In the coming months, Gillian Welch will release three albums of previously unheard material, all of which was recorded between the making of 2001’s Time (The Revelator) and 2003’s Soul Journey.
The 48 recordings, collectively titled Boots No 2: The Lost Songs, will arrive as three discrete albums, with the first release Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs, Vol. 1 coming out on July 31st.
“We stashed these recordings away years ago,” said Welch and David Rawlings, her longtime collaborator, in a statement. “Their shortcomings, real or imagined, technical or compositional, no longer seem bothersome today. Hearing them now is like seeing snapshots that captured moments the more formal portraits missed. So here we are hurrying them for release before the next tornado blows the whole shoebox away.”
Two songs now available from Vol. 1 are “Strange Isabella,” a gentle character portrait reminiscent of the spectral acoustic stylings of the duo’s foundational Time (The Revelator) album, and “Mighty Good Book,” an old-time devotional that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on 1998’s Hell Among the Yearlings.
Boots No. 2 follows Welch’s 2016 inaugural archival release Boots No. 1: The Official Revival Bootleg, which offered an intimate, and alternative, vision of the duo’s early Nineties Nashville beginnings. Last week, Welch and Rawlings surprise-released All the Good Times, a sparsely-recorded collection of acoustic covers of John Prine, Elizabeth Cotten and Bob Dylan songs.
Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs, Vol. 1 will be available digitally on July 31st.
Here’s the track list:
1. “Johnny Dear”
2. “First Place Ribbon”
3. “Give That Man a Road”
4. “Mighty Good Book”
5. “Chinatown”
6. “Fly Down”
7. “Shotgun Song”
8. “Apalachicola”
9. “Strange Isabella”
10. “Little Luli”
11. “Valley of Tears”
12. “Blind on the Inside”
13. “Back Turn and Swing”
14. “Roll On”
15. “Honey Baby”
16. “Here Come the News”
