’s still a little bit in the shadow. In the one step
from where those stairs were, from the shadows
to the light, he just turned into Johnny Cash. He
stood up straight and he put his chest up and
he walked down to that microphone and he was
Johnny Cash. It was so incredibly moving to see
someone who was born to perform and born to
be a persona. That was connected to his person.
But you could see that it wasn’t, it wasn’t — ’’
Welch wove her way into the opening: ‘‘It
wasn’t all of him.’’
‘‘Being an artist is something that you do bring
and put on,’’ Rawlings added.
‘‘It doesn’t mean it’s not you,’’ Welch said. ‘‘It
might be the absolute, highest part of you. But
you don’t always have it on.’’
There is an unspoken heartbreak hanging over
our conversation. The night before was a Saturday.
On the streets of Nashville, live music weakly tum-
bled out of some half-full bars; others were closed.
Some had signs suggesting that there might be an
opening on the horizon; others looked as though
they wouldn’t be so lucky. The streets were, in
some cases, more packed than I imagine the C.D.C.
would like, but there was a tentative undercurrent.
A cacophonous city unsettled by near silence.
Welch and Rawlings have spent much of their
career on the road, understanding that their
music resonates best when they are the ones ani-
mating it. They’ve toured without much glamour,
throwing what they need in a car and traversing
the country. They speak romantically of the road.
Not the shows, either. The very literal road — the
highways they’ve been on or the things they’ve
seen from car windows. Being on the road is, of
course, another opportunity to accumulate sto-
ries. To turn over a few more of America’s stones
and see what is underneath.
But when I asked if they were eager to get in
front of people again, Rawlings paused before
answering. ‘‘Maybe there’s a little shift of
perspective and understanding that the record-
ed work will outlive the live show.’’ Welch put
a fi ner point on it. ‘‘Not to ring a sour note, but
eventually your faculties start to diminish.’’
In a perfect world, Welch said, she would
write more — and in a noncyclical way, in a way
detached from the rigors of touring. There is only
one problem, Welch told me: She hadn’t been able
to write since the tornado in March. And in some
ways, it all began to make sense. This immersion
in a book of old folk songs, this resurfacing of old
but brilliant work. Yes, of course, tragedy creates
urgency, but so does the uncertainty of who you
are if you aren’t doing the thing you do well. And
so I wondered aloud whether they might be feeling
as though they had temporarily run out of things to
say. Welch almost immediately rebuff ed the idea.
‘‘I don’t think that’s possible, to run out of
things to say,’’ she said. As she had put it earlier,
‘‘I have to know what I think about something
and have gotten to the other side of it to have
the last verse.’’ Many weeks later, Welch texted
me with an update: ‘‘About a month ago, my eye
was drawn to a book that has sat mostly unread
on my shelf for some time, ‘The Book of Disquiet’
by Fernando Pessoa. I picked it up and randomly
read a passage of such beautiful poignancy, such
exquisite human precision, that the wonderment
of creative expression fl ooded me. I told no one
about it, but kept it to myself, and the impulse to
write, the need to grapple with this moment has
returned to me and grown from that little seed.’’
In Nashville, it was getting late, and even the
cicadas were singing as though they were trying
to land a record deal — loud, harmonious stretch-
es of sound falling atop one another. We had to
lean in a little closer to hear one another over the
choir, going back and forth about what Welch
called ‘‘the small particulars’’ of writing that they
love; how they would be writing and hit upon a
phrase, and how the phrase would slowly unfurl
into something greater. This part of our conver-
sation felt almost like the two onstage — unbur-
dened and gleefully chasing after a higher calling.
They began talking about ‘‘Hard Times,’’ eagerly
bouncing ideas off each other as if they were right
back to sketching out the song for the fi rst time.
Not so much debating but weighing the merits
of the song’s small machinery — clarifying the
narrative, making the language more evocative.
‘‘We like qualifi ers,’’ Rawlings said, moving
his hands as if he were fi tting puzzle pieces into
place. ‘‘There was the moment of thinking about
a hard-times song and then coming up with ‘Hard
times aren’t gonna rule my mind.’ And then
going, ‘No more.’ And then going, ‘OK, this is
now something that I understand and know how
to express or deal with.’ ’’
‘‘Yeah, it almost relates to that moment of trans-
formation or redemption, or some switch gets
fl ipped,’’ Welch came in, lively. ‘‘Someone has said
to me before that songs — there has to be a reason
for them. They’re kind of about, you know, pinnaclemoments. Precise moments.’’ She gave an example:
‘‘ ‘One more dollar, and I’m going home.’ These help
us focus on this transformative moment.’’
Redemption and optimism are subjects that
I fi nd diffi cult to approach, especially now, con-
sidering not only the masses of people dying but
also the way lives have become mere numbers
on a constantly ascending chart. Considering
that the country itself might not be worthy of
redemption. Considering, of course, that with
every reason for optimism I’ve found, there is
a new, darker, more cynical corner unearthed.
But now I found myself thinking about the arcs
of redemption that fl ow through the duo’s songs.
How gentle they are to their characters, their land-
scapes. Even when some might think they don’t
deserve it. Throughout their career — even in some
of ‘‘The Lost Songs’’ and the songs they chose on
‘‘All the Good Times,’’ there’s some relief at the end
of the darkness. In their version of Dylan’s ‘‘Aban-
doned Love,’’ the two wring all the anguish out of
the song’s fi rst seven verses before patiently, gen-
tly, laying out the fi nal verse: the one where Dylan
asks to feel the love of his wife just one more time
before he abandons their relationship. It’s hopeful
— the kind of ending to a song where you know
the answer was yes, just by how it is sung. It is the
rigorous truth- telling that the two excel in: One
cannot be redeemed without a clear articulation of
why redemption is needed. And that’s the part that
some other singers might gloss over. But Welch and
Rawlings, as writers, dig their hands into the mess
of a life that is worthwhile despite its messiness.
‘‘There’s something good in trouble,’’ Welch
said, half drowned out by the shouts of the cica-
das. ‘‘The kind of particular trouble that I seem to
connect with is that other kind, where it’s not the
endpoint. And I am aware that I don’t view the
redemption in a lot of these songs as an outside
force. It’s like a self- redemption. I think in a lot
of them, the person just manages to persevere
and get through it. And sometimes there’s grace,
but sometimes I think it’s just the person not giv-
ing up.’’ By now, Welch was smiling a bit, eager
to discuss redemption in a moment that some-
times seems unredeemable. ‘‘I grew up singing
folk music, where I was singing from the point of
view of a man, very often a Black man, or a Black
woman, all these diff erent people, and I’d connect
with all of them. And so that’s what we’re trying to
do. I’m trying to write the song that everyone can
sing, not because it’s so bland but because it’s so
deep down in the human experience that it’s what
everybody deals with. Love, loss, death.’’
Welch surprised me, then, with an unexpected
declaration: ‘‘I am an optimist.’’ Instinctively, and
perhaps too clinically, I asked how that was going
for her now, in that moment. She paused, with
night closing in and the clouds, once heavy with
rain, now thin enough to see some stars through.
‘‘It’s going OK,’’ she told me. ‘‘I don’t believe
anyone is going to stop the spirit of all the
humans out there.’’Welch and Rawlings
(Continued from Page 29)