Welch and Rawlings at CCA

We usually would crawl through broken glass to go see Gillian Welch, but we put off and put off buying tickets for her tour behind her latest CD, Woodland, almost until it was too late.  Boston and Portland were sold out by the time we got serious, but we were able to get what looked like acceptable tickets in the Chubb Theatre at the Capitol Center For the Arts in Concord NH on December 2.

It was rush hour as we drove up, and there was an accident on 93 in Southern NH, but we still got up there in not bad time, parked on Main Street near the venue, and had a fine meal at The Draft sports bar across the street.  The Draft filled up quickly with concert goers on a cold and dark early December night, and the Chubb filled up quickly too.

The balcony there gets horrible grades.  We'd been in the Chubb before, in the orchestra, and that's fine.  But don't go upstairs!  The sound system was pathetic and overtaxed; they tried to turn up the low end but just produced a disagreeable hum for the first few songs before turning it down to a tinny echo.  Luckily the crowd was pretty quiet, but they could easily have drowned out the band and we couldn't really hear Gillian and David when they talked in the mikes.  And the seats in the balcony were torture devices, crowded together closer than in Fenway Park!  Luckily the seat next to me was empty, so I could turn sideways and not break my knees, but it was close.  And their balcony bar was shuttered.  When I went down to the lobby for a beer I turned around immediately and climbed back up, because the line was about as long as your average TSA queue.

But besides that, we thoroughly enjoyed the show.  Gillian was on her acoustic and switched to a banjo for a couple of tunes.  David was on his tenor guitar, which sounded as good as ever.  And Paul Kowert joined them on bass for most of the songs.  Too bad we couldn't hear him.  We were thrilled that they opened with Caleb Meyer, but that was the earliest song they did.  As expected, they featured most of the songs from their new album and they mixed in some other great ones.  The setlist was excellent.

First set:

• Caleb Mayer
• Midnight Train
• Empty Trainload of Sky
• Cumberland Gap
• Wrecking Ball
• Hashtag
• Howdy Howdy
• North Country
• Ruby
• Red Clay Halo

Second set:

• Lawman
• What We Had
• Hard Times
• Sweet Tooth
• The Day the Mississippi Died
• Drag It Down That Dusty Road
• Wayside/Back In Time
• The Way It Goes

First encore:

• Look At Miss Ohio
• I'll Fly Away

Second encore:

• Hard to Say Goodnight
• Jackson

As I say, the sold-out house was quiet and the performers may have at first been a little puzzled by this.  But it was because we were all there to listen, not because we were frozen New Englanders.  There was much raucous applause and hooting after each song, but then we'd all shut up and listen to the delicate start to the next one.  They pretty much stuck to the recorded arrangements, but also threw in a few intricate intros and outros, and extended leads.

Cumberland Gap didn't have the fire it had had when we last saw them in Boston, but they made up for it later with a dynamic, four-dimensional Sweet Tooth jam.  I was very glad they did both Wrecking Ball and Wayside/Back In Time.  And two songs showed Gillian's uniqueness.  Hard Times is somewhere between a depressing, down blues song and an uplifting folk song, this one got a lot of crowd reaction.  And I feel that What We Had is one of the most astounding, excellent recent songs I've heard, while being out of character for even such an eclectic artist.  It's almost poppy blue-eyed soul, but still is wrenchingly authentic, and the harmonies in it are top-notch.

The crowd wouldn't let them go at the end, and they rewarded us with two encores, ending with their rootsy, country take on Jackson.  Great show and a quick drive back South to home!