Modern Nashville often spurns the archetypal country traditions of death and salvation in favour of Big Hats and bigger, somewhat more vacuous gestures. Hail, then, the likes of Gillian Welch and her partner David Rawlings. The duo moved from Boston (where they met while attending the Berkeley College of Music) to Nashville in the early 1990s in an attempt to bolster a career founded on a mutual love of bluegrass, the Carter Family and Woody Guthrie.
Slowly, the capital of country music took notice of Welch's bleak songs of redemption, misery and murder ballads. Her 1996 debut album, Revival, was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category. The follow-up, last year's beautifully minimalistic Hell Among The Yearlings, is as far removed from country glitz as one could possibly imagine. It is also incredibly, fitfully morose.
"I was concerned about that at the beginning," says Welch. "I started asking around
close friends, people who had heard it, and not everyone found it sad. Some people find really depressing songs strangely uplifting. Hopefully, it doesn't cast a shadow over things. It's sad in a cathartic way. Not as cathartic as Meat Loaf or Kiss, though - a more subtle catharsis. We don't play dance music. Well, we do, but it's of the slow variety."
Welch paints a sombre portrait of austerity. The spooky and timeless contents of the two records could be seen to be a reflection of the songwriter. Is Gillian really as scarred as the characters in her songs?
"I'm in there, and all the songs are in my head," she replies, "but all the names have been changed to protect the innocent. When what has been going on in my life makes its way out into a song, it takes the shape of a symbol or an archetype. I would be a different person if I were the sort who stood up on stage and told you what was going on in my head without disguising it. I don't think many people are like that. That's why they're artists.
"It's easier to do something creative than to simply sit down in front of someone and say, look this is the trouble I'm having this week. The songs are all true, every word of them. On some level, anyway. Perhaps not factually true, but emotionally true."
Gillian Welch plays Roisin Dubh, Galway, on Thursday; Streamstown RFC, Tipperary, on Friday; and Vicar Street, Dublin, next Saturday, February 13th