Last month Gillian Welch and David Rawlings announced their new album Woodland, a tribute to their recording studio that they worked hard to reassemble after the Nashville tornado, and shared its opening track “Empty Trainload Of Sky.” We get another preview of the album today in the form of “Hashtag,” not a title I’d naturally associate with rootsy folk types like Welch and Rawlings.
What does track is that the Rawlings-led song is a tribute to the late Guy Clark, one of this duo’s heroes and mentors. “We wrote Hashtag for Guy Clark,” Welch says. “Guy taught us what it was like on the road. He took us out opening for him all over the states, to our first shows in Texas, Oklahoma, California, and South Carolina. He showed us the parallel universe of the troubadour.”
“Hashtag” is a heavy-hearted ballad that graces Rawlings’ voice and acoustic pluckings with pedal steel accents and a masterful string arrangement. “When will we become ourselves?” Rawlings and Welch ask in gentle harmony. Listen below.
Woodland is out 8/23 on Acony.
