The Pour Haus, Louisville, KY
November 15, 2006

For those unfamiliar with David Rawlings, he has spent years recording and touring with Gillian Welch. So it only makes sense that on this night, Gillian was the additional cog in Rawlings’ machine. A last-minute booking, the band’s show could have been a disguise for a standard Welch show, but, in fact, this night belonged to Rawlings.

The band got cranked up with a beautiful rendition of Bill Monroe’s “I’m on My Way Back to the Old Home,” followed up with “I Hear Them All”, a song co-written with Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor. By the time they started Bob Dylan’s “Wicked Messenger” the 200 people in attendance were completely mesmerized by Rawlings’ flawless guitar work and the pair’s heavenly harmonies.

The two-set show incorporated such Gillian Welch standards as “Elvis Presley Blues” and “I Want to Sing That Rock and Roll.”  Rawlings even joked about allowing his rhythm guitar player to sing a song, but on this given night Gillian’s primary role was to provide background harmonies.

With it mattering little who led or followed, the duo never missed a beat. Highlighted by Jesse Fuller’s “Monkey and the Engineer” and “To Be Young,” a song co-written with Ryan Adams, this was a night to remember.  Rawlings and Welch ended the second set with another Dylan classic, “Queen Jane Approximately.” The surprises, however, were not quite over and the Rawlings and Welch encored with what the audience perceived to be a joke at first: Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.”

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