I bought a GREAT cd the other day.

I heard a couple of Gillian Welch cuts somewhere and decided I had to buy something. When I went into the CD store I found both 'Revival' and 'Yearlings' and did my usual back and forth trying to decide which one to buy since I knew little about either of them. A clerk walked by and I asked "You got an opinion about which of these I ought to buy?" He said, "Doesn't matter, whichever one you buy, you'll come back and get the other one." He was right.

If you like Gillian Welch you might be interested in Buddy Miller's new one "Cruel Moon." Pretty strong, even raw at times, but that same dark-Americana genre with some wonderful picking and smart lyrics.

Sometimes a bit too sweet, but worth checking out also is Allison Krauss. I love her cover of the Beatles "I Will".

Off topic a bit but check out David Grisman's "Tone poems"--nicely recorded.

I the only thing i don't like about the cd, is when the guitar player starts using a synthesiser of some type. For me , it interuppted the flow of each song.

Right on with the Gillian Welch (and David Rawlings!). Funny I met her and David Rawlings at a songwriters workshop at the Lyon's Folk Festival in Colorado in 1996. I didn't care for their stage performance (mainly because you couldn't even hear her singing), but the workshop was a different story. We were about ten people in a 20x20 room. The voice she has is just beautiful. I had never heard a really talented person singing up close like that. No stereo can come close to the natural sound. Something neat is that they had just released the album and were hoping they would make it. A year or so after I saw their album getting 'by the door' shelf space in Downtown Chicago music stores.
Gillian and David are really nice down to earth people. They talked about how they wrote their own songs and were 'hoping' to make it. I guess that 'tear my stillhouse down' came when she heard that phrase on TV while in a hotel room on the road. She just kept singing that and they built a song around it. She was really excited that 'Emmylou Harris' had chosen to put her song 'Orphan Girl' on an album. I think David Rawling's name should be on the album title too. His guitar lines have simple but beautiful melodic lines to them. He plays an old, old small bodied Gibson with the 'f' soundholes. I think it was a from the late 1930's. It's something really special to meet some people just before they make it.

For great albums. It's one I've had for a few years, but I'm really getting into Neil Young's 'Sleeps With Angels'. Very intense. The album really comes through when you listen to it front to back.

Cheers all,

Odd. I never thought of Gillian Welch's music as Bluegrass. Just sort of American, maybe country. Her revival cd is one of my all time favorite all-originals, along with Iris Dement's Infamous Angel and Lucinda Williams's Lucinda Williams.

Thanks for the recommendation. I love good bluegrass, but don't have a local radio outlet, so it's tough to find good new stuff. For those interested, www.cdnow.com has samples from tracks on both cds you can hear. Of the two, I prefer the Revival cd, the Hell Among The Yearlings seems a little too sedate for my tastes, but that's just me.

Anyone interested should also check out Kasey Chambers cd "Captain". It has really grown on me - especially the title track, "These Pines", and "Don't Go". Title track was recently used as background music in an episode of The Sopranos, of all places! I'd be interested in your opinion of this cd.

chas

Great cd. I actually found my copy in a used cd store. nobody knew her and I grabbed it...Do you have her 98 release? "Hell Among the Yearlings? Excellent...Not for everyone of course. But man, she can cut you to the quik when she's on....Cheers, Bluenose