Dave Rawlings Machine
A Friend of a Friend (Acony)

An apt title, that one, as Dave Rawlings is indeed “a friend of a friend”. The Nashville-based musician isn’t a household name, but he’s the long-time musical partner of Gillian Welch, who is. Or at least she should be. As her cowriter, backing vocalist, and multi-instrumental accompanist, Rawlings has never exactly been in Welch’s shadow, but it has been her name on all the records, and her voice in the forefront. In the context of the Dave Rawlings Machine, though, the roles are reversed. Welch has a cowriting credit on five of the nine tracks, and her singing is heard throughout, but always in a supporting role. For the first time in his long career, Rawlings has stepped into the spotlight.

It suits him well on this unhurried, mostly acoustic affair. Rawlings has a sweet, subtly smoky voice, not too rough around the edges, but not too smooth, either. All those years of harmonizing have undoubtedly taught him that serving the song beats vocal self-indulgence every time. On that note, the harmonies on the string-gilded opening cut, “Ruby” bring to mind no less than Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, even if the song’s melody owes a little to the Chi-Lites’ “Oh Girl”. The fiddle-and-banjo-augmented “It’s Too Easy” and “To Be Young (Is to Be Sad, Is to Be High)”, on the other hand, sound more like an old-timey string-band rave-up, while the spare “Sweet Tooth” could almost be mistaken for a lost track from the Anthology of American Folk Music. “How’s About You” takes a stride in the direction of Ernest Tubb country, complete with Floyd Cramer–style piano courtesy of Benmont Tench, but the hard-luck lyrics are straight out of the current economic downturn: “I used to have a dollar/Gonna have a dime someday.”

If all the above lends the impression that A Friend of a Friend is simply a tribute to classic country and folk, well, it sort of is, but not entirely. “Method Actor/Cortez the Killer” segues a Bright Eyes song into one by Crazy Horse. The two have nothing in common thematically—the former is all existential angst while the latter is a narrative about genocide—but Rawlings links them in a way that sounds natural, and which highlights his slippery but sublime acoustic-guitar work. Like Conor Oberst and Neil Young, Rawlings has a knack for making wrong notes sound just right, so if he wants to take the spotlight away from Welch for a little while, that’s okay with me.

Download This: “Ruby”