Appalachian, bluegrass, country and Americana singer and songwriter Gillian Welch has announced the release of Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs Vol. 1, the first of a 48 song three album set to go out on July 31 on Acony Records, the record label Welch and partner David Rawlings founded in 2001. Boots No 1: The Official Revival Bootleg was a double album released in 2016 celebrating the 20th anniversary of Welch’s 1996 debut album Revival. Two tracks from the upcoming album were released this week, “Strange Isabella” and “Mighty Good Book.”

According to the press release “The new collection was unearthed from a cache of home demos and reel-to-reel recordings.” Welch elaborates, “We stashed these recordings away years ago. Their shortcomings, real or imagined, technical or compositional, no longer seem bothersome today. Hearing them now is like seeing snapshots that captured moments the more formal portraits missed. So here we are hurrying them for release before the next tornado blows the whole shoebox away.”

The two new releases from Boots No. 2 share the same musical style as Boots No. 1 but sound slightly brighter, a little louder, and better mastered. The songs consist of Welch’s vocals sang over a solo acoustic guitar. “Strange Isabella” is a soft quiet song that sounds almost like a lullaby, while “Mighty Good Book” has more energy with more of a bluegrass feel.

Earlier in the year Welch released a single on mothers day and an album.
The album, All the Good Times Are Past & Gone, included songs by Bob Dylan, John Prine, Elizabeth Cotten, and Norman Blake. Rawlings states “In the Spring of 2020 Gillian and I dusted off an old tape machine and did some home recording. Sometimes we bumped the microphone, sometimes the tape ran out, but in the end we captured performances of some songs we love. Five are first takes and five took a little more doing, but they all helped pass the time and held our interest in playback enough that we wanted to share them with you.”

Boots No. 2 :The Lost Songs Vol. 1 Track listing

1. Johnny Dear
2. First Place Ribbon
3. Give That Man A Road
4. Mighty Good Book
5. Chinatown
6. Fly Down
7. Shotgun Song
8. Apalachicola
9. Strange Isabella
10. Little Luli
11. Valley of Tears
12. Blind On The Inside
13. Back Turn And Swing
14. Roll On
15.Honey Baby
16. Here Come The News