THE hardship and pain so evocatively expressed her crafted songs may in large be the product of second hand experience but Gillian Welch proved that her innate sense of bluegrass and country culture is true with a riveting performance at the DA Club on Saturday.
The 70 minute plus concert in the small venue was a show case gig, intended to help spread the word about this unpretentious Californian who sings and writes with a Hillbilly heart. She was accompanied by her partner, David Rawlings, who co wrote much of her impressive debut album, Revival, and who also contributes handsome guitar and vocal support on it.
On Saturday, his influence in the partnership was, if anything, stronger. His dazzling acoustic guitar playing, full of flicks, licks and flair, was a colourful counterpoint to the generally bleak tone of the songs, while his harmonies added a ghostliness to Welch's plaintive voice.
The empathy between the two as they roamed through the 10 tracks of Revival, plus some newer and older material, underlined the instinctive balance in their performance, a balance born of many such shows together and mutual respect.
Welch's self deprecating and humorous remarks (she introduced the ethereal ballad Paper Wings as the song she wrote after listening to a Willie Nelson boxed set) and her no nonsense approach ("we're usually a low tech act," she said, when stage lights were turned on) served to highlight the compelling simplicity of the songs and their haunting melodies.
These range from the white gospel of By The Mark through the honky tonk despair of Barroom Girls to the spiritual comfort of Orphan Girl. Many of the songs have a period quality, evoking the world of The Last Picture Show or earlier.
They also share a dark fatalistic approach, a foreboding captured well in Only One And Only, which closes the album and did likewise for the show.
In lesser hands this unrelenting gloom would prove wearing, but Gillian Welch and David Rawlings manage to elevate these bleak tales, as does the best of country, into music that fortifies the heart for its long and lonesome journey.
Or something like that.