Folk country duo Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have announced a new album, Woodland, due out on August 23 on the pair’s Acony Records. This is a follow-up to their Grammy-winning 2020 covers album, All The Good Times (Are Past & Gone). Woodland is Welch’s first album of original material since 2011’s The Harrow & the Harvest, and Rawlings’ first since 2017’s Poor David’s Almanack. Welch and Rawlings shared the first single lifted from their new album, “Empty Trainload of Sky,” while also announcing an extensive U.S. tour that kicks off on July 23 in South Burlington, Vermont, and finishes up on December 5 in Port Chester, New York.
“Woodland is at the heart of everything we do, and has been for the last 20 some years,” they said in a press statement. “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.” (Holler)