Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
November 5th 2004
Roxy Theatre, Parramatta, New South Wales
Australia

Audience Recording
Source Info: SonyECM-DS70P > Sony MZ-R90 > Goldwave 5.06 (WAV) > CD Wave Editor > FLAC Frontend


Disc One/Set One:
01) Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You
02) Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor
03) Elvis Presely Blues
04) Rock Of Ages
05) Acony Bell
06) True Life Blues
07) Look At Miss Ohio
08) I Want To Sing That Rock And Roll
09) My Morphine
10) Wrecking Ball
11) Red Clay Halo

Intermission

Disc Two/Set Two:
01) My First Lover
02) No One Knows My Name
03) One Little Song
04) Revelator
05) By The Mark
06) Diamond Joe
07) Everything Is Free
08) Black Star
09) Caleb Meyer
Encore
10) The Way It Will Be
11) I'll Fly Away


SHOW REVIEW

By Bernard Zuel
Sydney Morning Herald
November 8, 2004

Gillian Welch ... beautifully expressed music.
Parramatta, November 5

This one-time pink-walled picture palace, now with a thumping "doof-doof" nightclub downstairs (the noise ungraciously bleeding up through the floor later)
and an outdoor DJ with percussionist, has an upstairs room with the mixed ambience of the country hall and the deco theatre.
It seems tailor-made for Gillian Welch, and her partner David Rawlings, whose music is both rustic and artistic, plain-spoken and beautifully expressed.
Above the high stage and first rows of plastic seats in an arc, behind which rise the old cinema seats, are the restored grand ceiling lights and
slightly baroque plaster filigrees which remind of days when straightened circumstances did not have to mean austere or utilitarian.
And around us are perfect acoustics. Perfect, anyway, for two voices, and two acoustic guitars with microphones, rather than played through amplifiers.
It is in this environment that we found ourselves enjoying one of the most sublime musical evenings of this or any recent year, filled with the sounds
of the Appalachians and the plains, and informed by both a respectful understanding of the music's roots and a subtle but persistent drip of an attitude
as much rock'n'roll as bluegrass.
Some of that could be heard in Rawlings's often astonishing guitar work, on an instrument which looked like a lovingly maintained but clearly weathered
between-the-wars veteran. Though he is an unflashy player, Rawlings's playing was inventive and energetic, constantly moving but never intruding beyond its
role as the carriage and engine for these songs, as in the passionate gospel of Rock Of Ages where you could almost see the dirt-floor church.
Some of it was found in a gorgeous version of Radiohead's Black Star, which could easily have been mistaken for a Doc Watson tune, or the references
to Steve Miller's Quicksilver Girl in My First Lover.
And some of it too could be seen in the bounciness on stage where this understated attractive couple lightly bantered with the audience and tweaked a
catalogue which, on record at least, leans more towards the sparsely beautiful but dark, but here found regular sprightliness.
What we will remember most, however, from this night is the way the voices of Welch and Rawlings seemed to merge, not into one voice but
(as we saw so impressively in both Miss Ohio and I Want To Sing That Rock And Roll) into something new again and so richly rewarding. It was
church and nursery, field and fireside, heaven and earth.