historiblogography

dreaming a highway back

I've been listening to Gillian Welch ever since the release of her first album, Revival. I used to love that album with an unreasonable intensity, but lately I've lost interest in it; the songs, and the voice, now seem to present an imitation, a singer trying to sound like something she admires. I have, for whatever reason, a sense of some missing thing behind a faithfully executed gesture.

But the astonishing thing about Welch is how much she has grown into the "Appalachian high-lonesome" music that she loves, and that I love along with her. The album playing over and over again on my IPod (thanks, guys) is her very remarkable Time (The Revelator), a collection of music so quietly and perfectly done that each song seems to be inexhaustible; the song playing over and over on my IPod, as I fall asleep in an army bunk thousands of miles away from home, is "I Dream A Highway," a song plainly written by someone who understands what it feels like to sleep in a strange bed thousands of miles from home. I almost posted a link to the lyrics, here, but I won't, and I hope you won't go google them. Listen first.

On the same album, "Elvis Presley Blues" pulls together two potent American icons in a deeply resonant way: Elvis being "all alone in a long decline / Thinking how happy John Henry was when he fell down and died." Welch very neatly captures the sensation of mixing a sadness over something with a love for that something, a perfect bittersweet embrace of loss. The song is a remarkable accomplishment, and it's also a remarkable accomplishment that circles back to the place she started; it references Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, points to the traditions in which she wishes to walk, and avoids merely imitating any of them. Welch simultaneously reaches back to a cherished past and moves beyond it. And, I mean, wow.

About that cherished past: The same song displays a terrific consciousness of its subject, and I'm inclined to speculate that Welch has not only read Peter Guralnick's gorgeous two-volume biography of Elvis Presley, but has also spent some time watching footage of the young Elvis's live performances:

How he took it all, the black and white
Grabbing one in the other hand and he held on tight
And he shook it like a hurricane
And he shook it like to make it break
And he shook it like a holy roller, baby
With his soul at stake, with his soul at stake

I also love the image, earlier in the song, of Elvis as "Just a country boy/who combed his hair/Put on a shirt his mother made/And he went on the air." A storyteller's respect for her story is always apparent, and these songs are an endless pleasure. Which is much appreciated, these days.

posted by Chris Bray @ 11:20 PM