Exclusive Premiere: Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings Perform Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors”

When I speak with singer-songwriter Gillian Welch, it’s been a week since Dolly Parton passed away, and the country icon is still omnipresent in East Nashville. “There’s a four-way stop on the street behind our house, and nearly every car is blasting Dolly,” Welch says. “I can’t remember the last time I heard that much of her music out in the wild. It’s fascinating—and I’m glad.”

The ongoing celebration of Parton’s life and music makes an intimate session Welch and her longtime partner, the guitarist and producer Dave Rawlings, recorded earlier in the year even more magical. The pair stepped into historic RCA Studio B on Nashville’s Music Row to record a video of the duo playing a stripped-down version of the Parton classic “Coat of Many Colors,” which G&G is proud to premiere. The performance is the first in a new video series—Studio B Side Sessions—produced by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, which now owns and operates the studio. Opened in 1957 by Chet Atkins and music executive Steve Sholes, Studio B has hosted a who’s who of music legends, including Parton, who first recorded “Coat of Many Colors” there in 1971; Willie Nelson; the Everly Brothers; and Elvis Presley.

Welch also used the studio to cut her 2001 breakthrough, Time (the Revelator), which she and Rawlings revisit with a version of the album’s “Elvis Presley Blues” in the second half of the session. Upcoming performers in the series include Ashley McBryde and Devon Gilfillian.

Watch the video below, and read on for our interview with Welch on witnessing Parton’s kindness firsthand, the sound of Studio B, and the twenty-fifth anniversary of Time (the Revelator).

Your version of “Coat of Many Colors” has certainly taken on a new level of poignancy.

Yeah, it really has. And also, the world is now awash in Dolly’s songs, which is great. In Nashville, it’s like the city has remembered who it is and what it loves. It’s all Dolly, all the time.

What did she mean to you?

Like so many people, she just makes me want to do better, as an artist and as a person. All the “cornball” stuff is true—she was a shining example of what you can do: rise above, respond with humor and humanity, put your money into good works. You really can be a light in the world, and that’s what I’ve been thinking about this week.

Did you ever meet her?

Yes, I did. I first met her the day after my tenth birthday. I had these fantastic birthday plans—big slumber party, trip to the ice cream parlor, a piñata—and then I got a terrible stomach flu in the middle of the party. It completely ruined everything. We were living in Los Angeles, and my parents wrote music for television shows. Dolly happened to be coming over to my house the day after that ruined birthday. She was working on music with them and had come over to rehearse. I was laid out on the pull-out sofa with a bucket next to me, still sick, and she came into the room and was just so nice. It felt like an angelic visitation. She truly made me feel better. I knew she was famous, but in 1977 she wasn’t what she is now in the larger culture. To me, she was this incredibly kind musician at our house. She totally understood that a ruined ten-year-old’s slumber party was catastrophic. She understood the heartbreak.

Later, when I moved to Nashville, our paths crossed a number of times. Once, Alison Krauss and I were up for a bluegrass award, and we were up against Dolly. We won, and a day or two later, this beautiful card arrived from her, congratulating us and saying how well-deserved it was. In all my years, I’ve never had another musician—essentially a competitor in an awards situation—send a note like that. That’s just who she was. There really isn’t another like her.

In the Studio B video, Dave says there’s something very immediate about “Coat of Many Colors”—that the first time you hear it, you’re hearing this piece of communication that makes you look at the world slightly differently from then on.

I think that’s a really astute observation. It is immediate and completely understandable. I feel Dolly’s recognition of the beauty and the extraordinary nature of this simple coat her mother made, and her bafflement that other people can’t see that beauty. As a writer, I can tell from how she writes about it that it’s absolutely true to her. I think she saw beauty everywhere and tried and tried to help other people see it too.

In my own small way, I feel a kinship with that. I see beauty in sadness and shadow. I’ve never seen those things as bad—they’re just another side of the coin, a beautiful and necessary part of our lives. That’s one of the reasons I connect with that song. I feel her bewilderment at people who just won’t open their eyes.

Do you have a favorite Dolly song that might be lesser known—a kind of hidden gem?

I’ve always liked “Joshua.” It’s an unusual story, and I love the idea of these two outsiders, these loners, finding each other. I also like “Everything’s Beautiful (in Its Own Way).” That one really resonates with me. But how can you not love “9 to 5”? I think that was the first Dolly song I ever heard. It’s fantastic—such a story. You can see all of it, and you feel like you know that person from the very first verse. There’s this instant familiarity.

Had you been in Studio B since recording Time (the Revelator) before you did this session?

No. We’d poked our heads into Studio B before it, but we hadn’t really set up our rig—our microphones, our gear—in a way that resembled making Time (The Revelator) there, not until this Dolly session. That room is a joy, but also a little disconcerting. You don’t sound big and epic; you sound a bit small—but good. You have to get your courage up to record in there because it’s not one of those big, glamorous rooms where you feel like you have the voice of God. There’s something a little fragile about it.

This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Time (The Revelator). Do you get nostalgic when you look back?

I’m mostly not nostalgic. If something I’ve done seems to stand up over time, I’m amazed and happy and a little surprised. That was a difficult, painful time. We were very isolated and independent. The music industry was going through a major sea change—crashing and burning, really—and we weren’t sure we’d even have careers. We had to break everything down every four days for international tour groups—Germans, Brits—coming through to look at Studio B. That constant deadline pressure actually helped us get some of the master takes that ended up on the record. We’d be so close to a take and thinking, “We’ve got forty minutes, then we have to tear down.” It was a wild time, but it makes all of us—me, Dave, and Matt Andrews, our engineer—quietly proud to be even a small part of that studio’s history.