Gillian Welch & David Rawlings - Acoustic Reckoning, Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY, 11th April 2026 | ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST

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Gillian Welch & David Rawlings - Acoustic Reckoning, Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY, 4-11-2026

Paul says - Here's something for Grateful Dead fans as well as fans of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings: it's acoustic versions of most of the songs on the 1981 Grateful Dead album "Reckoning," plus many other Grateful Dead covers. There's a lot of music to love here as well, since the concert was almost three hours long. And it took place less than a month ago, as I write this in May 2026.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of searching for concerts that have taken place in the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York, due to the leak of dozens of concerts from there a couple of weeks ago. The sound quality of these concerts is excellent, but most of them need work being split into individual song files and such, so I've been checking to see if other people are doing that. These searches have turned up a few things that don't actually come from that big leak, and this is one of them. This is from a webcast instead. So, while the sourcing is different, the sound quality is equally excellent.

Welch and Rawlings have become stars of roots music, blending country, bluegrass, and folk. But while they've released many albums mostly consisting of songs they've written, it turns out they've also been Deadheads all along. In fact, while gathering information for this album, I came across an article talking about how Welch followed the Dead for some concerts in the late 1980s, as Deadheads did. So, apparently just for fun, they decided to perform an entire tour of the U.S. consisting of nothing but covers of Dead songs, as well as cover songs closely associated with the Dead. The tour started in April 2026 with this concert, and will continue through August. So if you're reading this, you might want to go see them live. I checked their setlists at setlist.fm. It turns out they've been varying up their set lists a lot on the tour. They played 24 songs here. But they've done over 40 different ones on the tour so far, and all the songs are those that were performed by the Dead.

The tour was inspired by the Dead's "Reckoning" album, which was semi-acoustic. It's hard to call it fully acoustic, since the band had two drummers. But Welch and Rawlings went even more stripped down, being accompanied by just a bassist (as you can see on the cover image). A majority of the songs performed did appear on "Reckoning," but it's a loose tribute. They skipped some songs from that album, and played quite a few others. I was especially impressed by "St. Stephen," as I didn't know it could sound good with such minimal instrumentation.  

This album is two hours and 52 minutes long. 

01 talk 
02 Bertha 
03 Jack Straw 
04 Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie 
05 Dire Wolf 
06 Dark Hollow 
07 talk 
08 It Must Have Been the Roses 
09 Loser 
10 Friend of the Devil 
11 Cassidy 
12 talk 
13 Cumberland Blues 
14 Brown-Eyed Women 
15 I've Been All Around This World 
16 Deep Elm Blues 
17 Brokedown Palace 
18 talk 
19 He's Gone 
20 Cold Rain and Snow 
21 Bird Song 
22 Ripple 
23 talk 
24 Althea 
25 To Lay Me Down 
26 St. Stephen 
27 Not Fade Away - St. Stephen [Reprise]
28 Morning Dew 
29 talk