To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Revival, the archival Boots No. 1: The Official Archival Bootleg (out November 25 on Acony Records) returns the listener to that seemingly organic achievement with fresh ears. It was the rare debut album and the rare artist that both seemed to arrive fully formed, complete, not as the first step toward artistic progression but with that destination already reached. If Revival was arrival, this collection of 21 home demos, outtakes, alternative versions and one live radio performance show how Welch, guitarist David Rawlings (pretty much an equal partner from the start) and subsequently producer T Bone Burnett got where they did. The music sounds more casual and offhand here, with room to breathe. “There was somethin’ in there,” says Rawlings at the end of a stripped-down “I Don’t Want to Go Downtown,” though not enough for the song to make the final cut (nor did the lilting waltz of “Go On Downtown,” which sounds like a real keeper, though apparently the official debut wasn’t destined to be a downtown sort of album). There are songs here that would be resurface on subsequent Welch albums, and others that would be covered by different artists, but didn’t quite fit with the persona Welch was developing (the propulsive, rockabilly-tinged “455 Rocket,” the hard twanging Sun sound of “Dry Town”). There are variations on the standouts that would sound so perfect on the debut, “Orphan Girl” and “Paper Wings.” There’s even a revival of “Old Time Religion” that boosts Rawlings’ vocal but might have been a little too heavy-handed, thematically, for the released album. There are doubtless plenty more cuts from those early years that have less to do with how Revival would sound and what Gillian Welch would become. But as roadhouse critic Robert Frost might have suggested, here are the roads not taken, the possibilities left behind in search of something cohesive and fully formed.
