Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have announced a new album called Woodland, named for the pair's Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville, which is back in business after being seriously damaged by a tornado.
The album is out August 23 on Welch and Rawlings's Acony Records, and today you can hear the bluesy lead single and album opener "Empty Trainload of Sky."
In a statement about the record, the couple wrote:
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.
Welch and Rawlings's last album together (and first credited to both of them) was 2020's covers and traditionals album All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone).
Check out "Empty Trainload of Sky" and see the Woodland tracklist below.
Woodland:
1. Empty Trainload of Sky
2. What We Had
3. Lawman
4. The Bells and the Birds
5. North Country
6. Hashtag
7. The Day the Mississippi Died
8. Turf the Gambler
9. Here Stands a Woman
10. Howdy Howdy