Berglund Center is proud to welcome acclaimed singer-songwriters Gillian Welch & David Rawlings to Berglund Performing Arts Theatre on Thursday, October 22, 2026. Known for their masterful storytelling, timeless harmonies, and unmistakable blend of folk, bluegrass, and Americana, the Grammy Award-winning duo will deliver an unforgettable evening of music for fans across the region.
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are pillars of the modern acoustic music world and their rich and remarkable careers span over twenty-five years. They have been hailed by Pitchfork as “modern masters of American folk” and “protectors of the American folk song” by Rolling Stone and the New York Times says “their combined voices operate beyond simple sonic harmony. There are emotional inquiries at play. If Welch’s voice delivers the good news or the hard news of the world, Rawlings’s voice comes underneath, asking how much deeper the sadness can go or what fresh heights the ecstatic can climb to.”
Their most recent 10th studio album, Woodland, won the 2025 Best Folk Album GRAMMY. Woodland was named for and recorded at Welch and Rawlings’ own Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville, TN. Of the album and studio, Welch said, “Woodland is at the heart of everything we do and has been for the last twenty some years. The past four years were spent almost entirely within its walls, bringing it back to life after the 2020 tornado and making this record. The music is (songs are) a swirl of contradictions, emptiness, fullness, joy, grief, destruction, permanence. Now.” The new 10-song collection mingles full band tracks with intricate duet performances all tied together with the duo’s signature sound and lyricism and cements the pair’s iconoclastic position at the forefront of acoustic music.
After moving to Nashville in the 1990s, Welch was launched into the public consciousness when Emmylou Harris recorded a cover of Welch’s “Orphan Girl.” Her career continued to flourish as her 1996 debut Revival, produced by T Bone Burnett, was released to critical acclaim. Firmly on the roots music map following the release, Welch and Rawlings followed up that GRAMMY nominated album release with 1998’s Hell Among The Yearlings, a stark duet record that further solidified the duo as a force in the folk music scene.
In 2000, Welch was awarded the Album of the Year GRAMMY for her work as Associate Producer as well as a performer and songwriter on the eight times platinum O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack. Welch and Rawlings were simultaneously nominated for Time (The Revelator) which Rolling Stone called one of the best albums of the 2000s and is widely considered by critics and fans to be one of the best albums of all time. Beginning with Time (The Revelator), all of Welch and Rawlings albums have been self-produced and self-released on their own record label, Acony Records, helping to establish the duo’s fierce commitment to independent music.
2003’s Soul Journey was the pair’s first experimentation with a fuller, electric sound, which paved the way for the Dave Rawlings Machine project, and their first release under Rawlings’ name (A Friend of A Friend, 2009), which was accompanied by a time period of heavy touring and headlining major festivals.
The Harrow and The Harvest returned to the duet sound and was nominated for Best Contemporary Folk Album and Best Engineered Album at the 2012 GRAMMYs and won Artist of the Year (Welch) and Instrumentalist of the Year (Rawlings) at the Americana Honors & Awards. The album garnered glowing reviews and topped multiple year end “Best Of” lists.
Nashville Obsolete, the last project to be released as Dave Rawlings Machine in 2015, showcased Rawlings’ expanding pallet as a producer with more lavish arrangements, strings, and guest musicians. He also produced albums by Willie Watson, Dawes, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Robyn Hitchcock. “Cumberland Gap” from Poor David’s Almanack in 2017 was nominated for Best American Roots Song and was featured in Guy Ritchie’s film The Gentlemen and and has since become one of the duo’s highest streaming songs.
To celebrate the twenty-year anniversary of the Welch-Rawlings partnership in 2016, they launched an archival branch of Acony Records, entitled Boots, dedicated to releasing outtakes, demos, bootlegs, and live recordings from their copious vault.
In 2018, Welch was the first musician to receive the Thomas Wolfe Prize for Literature. The award is bestowed by University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Department of English & Comparative Literature and recognizes contemporary writers with a distinguished body of work.
2019 saw Welch and Rawlings nominated for an Academy Award for “Best Original Song” where they performed their singing cowboy duet live at the Academy Awards. “When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings” was written for the Coen brothers’ film The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs. In 2020, the duo released All the Good Times, the first album under both their names, and won the GRAMMY for the Best Folk Album. They were crowned with the Berklee American Masters Award and honored by Americana Music Association with a Lifetime Achievement for Songwriting.
Welch and Rawlings continue to tour the world in support of their music while simultaneously writing and lending their talents to countless fellow artists’ projects. They are continuously working to release their acclaimed catalog on vinyl of the highest possible fidelity. The vinyl edition of the new album Woodland is mastered by David Rawlings directly from the original analog master tapes to his own custom lathe. Acony Records is proud to be partnering with the all-new Paramount Pressing & Plating in Denver, Colorado, a joint venture between Rawlings and esteemed plating craftsman Gary Salstrom, to produce superior vinyl records.
Tickets go on sale – Friday, July 17th! They will be available at berglundcenter.live or ticketmaster.com, and the Berglund Center Box Office.
Event Details:
- Event: Thursday, October 22, 2026 | Location: Berglund Performing Arts Theatre
About Berglund Center:
Celebrating over 50 years of bringing the world’s best music and biggest artists to Southwest Virginia, Berglund Center is a full-service entertainment facility located in the heart of Virginia’s Blue Ridge. Endeavoring to provide an unparalleled live experience, the Center takes pride in furnishing exceptional customer service while entertaining audiences of all ages. Visit us at www.BerglundCenter.live for more information.
