I've always been a big fan of Gillian Welch's albums. She and her musical partner, Dave Rawlings, made two records (Revival and Hell Among the Yearlings) for Almo Sounds with producer T Bone Burnett that I enjoyed. But it was the next album, the Dave Rawlings-produced Time (The Revelator) on their own Acony Records, which put them onto my desert island list. It's quietly stunning, both musically and sonically, and Gillian's new album The Harrow & The Harvest is equally as strong. I got a chance to speak with them while they were on tour supporting Buffalo Springfield. At first they seemed a bit bored by yet another interview, but when I mentioned I wanted Dave to stay in the room so we could talk about recording, they both visibly perked up. Although Dave is credited with production, Gillian also has some deep knowledge and opinions on recording. As befits two people who have worked together for over a decade, they often finish each other's sentences and thoughts. Their strong connection as musical partners is evident.
Time (The Revelator) is one of my favorite records. I think it's a classic album.
G: We made it in the old RCA Studio B in Nashville that was built in the late '50s. It had no gear in there.
D: We were looking for a recording space and I had been driving around Nashville trying to find an old studio to rent, or possibly buy. One day I drove by Studio B and the door was open. I thought, "Oh my God, that's Studio B. I've never been in there." I walked in, heard my footsteps on the floor and knew that I liked the sound of the room. Bob Moore was there that day — Elvis's bass player. He just happened to stop by. I was really interested in [renting] it. I then found out that the Country Music Hall of Fame — who had been running a lot of tours through it and whatnot — were building the new Hall of Fame. In the interim they were going to be too busy to do anything with RCA B. We approached them through a friend who was on their board and they said would it be all right if we brought our gear in and rented it on a monthly basis. They treated it as a donation to the new Hall of Fame, which was real nice. We rented it out for about 14 months. When we first got in there, I spent a month or two cleaning out the troughs and I fixed the plate reverbs. The place hadn't been used much as a professional space in quite a while.
G. It had not been a functioning studio.
But they had a little bit of gear, like the plates?
D: They had the plates in the other room and they had somebody doing some karaoke sessions out of the live room. The control room was basically empty.
G: The speakers were still there.
How long did Harrow & The Harvest take to record?
G: Four weeks. That's about how long our records take.
Is everything recorded live?
G: Totally.
D: Yeah, everything is live. It is pretty much all from takes one, two or three. Very few mixes. This is the first record we've done that Stephen Marcussen [our mastering engineer] listened to and said, "Okay, Let's transfer it." We didn't compress or EQ anything. Just transferred it from a machine of his that we really like, through the nice converters and a clean signal chain.
Do you have an engineer helping you?
D: We have worked pretty closely with Matt Andrews in Nashville for a while now, and our methodology has developed around the three of us. I'm not in the control room while we are tracking, so we rely on Matt, to some degree. We have some sense of whether or not we are getting there, but it's always good to have another set of ears. If we are going to be editing between takes, it's generally good to get parts from adjacent takes. I suppose I handle most of the responsibilities that you'd associate with a producer.
G: We all listen and weigh in on what the good takes are. Happily, we pretty much agree. It's pretty evident.
Do you do the mixing?
D: I do a lot of mixing. On The Harrow & The Harvest, we weren't really moving faders very much — we never really ride stuff. For most mixes we set the faders and let them run. It's very rare for there to be fader moves within a song. Matt did a lot of live mixing, where he would get the picture a particular way. If we liked it when we came in, we might only tweak things slightly. He did a lot of riding the preamps and then we would adjust from there as far as color and compression.
I'm assuming you work out the arrangements well in advance and bring them in?
G: No.
D: Some of the writing goes down in the studio.
G: It's a very "in the moment" dynamic process.
D: The improvisation is usually better early on, and of course you always have time later if you fail.
G: I tend to be... the positive way to say it is that I'm really consistent. But once I've been playing a song for a while it tends to solidify for me. That can be a problem if we are having trouble recording something, as it's unlikely that I'm going to change what I'm doing enough to make a difference. Dave's really good at suggesting arrangements. But, even broader than that, he creates musical changes that really crack things open. For instance, having me move from guitar to banjo or totally recasting a song from major to minor. A lot of these songs are very spontaneous takes on a new arrangement or even new music.
D: "Hard Times" is the second time Gil ever played it on banjo. The first take is un-listenable 'cause there are so many chord mistakes.
G: It's clam city.
D: As the second take was going down, I knew it was magic. I actually cut the solo short because I didn't want there to be any more time — I wanted less time for things to go wrong.
G: He shot me this look of, "Start singing again."
D: Let's get through the fucking thing! It was moving me so much.
G: "Six White Horses" was maybe one of the first times we ever performed it, with me hamboning and with you at the rack [harmonica]. This runs through the whole record — it's very spontaneous
D: ...but only after quite a bit of writing and working. The studio time is the culmination of the writing. "The Way the Whole Thing Ends," has approximately 25 verses. The studio is where we figure out how long the songs need to be and where to cut them down. It was the same situation with "I Dream a Highway;" it's a very long song and I thought it was appropriate for it to remain long. Most of the time they get better if you shrink them, but that one seemed nice long.
G: We had only ever sung that twice.
D: I said, "We shouldn't ever play that until we...
G: 'Til we have tape rolling."
D:We didn't know if it would fit on a reel. I cut out a couple of verses in the final — that's a composite of takes one and two.
You've done enough records in this format, and it seems like it's quick to get set up with Matt.
G: The interesting thing about this record is that we had never had a room that was great sounding to do duet records in at Woodland Sound Studios [Gillian and Dave's studio].
D: We made Soul Journey in the A room at Woodland. We have tried several times to do acoustic stuff — even during the first record with T Bone. We worked in Woodland in '95 and tried to do some acoustic stuff, but never really got anything satisfactory. AES held an event where they brought in Glenn Snoddy, who'd built the studio. We looked at the room and realized that what we didn't like was basically a '90s renovation. So we took the B room and tore it down to studs. We took the wood floor up and basically restored it to how it was in the '60s, when it was built, with linoleum floor and acoustic tiles — basically the same construction as RCA B, which is what Woodland B was built to mirror. We didn't know what we were going to get. We came back, finished the trim, worked for a few weeks, buffing the floor with the same wax compound. Then we set up mics and did one take of a song that ended up being an outtake. The next thing we played was "The Way it Will Be." We did one take of that and it was a master. We felt like, "Okay, this room is working well." ...Revelator sits back in speakers in a very nice, mysterious way — The Harrow & The Harvest throws out the speakers and combines in the space you are in.
From: https://tapeop.com/interviews/85/gillian-welch-and-dave-rawlings/
