Music from the Revelator Collection

Editors’ Notes Music from the Revelator Collection culls eight of the best moments from Gillian Welch's video collection of the same name, starting with “April The 14th Part 1,” a bewitching live performance recorded from the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, North Carolina on November 10, 2001. Listen to the otherworldly vocal harmonies between Welch and her partner David Rawlings on the chorus here — they’re so congruent that at times it sounds like a third vocal overtone is birthed from their two voices. The similarly gorgeous “Wichita” is a previously unreleased song penned by Welch that romanticizes the beauty of the nature surrounding Kansas’ largest city. At the same Cat’s Cradle show, the duo perform a heart-stopping cover of the song “Billy” which was originally written and recorded by Bob Dylan in 1973 to accompany the Sam Peckinpah film Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. They also take on Townes Van Zandt’s “White Freightliner Blues” with Americana-inflected reverence.