Gillian Welch

Americana Music Association Lifetime Achievement for Songwriting Award winners Gillian Welch and David Rawlings will make a long awaited return to Australian shores in January and February in 2016 for not one but two very special tours

Playing as the duo, Gillian Welch, before they transform into the quintet of the Dave Rawlings Machine for the drive back down the East Coast. Get ready to experience the first ever visit by the Machine.

“We are very excited, once again, to be bringing our songs and our selves, and a few of our good friends, all the way from Tennessee to the land of Australia way down under… come out and say howdy when we roll in to town!” – Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Nashville, Tenn.

The dynamic duo were last here a long 11 years ago in 2004. No one had quite expected the sublime beauty and simplistic complexity of their voices and instruments in their live shows. From the grandeous Forum Theatre in Melbourne to the tiny Meeniyan Town Hall, they slayed ‘em all in shows that continue to be talked about.

Dave Rawlings Machine play in support of the recently released and critically acclaimed album Nashville Obsolete which features seven original compositions written by Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. The Machine live band will feature Dave and Gillian, as well as Willie Watson, Punch Brother Paul Kowert and incredible fiddler Britt Haas.

Nashville Obsolete marks the 7th studio album on which Welch and Rawlings have collaborated together over a two-decade long creative partnership. In 2015 The Music referred to them as the “Americana dream team” and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who would disagree because they, at every outing, be it the GRAMMY nominated Gillian Welch release The Harrow and the Harvest (2011), the 2009 Dave Rawlings Machine release A Friend of a Friend or the 2001 Gillian Welch masterpiece Time (The Revelator), constantly moved the musical goal posts with the same brilliant results. As Fasterlouder recently said about Nashville Obsolete “It’s possibly the recording career high point for Rawlings and company.”

The night Gillian and David were awarded the 2015 Americana Music Association Lifetime Achievement Awards for Songwriting, Robyn Hitchcock gave a speech that succinctly and brilliantly summed up this writing tour de force: “Like a jewel they have many facets. They may appear as an old time Appalachian pair, stood by a wooden wagon. Or as ’90s indie rockers, finding the essence of a Radiohead song. Or they may strike you as a jam band.”

Regardless of how you might see them these are the shows of 2016 that are a must see. It has taken eleven years to get them back and it will be at least another ten before we see them here again.