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Dave Rawlings Machine

Bijou Theatre

Dec 1st, 2009

DAVE RAWLINGS MACHINE TO RELEASE
A FRIEND OF A FRIEND ON NOVEMBER 17, 2009

Acony Records is proud to announce the November 17 release of the Dave Rawlings Machine record, A Friend of a Friend. This is the first record by Dave Rawlings, the guitarist, producer, singer and songwriter best known for his work with Gillian Welch and Old Crow Medicine Show. These long-time compatriots join Rawlings on this record beside newer friends Benmont Tench from the Heartbreakers, Karl Himmel, and Nate Walcott of Bright Eyes.

The notion of recording as Dave Rawlings Machine began in 2007. ³I had a few older songs that I had written with other artists that I wanted to record myself,² says Rawlings. ³Then the last year or so Gillian and I spent a good deal of time in Los Angeles, hanging out with a new group of musicians and songwriters. This inspired a number of songs that seemed to complete the picture. So we started recording. It was as much of a surprise to me as it was to anybody.²

Of the nine songs on the record, Rawlings wrote seven. A Friend of a Friend has more lavish arrangements than songs from the Gillian Welch catalog typically do. They are more boisterous, but they are built on the same careful spine that Welch songs are. Rawlings¹s sly and succinct guitar playing is embedded within ensemble play as opposed to carrying the bulk of the arrangement. The songs are exuberant, sturdy, and carefully constructed, but they also reverberate poetically. The music on A Friend of a Friend is cousin to the deftly modern and haunting music that Welch and Rawlings are known for, but it has here been expanded; the crowd is larger, the party more robust, but the room is the same room.

To support the release of the record, Dave Rawlings Machine is hitting the road in November and December. The Machine will include Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch along with Ketch Secor, Willie Watson and Morgan Jahnig of Old Crow Medicine Show.

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