Gillian Welch and Richard Buckner

Tramps, New York, September 14, 1998


One advantage country musicians enjoy is that there's really no such thing as being too derivative. A songwriter might seek originality in a fresh word or two, but oftentimes a singer simply passes along traditional melodies and other folks' lyrics. While some might find the genre a bit restrictive, those who choose to listen know there's a lot of beautiful country to explore.

Gillian Welch lives in the old country, and her warm voice and persona invite all who listen to join her there. Richard Buckner lives there as well, although his musical persona seems to rail against its confines. Welch and accompanist David Rawlings offer traditional-sounding songs for guitar and banjo that relate old murders and tales of prize horses and whiskey stills. Buckner writes lyrically complex songs in the tradition of Townes Van Zandt about love and loss and, to borrow the title of his second album, "devotion and doubt."

Unfortunately, Buckner's talent doesn't translate well into a live acoustic format. His lyrics are difficult to discern and the musical accompaniment is mostly flat strumming accented by Eric Haywood's eerie pedal steel. Without the power of his lyrics and a full ensemble behind him, Buckner's burdened tone sounds self-indulgent and the gruffness in his voice seems affected, two qualities which are absent from his critically acclaimed recordings. He plays his set in first gear, not varying the tempo or the melody enough to separate one song from the next. In addition, his shyness doesn't lend itself well to any kind of stage presence. He speaks only a handful of words between songs, making little attempt to connect with his audience beyond presenting his songs one after the next.

At his best, it seems as though Buckner doesn't really fit at all into the narrow confines of country music; it's as if he sets the boundaries of country around him and then tries to break out of them, like the Velvet Underground trapped at a hootenanny. Even when his lyrics were drowned out by the psychedelic wail of Haywood's slide or Buckner's own distorted electric, there was no doubt he was trying the express the hell out of something with his tortured, moaning growl.

Gillian Welch, on the other hand, isn't concerned with questions of stylistic liberation. Instead, she dispenses with the irony and the pessimism and sings songs, if for no other reason than that they are beautiful -- a fairly unhip credential in a time when cynicism and hipness are often interchangeable.

Her songs are almost like parables set to nursery rhymes. They can lull you into near-hypnosis and then make your jaw drop with one final revelation. In this sense, they revel in country-musical values to such an extent that the listener might be surprised to learn that she and Rawlings write nearly all of their own material. When they do play cover tunes, they imbue them with the same intelligence and emotion as their originals. Her version of Jimmy Driftwood's "Tennessee Stud," for example, takes what often comes across as a sentimental paean to a legendary horse, and brings out it's narrative so powerfully that the experience is almost cinematic.

Rawlings backs her on guitar with versatile picking that makes the music swell and vibrate at all the right moments. He also provides tenor harmonies that blend seamlessly with Welch's voice, while not eclipsing it. Unlike Buckner, whose music travels best from the studio to the darkened bedroom, Welch's music is a study in solid tradition. And it fills the barroom just as powerfully as the living room.

JAMIE COWPERTHWAIT