Starr Hill Presents: An Evening with Gillian Welch & David Rawlings

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are pillars of the modern acoustic music world and their rich and remarkable careers span over twenty-five years. They have been hailed by Pitchfork as “modern masters of American folk” and “protectors of the American folk song” by Rolling Stone.

After moving to Nashville in the 1990s, Welch was launched into the public consciousness when Emmylou Harris recorded a cover of Welch’s “Orphan Girl.” Her career continued to flourish as her 1996 debut Revival, produced by T Bone Burnett, was released to critical acclaim. In 2000, Welch was awarded the Album of the Year GRAMMY for her work as Associate Producer as well as a performer and songwriter on the eight times platinum O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack. Welch and Rawlings were simultaneously nominated for Time (The Revelator) which Rolling Stone called one of the best albums of the 2000s and is widely considered by critics and fans to be one of the best albums of all time.

In 2018, Welch was the first musician to receive the Thomas Wolfe Prize for Literature. The award is bestowed by University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Department of English & Comparative Literature and recognizes contemporary writers with a distinguished body of work. 2019 saw Welch and Rawlings nominated for an Academy Award for “Best Original Song” where they performed their singing cowboy duet live on the Oscars. “When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings” was written for the Coen brothers’ film The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs. In 2020, the duo released All the Good Times, the first album under both their names, and won the GRAMMY for the Best Folk Album.

Recently, they were crowned with the Berklee American Masters Award and honored by Americana Music Association with a Lifetime Achievement for Songwriting.