Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, photo by Alyssa Gafkjen

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have announced a handful of new Pacific Northwest performances on their celebrated Grateful Dead Acoustic Reckoning tour. After a month of stirring shows from the longtime musical partners honoring the foundational jamband’s catalog, they’ve extended the celebration into mid-August, with pairs of performances at Portland, Ore.’s Revolution Hall and Seattle’s Moore Theatre on Aug 15-16 and 19-20.

Welch and Rawlings’ new shows will follow their five-stop Midwest run and booking at Lyons, Colo.’s Rocky Mountain Folks Festival in early August. This week, the duo will conclude the first leg of the Grateful Dead Acoustic Reckoning series with two shows in Oklahoma and a special guest appearance with Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit at Morrison, Colo.’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Other high-profile bookings coming up include a set at Newport Folk Festival on July 25 and CaveFest at Pelham, Tenn.’s The Caverns Amphitheater on Oct. 10 and 11.

Though timed to coincide with the 45th anniversary of the Grateful Dead’s Reckoning, Welch and Rawlings’ tribute tour sets its sights on highlights from throughout the band’s expansive discography, translated into their intimate, inimitable folk duo sound.

“It’s interesting because I don’t listen to too many people covering the Dead,” Welch reflected in a recent Relix interview. “I like the Dead so much that I’m not very well acquainted with other people doing Dead songs. But let me just say, I’m kind of surprised when I hear people doing them. I think I’m kind of a freak but I have this other impression of what the Dead sounds like, and they’re really heavy to me. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Not that it’s dour or dark though, because I hear this continuous pushing against that, this continuous attempt to transcend. I hear the Dead as ecstatic. One of the things that speaks to me about their music is trying to get lost in the moment. It’s shocking how often that works.”

Rawlings added, “As a band, the Dead were able to deconstruct music. Sometimes there were things you wanted that they would take away, like a melody or tonality or the rhythm. Sometimes they would go all the way into space where they’ve taken all the nutritional value out of it. You’ve lost the pulse of the music, you’ve lost the tonality and you’re just out there. Then when it comes back, you have this feeling like someone is showing you music for the very first time.”

Tickets for Welch and Rawlings’s new Pacific Northwest Grateful Dead Acoustic Reckoning shows will become available through an artist presale tomorrow, April 29, at 10 a.m. PT. A general on-sale will follow this Friday, May 1, at 10 a.m. PT. Find more information at gillianwelch-davidrawlings.com/tour.

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