Gillian Welch

The first time singer songwriter Gillian Welch and guitarist/partner David Rawlings played Chico, at Sierra Nevada’s Big Room, the show sold out in 23 minutes—a record for the acclaimed folk duo. Although she’s never had a radio hit and sells only a modest number of albums, Welch has garnered diehard fans from years of solo touring and playing the bluegrass/folk festival circuit.

Locally, her acoustic music is often aired on KZFR community radio (especially David Guzzetti’s Monday-morning show, Woody and Friends), and for good reason. Welch’s voice is at once genteel and soulful, and her rustic folk-country songs often border on a haunted sort of timelessness, reflecting their traditional roots in Appalachian and Ozark spiritual music hundreds of years old.

For his part, Rawlings is a mesmerizing guitarist capable of carrying melodies with flawless grace on his 1935 Epiphone Olympic archtop, offering beautiful backup harmonies and blowing a little harp on occasion.

One of the most revealing interviews Welch gave this year concerning her latest album, the starkly personal Soul Journey, was in O, Oprah’s magazine. She explained her unique adoption at birth (her adoptive father was a musician in Jack Paar’s studio orchestra, and one night comedian Bob Newhart made an impromptu TV plea for the searching couple—the next day, whammo, Gillian was delivered).

Live, you can expect a wonderfully rendered selection of her own golden newbies such as “Orphan Girl” or “My Morphine” and perhaps a choice cover of a tune by the likes of Townes Van Zandt or Graham Parsons.

If you missed ’em before, here’s another chance to catch rising legends, this time in the acoustically superior Paradise Performing Arts Center.