Gillian Welch and David Rawlings look back on turbulent times on ‘Woodland’

When a tornado touches down, the destruction can be brutal. Trees are uprooted and trucks can be flung about like toys. Whole houses there one moment are piles of rubble the next.

The 2020 Nashville tornado was like this: deadly and devastating. One of the many losses that night included Gillian Welch and David Rawling‘s East Nashville studio called Woodland. But when the dust settled and the sky cleared, Welch and Rawlings were still standing.

The pair, who have been making music together for decades, won the Grammy Award for best folk album in 2021 for the covers album they made together in the immediate aftermath, called All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone). Their new album is their first of original songs in several years. It’s named Woodland, named after their studio, and in this session, the duo talks about rebuilding, about writing songs during turbulent times, and they also tell maybe the best story we’ve ever heard about winning a Grammy.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.