Gillian Welch and David Rawlings on returning to Australia and saying no to Zach Bryan

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Renowned Americana duo Gillian Welch and David Rawlings head back to Australia for a third time this month, performing a series of theatre shows in Sydney and Melbourne over a fortnight.

The shows sold out straight away, no one in their right mind would be surprised. These blokes are bloody brilliant songwriters, and their live shows are absolute magic, leaving you breathless and changed forever.

Their jaw-dropping singing talents and the heart-wrenching blend of their voices send shivers, while the sense of familiarity they bring to any room makes their performance one of a kind.

Closeness is crucial, and it carries a price tag.

A bit of rough maths done on the back of an envelope suggests Welch and Rawlings could've probably slipped into Australia a lot faster than they did.

At Melbourne's Hamer Hall, they'll be playing five full-on shows, which'll see them perform in front of over 10,000 people. Over in Sydney, their three sold-out shows at the Harbour City's Opera House will give them a similar massive crowd.

But anyone who's seen Welch and Rawlings understands that putting on their show in a cookie-cutter venue would be like blasphemy. And no one knows that better than Welch and Rawlings themselves, as they reckon it just wouldn't cut it.

They've got a list of venues lined up for their visit.

We've never been keen on setting up in spaces much bigger than that size, 'cause even at that scale, we want to be able to recreate the close-knit vibe of the shows we've done over the years.

I'd rather have a footy at a footy oval we love, even if it's in front of a small crowd that thought we were on fire, than play in a huge stadium where the fans just weren't getting the same vibe.

Fair to say, but it's another thing to put your cash where your mouth is. Welch and Rawlings have always backed it up though.

"We received an incredibly generous offer from Zach Bryan, who regularly sells out huge venues here, to co-headline at a stadium in Atlanta," Rawlings says.

"I know so many people who'd just leap at those sorts of things. I like his music, and would love to do the show but it's like, 'Sorry, we can't do a good job. What you think you like about us isn't going to come through that football stadium, so we'll politely decline'."

The space where they perform is particularly important because Welch and Rawlings forgo even basic technology to get their ideal live sound.

At the end of the day, we're still pretty close to the traditional chamber music style," Welch says. "We're playing acoustic instruments. There aren't any amps or pick-ups on stage. I reckon the theatre is often like another member of the band. It has a big influence on the way we play.

A rare Australian visit

Welch and Rawlings kicked off their 2004 tour of Australia on the eastern coast, receiving rave reviews for their faultless shows.

The music's bloody gorgeous, it's like nature and had it been perfectly performed, woulda looked grand on display behind a glass cabinet.

"We'll never forget these tours," Rawlings says.

Fair dinkum, I reckon people thought we'd never actually make the trip, because we Aussies aren't usually too keen on flying," Welch adds. "So, people seemed close to gobsmacked and over the moon that we were chucked in amongst them. I've just never felt anything like that before.

While visiting to Aussie land isn't a breeze for the couple, who've been upfront about their hassles with gettin' on a plane, they reckon it's always worth the effort.

On their second trip, the band landed in Perth and avoided any more flights by jumping into their car and driving across the country.

"I had a pretty wild idea, 'Let's head into Perth, drive along the Nullarbor, visit everywhere on the way up to Brisbane and Byron Bay, then get the band flown in and we'll tour it back down to Melbourne – let's just be there and soak up as much of this country as we can'," Rawlings says.

That's what we enjoy about touring in the US, and always have, is we're familiar with this country so well from the kilometres we've driven behind our own wheel. We don't do it on a bus and wouldn't prefer to because of what you miss out on. What you learn and the experiences you have when you just tour in a car.

That ripper of a trip across Australia was well and truly worth it, giving the duo a picture of the country that many of us Aussies have never experienced.

We've got photos that are fair dinkum lookalikes of nothing," Welch says. "One time, we pulled up close to the longest horizon in the country [Western Australia's Eyre Highway] on a straight stretch of road. We got out and walked off into the red dirt. It was as good as it gets.

I've never seen a landscape like that, and that's saying somethin' 'cause, as Dave said, we've driven a million miles through this country [the US]. We've never seen anythin' like that.

You can't rush greatness

In 2020, after decades of workin' together and firin' up on each other's recordings, the couple dropped All The Good Times, a collection of cover versions and their very first duo album.

In 2024, they released Woodland, which marked Welch's return to original material since 2011's The Harrow & The Harvest, and Rawlings's return since 2017's Poor David's Almanack.

When we chop to the chase, we generally make albums in about six weeks," Welch says. "But it takes us a decent while to come up with the songs. I wish we could write faster, but it's just how it is.

Ru andere fans will be stoked to hear that the duo chucked out a heap of material during their lengthy break between albums. Given their ability to do just about anything musically, that's given the pair a nice long list of options when it comes to how they'll put all their new stuff together.

"We had almost a double album's worth of songs, or two albums' worth of songs, and had been working for a while thinking, 'Well, maybe this is a double, or maybe this is an album under my name and an album under Dave's name'," Welch says.

"As we were workin', we stumbled upon a bunch of songs that we'd done, and they all gelled together like they had a connection, and drew on the same theme, like," Rawlings says.

We were just happy as clams to get to that point. And we were as gobsmacked as anyone that, all of a sudden, there was a record.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings start their Aussie concert run at the Sydney Opera House on 23 January.