5. Gillian Welch - Revival

Ole Miss. Faulkner country. The stories of Yoknapatawpha county's characters. The fields leading away from the Delta and towards the smallest of the foothills of Appalachia. It's my second semester at the University of Mississippi and I've started checking out the places around the courthouse square: Proud Larry's, Square Books and Off-Square Books, Salvation Army, Uncle Buck's Records, Murf's Irish Pub, and other little shops. One night I went into Proud Larry's and ate a pasta dish, but before leaving I found myself captivated by a small band playing. I stayed. I heard a voice that sung right down to something inside. I was enthralled by Gillian Welch's singing and David Rawling's guitar playing. I bought a CD that night. I fell in love. I played Revival constantly. I turned it up on my headphones at work at the reception desk in Guess Hall when a guy 8 years my senior would start to come near to chatter about this or that. But then he learned what I was listening to and made me a mixed tape of some other music he thought I might like. I did.
Later I bought the rest of her CDs. Hell Among the Yearlings has surfaced again and again to serve an emotional purpose, either through the whole album or single songs: "Caleb Meyer," "Winter's Come and Gone," etc. Soul Journey began my journey to Hattiesburg when I bought it in a used bookstore and blasted it in my empty apartment as I moved the furniture around trying to figure out the space that was to be all my own. I saw Gillian and David play in Oxford, MS, at the Double Decker Arts Festival around a year after a two year relationship had ended. I met my ex there, we talked a moment, and I felt the need to disappear behind my camera, excuse to be excused and "see you later, sometime." Goodbyes were sung in the lyrics that Gillian belt out from that stage in her sundress and cowgirl boots.

We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why

"Annabelle" was one of the songs that was "the apple of my eye" for a while.  I sung it long and rambling in the car on the long roadtrip to Kentucky as I moved there.  I grew attached to "One More Dollar" when I read about the Depression, migrant workers,  families split as folks traveled far distances to earn wages to pay for matters at home, and other concerns I imagined from the history and literature books, and above all Dorothea Lange's photography.

One more dime to show for my day
One more dollar and I'm on my way
When I reach those hills, boys, I'll never roam
One more dollar and I'm going home

For some reason the insistent and begging prayer of repentance in "Tear My Stillhouse Down" begame a theme song for me even before I was interested in any moonshine, bourbon, wine, or cider.   I loved the story, as usual, and the idea of wanting to be rid of something that held her back, held her down, and kept her from joy.

Oh tear my stillhouse down
Let it go to rust
Don't leave no trace
Of the hiding place
Where I made that evil stuff
For all my time and money
No profit did I see
That old copper kettle
Was the death of me
Oh tell all your children
That Hell ain't no dream
'Cause Satan, he lives
In my whiskey machine
And in my time of dying
I know where I'm bound
So when I die
Tear my stillhouse down

I revisited Hell Among the Yearlings many times again, specifically for "Winter's Come and Gone" while traveling in southwest Virginia and North Carolina in early Spring of 2007 while it rained on the highways I was traveling through the mountains.  But it all started with Revival, and this is the album that led me to others.  And to close, "Only One and Only":

There's a hundred bluebirds
Up above the clouds
Putting all the color in the sky
And twice as many teardrops
There to wash it down
Every one's another lullaby
But there's only one and only
Who could go and leave me lonely

Also, visit the Wikipedia articles on Revival and Gillian Welch, in addition to the band’s website.