HEAR THIS: GILLIAN WELCH

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