Notes on Notes: Acoustic Veterans Visit

Fervent folkies Gillian Welch and her musical and life partner David Rawlings were frequent visitors to the Lobero Theatre back when the singer-songwriter series Sings Like Hell was still a thing – the duo began making their astonishing moving records right around when SLH was hitting its stride in the late 1990s. But we haven’t seen them around these parts for a while. So it’s a treat that Welch and Rawlings, whose harmonies are as evocative and haunting as their deeply personal songs, are headed back to town for a March 9 concert, albeit at the much larger if equally elegant Granada. The “modern masters of American folk” – called “protectors of the American folk song” by Rolling Stone (no going electric à la Dylan in A Complete Unknown for this duo) – took home for a second time in five years the Best Folk Album Grammy for Woodland last month. Visit www.granadasb.org. 

Irish champion flutist and multi-instrumentalist/songwriter Séamus Egan formed Solas as something of an Irish music supergroup way back in 1995, and the idea was quickly validated by Solas’ almost instant popular and critical success, including the Boston Globe hailing the band as “the finest Celtic ensemble this country has ever produced.” There have been a few personnel changes over the years, and in 2017 Solas decided to go on a break. Now Séamus, original fiddler Winifred Horan, longtime accordionist and concertina player Mick McAuley, guitarist Eamon McElholm and new vocalist/banjo player Moira Smiley have reformed Solas for a 30th anniversary tour, which kicks off its California swing at the Lobero on March 12.