HEAR THIS: GILLIAN WELCH

May 10. 2020 | By Wayne Jessup
Photo by Jay Blakesberg, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Golden Gate Park, SF, 2015

Home is now Nashville, but based on her time growing up in LA and at UC Santa Cruz, we’ll always claim her. “Happy Mothers Day” is a brand new track from Gillian Welch and David Rawlings on their own Acony Records, and their first new release since the Oscar-nominated “When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings” from the Coen Brothers The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. If you’re among the ones marking time for a followup to 2011’s The Harrow and the Harvest, this is a very nice gift. Given everyone’s separation this year, the track is extra poignant. 

In her own words:
“We can’t always be with the ones we love, but that can’t stop us from saying ‘I love you.’ I wrote this song one May when I was far away and couldn’t be with my mom on Mother’s Day. Then I called and sang it into her answering machine when I knew everybody’d be sitting down to eat. Here is the original home demo for the song, recorded on a portable reel to reel.” — Gillian Welch

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