On 'Woodland,' Gillian Welch and David Rawlings document recovery journey from 2020 tornado

Gillian Welch remembers exactly where she was when the tornado hit Nashville in March 2020: "I was in the bathroom, hugging the toilet, with our two main guitars next to me."

Welch and her musical partner, David Rawlings, went into the stormy aftermath to their music studio, Woodland Sound Studios, in East Nashville. The two had owned the studio for 18 years — 22 now — and weren't going to let the tornado win.

"Unbeknownst to us, it had torn the roof off the steep woodland like a sardine can," Welch told The Tennessean.

There started the four years of repairs, and all the while, Rawlings and Welch wrote their new album.

When it came time to title the new record, released Aug. 23, there was nothing else to call their 10th studio album but "Woodland."

A tight 10-track record that muses on loss and destruction, renewal and perseverance, the folk icons have brought another harmonic, thoughtful and sonically sparkling record our way yet again.

Gillian Welch: After a tornado threatened her 'musical life', she reveals her 'Lost Songs'

Welch, a 56-year-old folk singer-songwriter known for "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" songs "I'll Fly Away" and "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby" has long worked alongside David Rawlings since the early '90s, a 54-year-old guitarist and singer.

The two are known for songs "Look At Miss Ohio," "Everything Is Free" and "The Way It Goes" and have been credited as one of the most prominent duos keeping American folk music alive.

The two have experienced a lot together — decades of tours, writing songs releasing albums, and saving a music studio. Twice.

The story behind their newest album, "Woodland," sees the duo navigating grief, ruination and hope.

"The night (of the tornado) itself, oh, it was terrible," Welch said. "It was 72 hours I would never want to relive again ever in my life. Just horrific." If the two hadn't been in Nashville to race to the studio during the rain they would've lost everything, Welch said.

"Everything would have been ruined, every master tape, every guitar, every microphone, every tape machine, I'm serious, just literally everything," she added.

Over the last five years, Welch said she gives Rawlings "full credit" for bringing the studio back to life.

"As far as restoring (Woodland) and bringing it back — after the roof got peeled off in the tornado, and then it rained torrentially for five-six hours — the reconstruction process was Dave," she said.

"He just took over and made it his mission to resuscitate the studio."

Rawlings said that processing the feelings of loss that came with the disaster, and all the work repairing the studio, felt as though it colored the batch of songs and recordings at their core.

"I mean, really it was when I thought, 'My goodness, I've been here in this building for five years and pretty much nowhere else'... if it was going to be called anything, that's what it was," Rawlings said, noting that the right name for the album has always been "Woodland."

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings dive back in time to their first Nashville days

The duo's attachment to Woodland has always been a tender one; they recorded part of their very first record at Woodland Studios during their early days in Nashville.

Welch and Rawlings moved to Music City in 1992 and started opening for Guy Clark with Rawlings in '94. Two years later, they put out their debut album "Revival."

Around that time, Welch and Rawlings moved into a little dingy shack in Sylvan Park. Every time they left on tour, they'd return home to moldy shoes and a new cold. Despite the constant sickness they battled there, the shack's warped walls "sounded great" during recordings, Welch reminisced. The two later opted for a different home, one by Brown's Diner.

They noticed, years later after recording there, that Woodland Sound Studios had been put up for sale. The studio, rife with history since it opened its door in '68, had been a recording spot for greats like the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Loretta Lynn and Jimmy Buffett.

Welch would drive by the empty Woodland lot in the early 2000s and see the for sale sign. "I just kept waiting for the day, wondering: 'Who's going to buy Woodland? Who's going to save Woodland? Who's going to be crazy enough to buy this old place?' And it turns out it was us," Welch said.

They bought the studio in 2002 after the building had sat vacant for a couple of years.

That's when the duo saved Woodland for the first time, repair spaces and making it their own at the same time.

"You know, the first time...we really worked together and made the control room and pulled the cable and put the glass in, and I was there with him all the way," Welch said.

From 2002 to 2020, Rawlings and Welch took care of Woodland. It wasn't always easy, but something about it was beautiful.

After the tornado and the pandemic hit, also known as the East Nashville "double whammy," the two spent two years off the road again.

They have only done a handful of live performances over the past few years; aside from the pandemic, Rawlings said that they felt it was important to get the studio rebuilt and their record made before they went out on the road again.

To Welch, it almost felt like she had moved to Nashville with Rawlings for the very first time again.

"So many times David and I have looked at each other and remarked how these last few years reminded us so much of when we first moved to Nashville in '92, because we were just here," no touring, no traveling, they were just in Nashville, like '90s when they first moved here.

"Just in so many ways, it felt like a crazy big circle," Welch said with a hint of nostalgia.

Now, they're back on the road, kicking off with a performance at the 2024 Newport Folk Festival in July.

Welch and Rawlings will set out on a tour that begins Sept. 4 in Kentucky and will stop in many American cities until Dec. 8, but Welch said more tour dates will soon be unveiled as well.

"The dams about to break, and we'll be out there in the world," Rawlings said.

"We'll definitely be spending some long hours in the Cadillac," Welch said. "But that's all right, we've spent long hours in town the last few years, and it's been a total joy."

Audrey Gibbs is a music reporter at The Tennessean. You can reach her at agibbs@tennessean.com.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: On 'Woodland,' Gillian Welch and David Rawlings document recovery journey from 2020 tornado