David Rawlings

Welch and Rawlings

David Todd Rawlings was born on December 30, 1969 in North Smithfield, Rhode Island, and studied at Berklee College of Music. He took up guitar comparatively late, in 1986, and met Gillian Welch in 1989 at an audition for Berklee's country band. He was drawn to country in the 1970s through radio story songs and names Miles Davis, Chet Baker and Johnny Marr among his influences; Norman Blake is the guitarist he says he still borrows licks from. His vocal style is often compared to Bob Dylan's. His main instrument is a 1935 Epiphone Olympic archtop he found in a friend's garage, and he plays an early-1950s Gibson F-12 mandolin, crosspicking and hybrid picking.

Welch and Rawlings moved to Nashville around 1992 or 1993, performing under Welch's name, and she signed to Almo Sounds, with Revival (1996) as the first record. From 1998 their records came out on her own label, Acony. The Dave Rawlings Machine, in the mid-2010s, was Rawlings, Welch, Willie Watson, Paul Kowert and Brittany Haas, with John Paul Jones occasionally on mandolin.