Gillian Welch’s OKC return engages, moves
Gillian Welch acknowledged it had been a long time since she played in Oklahoma City.
“Is The Blue Door still here?” Welch asked the audience Aug. 24 in the sold-out Tower Theatre where she and her partner, David Rawlings, left the crowd hoping their return visit is not years away.
Welch said her first appearance in Oklahoma City was many years ago, opening at The Blue Door for Guy Clark, a singer, musician and songwriter who died in 2016. This time in Oklahoma City, Welch was the headliner, and she did not disappoint in her 27-song, two-hourplus set.
I have been to two concerts at the Tower Theatre in the past year — Steve Earle and Welch — and both performers spoke in reverence of Clark, proof of the influence the Texas legend had on many musicians. Earle, by the way, is returning to Tower Theatre in December as the venue continues to bring amazing talent to Oklahoma City, like Welch and Rawlings.
Welch sang, played the guitar and banjo, and engaged the audience in conversation like an old friend, entertaining a diverse group of young and old at the Tower Theatre — proof that good music attracts all generations of fans, no matter what the genre.
From their opening song of “Scarlet Town,” off their 2011 “The Harrow & The Harvest” album, to their finale of “I’ll Fly Away,” the pair’s wide range of musical talent was on display. Their harmony is fantastic, and they need no backup band.
Some of Welch’s music is dark and fatalistic. “I feel so good I am going to play a killing song for you,” she joked before the duo performed “Caleb Meyer,” a song about a woman who avenges being raped by a drunken moonshiner.
But their songs are as diverse as their audience, inspired by folk, country, blues, bluegrass, rock ‘n’ roll and gospel, and steeped in Southern tradition. You might not like everything, but there is something for everyone to like.
“Elvis Presley Blues” and “Red Clay Halo” highlighted the end of their first hour of music that included Rawlings’ own “Midnight Train,” before taking a 30-minute break, a longer respite than usual because a patron needed medical attention.
The second hour included W el ch standards like “Revelator,” Rawlings’ version of “Cumberland Gap.” On “Six White Horses,” Welch even danced a jig for the crowd.
A hush fell over the audience during the poignant “Orphan Girl,” the first song of their first encore. It is Welch’s semi auto biographical song off her debut album about a girl who wanders the lonely road of life without any family to keep her company, but she looks forward to meeting them “at God’s table” in heaven someday. Welch is not an orphan, but she was adopted.
It is a moving piece of music, and the Tower Theatre audience seemed rapt by the performance. They followed that with “Look at Miss Ohio,” an up-tempo version of Townes Van Zandt’s “White Freightliner Blues” and “One More Dollar.”
Their second encore began with “Everything is Free,” and the finale of “I’ll Fly Away” — the song she accompanied Alison Krauss on in “O Brother Where Art Thou?” — was worth the price of admission alone, turning the Tower Theatre into a facsimile of the tent revivals my parents used to take me to as a kid. The best thing about them was the music.
Here’s hoping Welch and Rawlings return to Oklahoma City soon. My only request is that they include “Dry Town” on the set list next time.