The Dave Rawlings Machine arrived in Studio 1A with little need for a soundcheck – they simply gathered around one microphone and stepped up and back to it bluegrass style.
But bluegrass is only one of the genres the quintet traffics in under the Americana umbrella. Their ranks include veterans of The Old Crow Medicine Show, The Punch Brothers – and one Gillian Welch. Since 1996 Welch and Rawlings have been musical partners. On her records she sings lead and he often harmonizes; on the two Dave Rawlings Machine discs – including the new “Nashville Obsolete” – Rawlings takes all the lead vocals, though the original songs are all Welch/Rawlings compositions.
For their recent on-air performance the Machine powered through “The Weekend” from their latest, “To Be Young (Is To Be Sad Is To Be High)” which Rawlings co-wrote with Ryan Adams years ago – and treated us to the online exclusive streaming here, “The Last Pharoah”.