Folk superstars Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are heading to Boston. The Grammy winning duo will perform at the Boch Center Wang Theatre May 10. The show is presented by the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame. Tickets are on sale now at BochCenter.org.
Earlier this year, the duo received a Grammy for 2025 Best Folk Album for their 10th studio album, Woodland. The duo previously received two Grammys, 2021’s Best Folk Album for All The Good Times (2020) and the 2002 Album Of The Year Grammy for O Brother, Where Art Thou? – Soundtrack.
Welch and Rawlings’ 10th studio album, Woodland, is out now on all formats. Woodland was named for and recorded at Welch and Rawlings’ own Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville, TN. Of the album and studio, they said, “Woodland is at the heart of everything we do and has been for the last twenty some years. The past four years were spent almost entirely within its walls, bringing it back to life after the 2020 tornado and making this record. The music is (songs are) a swirl of contradictions, emptiness, fullness, joy, grief, destruction, permanence. Now.”
The new 10-song collection mingles full band tracks with intricate duet performances all tied together with the duo’s signature sound and lyricism and cements the pair’s iconoclastic position at the forefront of acoustic music. Woodland is the duo’s first album since 2020’s All the Good Times, a collection of covers and classic folk songs which earned the duo the 2021 GRAMMY Award for Best Folk Album, and their first album of new original music since 2017’s Poor David’s Almanack.
The vinyl edition of Woodland is mastered by David Rawlings directly from the original analog master tapes to his custom Neumann VMS-80 lathe. Acony Records is proud to be partnering with the all-new Paramount Pressing & Plating, a joint venture between Rawlings and esteemed plating craftsman Gary Salstrom, to produce superior vinyl records. Paramount Pressing, located in Denver, CO and built from the ground up from Salstrom’s specifications, is dedicated to producing the highest quality vinyl records available, using state of the art Pheenix Alpha and Viryl presses and the experience of some of the greatest record pressing engineers and record producers in the business.
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. Firmly on the roots music map following the release, Welch and Rawlings followed up that GRAMMY nominated album release with 1998’s Hell Among The Yearlings, a stark duet record that further solidified the duo as a force in the folk music scene.
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.
Beginning with Time (The Revelator), all of Welch and Rawlings albums have been self-produced and self-released on their own record label, Acony Records, helping to establish the duo’s fierce commitment to independent music.
2003’s Soul Journey was the pair’s first experimentation with a fuller, electric sound, which paved the way for the Dave Rawlings Machine project, and their first release under Rawlings’ name (A Friend of A Friend, 2009), which was accompanied by a time period of heavy touring and headlining major festivals.
The Harrow and The Harvest returned to the duet sound and was nominated for Best Contemporary Folk Album and Best Engineered Album at the 2012 GRAMMYs, and won Artist of the Year (Welch) and Instrumentalist of the Year (Rawlings) at the Americana Honors & Awards. The album garnered glowing reviews and topped multiple year end “Best Of” lists.
Nashville Obsolete, the last project to be released as Dave Rawlings Machine in 2015, showcased Rawlings’ expanding pallet as a producer with more lavish arrangements, strings, and guest musicians. He also produced albums by Willie Watson, Dawes, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Robyn Hitchcock. “Cumberland Gap” from Poor David’s Almanack in 2017 was nominated for Best American Roots Song and was featured in Guy Ritchie’s film The Gentlemen, and has since become one of the duo’s highest streaming songs.
In celebration of the twenty year anniversary of the Welch-Rawlings partnership, the two launched an archival branch of Acony Records, entitled Boots, dedicated to releasing outtakes, demos, bootlegs, and live recordings from their copious vault. Thus far they have released five album’s worth of music with more on the way.
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.
WHAT: Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
WHEN: Saturday, May 10, 2025
WHERE: Boch Center Wang Theatre
Tickets are on sale now at the Boch Center Box Office, www.bochcenter.org, and via Ticketmaster. The Wang Theatre is located at 270 Tremont Street in Boston, MA
The Folk America Roots Hall of Fame is a cultural and education initiative of the Boch Center located inside the Wang Theatre at 270 Tremont St. Boston, Massachusetts. Curated by the Museum Collective, FARHOF is geared to music lovers of all ages, providing educational offerings that ensure legacies are honored and new musical traditions are nurtured for generations to come. These genres of music have historically provided an outlet for individuals of all races and backgrounds, and from every corner of the United States to express their joys, sorrows, and experiences.
Recent and current exhibits include Joan Baez: A Life of Music, Art and Activism, All Seeing Eye: Blue Note Records Through the Lens of Francis Wolff; Bruce Springsteen: Portraits of an American Music Icon; Legends of Folk, Americana, Roots Music; Arlo Guthrie: Native Son; Life in Six Strings; Don't Think Twice: The Daniel Kramer Photographs of Bob Dylan, 1964-65; Boston: A Music Town; The Wang Theatre: A Century of Great Music; historic artifacts from David Bieber Archives and the Cultural Heroes sculptures on loan from Alan LeQuire Galleries in Nashville, TN.
For updates, information about tours and upcoming events and exhibits please visit www.FolkAmericanaRootsHallofFame.org.
Be sure to follow Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
About the Boch Center:
The Boch Center is one of the nation’s leading nonprofit performing arts institutions and a guardian of the historic Wang and Shubert Theatres. As New England’s largest cultural venue, the Boch Center is home to theater, classical and popular music, dance, comedy, opera, Broadway musicals, family entertainment, and more.
Located in Boston’s historic Theater District, the Boch Center also offers a diverse mix of educational, cultural and community outreach initiatives, including the City Spotlights Leadership Program and the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame; collaborates with artists and local nonprofit arts organizations; preserves historic venues; and acts as a champion for Greater Boston’s arts and cultural community. Learn more at bochcenter.org.
