Gillian Welch is reissuing her 2011 record, The Harrow & the Harvest, which she made with her longtime songwriting partner David Rawlings. The new edition of the album, which Rawlings produced, arrives as a set of ¼" reel-to-reel tapes. The Rawlings- and Welch-signed packages are going for $699 each. Find more details here, and check out a sample of “Scarlet Town” on tape below.
Welch has not issued an album of all-new material since The Harrow & the Harvest, which wasn’t released on vinyl until 2017. In 2020, she and Rawlings joined forces for All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone), where they covered songs by Elizabeth Cotten, Bob Dylan, John Prine, and more. That record earned the duo a Grammy for Best Folk Album.
David Rawlings said in a statement: “As someone who spends a lot of time listening to analog tape, I’ve been a big fan of the reel-to-reel culture that has slowly grown over the past decade. So, given a window of time waiting for the construction of a new top-notch pressing plant (that's another story), technician Brent Bishop and I decided to develop our dream duplication system for making peerless reel-to-reel tapes. Gillian and I are particularly proud that this release of The Harrow & The Harvest is, from the writing, recording and final reel-to-reel, completely homegrown.”
Between her own LPs, Welch has joined Rawlings on his records Poor David’s Almanack and Nashville Obsolete. In 2020, the duo also oversaw the release of three volumes of archival material.
Read Pitchfork’s new Sunday Review of Gillian Welch’s Time (The Revelator).
