Return of the Grievous Angel

It was only this past summer when I discovered Gillian Welch. Quietly creeping away from the lingering smoke and flat beer shadows of a deserted corner in a cobweb bar, I climbed into my truck and took off for the backroads under a paper moon and teardrop stars. I was losing my girl. I was losing my friends. I was broke and without a job. All dogs within a five-mile radius of me were dead. \nThere couldn't have been a more beautifully timed moment for my rewakening to the roots of American music. Coming across my speakers like a whispering "Grievous Angel," Gillian Welch sang a siren's song with her controversial "My Morphine." I was immediately and wholeheartedly in love.\nThe Buskirk-Chumley Theater was once again treated to the haunted songs and the "Return of the Grievous Angel." Having performed in Bloomington twice before, Welch's show was a sold-out musical masterpiece of live performance. Taking the stage with her long-time collaborator, the amazingly accomplished David Rawlings, Welch and Rawlings rambled through the finest finger-pickin' and two-part harmony an individual could ask for in two hours. \nMaking music that lolled through the air like the channeled apparitions of Appalachia long lost, Welch and Rawlings' minimalist approach left you feeling the raw emotion with which they approach their passion. Armed with only acoustic guitars, the occasional harmonica and two mics, Welch and Rawlings songs surrendered the night to a touching experience and the power of music to move its audience. On more than one occasion, Rawlings' lightning-fire, finger-flying guitar feats extraordinaire had happy-footed couples do-si-doing in the balcony. \nSeveral times throughout the night, and especially on Welch's wrenching solo performance of "I Had a Real Good Mother and Father," her voice played to the heartstrings of our lives, soft and silent sobs coming from the crowd. I am not ashamed to say that I can be counted among the sniveling.\nBy the end of the night, Welch and Rawlings would perform two encores and receive three much-deserved standing ovations. Their last song, a heartfelt tribute to Townes Van Zandt's "Snowin' on Raton," left the audience with its only negative comment. We wanted more.