Gillian Welch Tickets : The New Yorker Wilkinson Described Rawlings As A Inventive Guitarist

Welch and Rawlings incorporate elements of early twentieth century music such as old time, classic country, gospel and traditional bluegrass with modern elements of rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll, jazz, and punk rock. The New Yorker's Alec Wilkinson maintained their musical style is "not easily classified it is at once innovative and obliquely reminiscent of past rural forms".The instrumentation on their songs is usually a simple arrangement, with Welch and Rawlings accompanying their own vocals with acoustic guitars, banjos, or a mandolin.

Welch plays rhythm guitar with a 1956 Gibson J-50 (or banjo), while Rawlings plays lead on a 1935 Epiphone Olympic Guitar. The New Yorker's Wilkinson described Rawlings as a "strikingly inventive guitarist" who plays solos that are "daring melodic leaps".A review in No Depression by Andy Moore observed that "he doesn't play his big, coffee-colored, hollow body Gibson so much as he squeezes, strokes, chokes and does just about everything but blow into it".

Jamie Cowperthwait of Rolling Stone wrote that Rawlings' guitar playing "makes the music swell and vibrate at all the right moments."Many songs performed by Welch and Rawlings contain dark themes about social outcasts struggling against such elements as poverty, drug addiction, death, a disconnection from their family, and an unresponsive God.

Despite Welch being the lead singer, several of these characters are male. Welch has commented, "To be commercial, everybody wants happy love songs. People would flat-out ask me, 'Don't you have any happy love songs?' Well, as a matter of fact, I don't. I've got songs about orphans and morphine addicts." To reflect these themes, Welch and Rawlings often employ a slow pace to their songs. Their tempo is compared to a "slow heartbeat", and Cowperthwait of Rolling Stone observed that their songs "can lull you into near-hypnosis and then make your jaw drop with one final revelation".

Welch emphasizes music from a previous era as her major influence. She said that "by and large I listen to people who are dead. I'm really of the tried-and-true school. I let 50 years go by and see what's really relevant." Welch has acknowledged inspiration from several traditional country artists, including the Stanley Brothers, the Carter Family, the Louvin Brothers, and the Blue Sky Boys.

She explained her relationship with traditional music by saying, "I've never tried to be traditional. It's been a springboard for me and I love it and revere it and would not be doing what I do without the music of the Monroe Brothers, the Stanley Brothers and the Carter Family. However, it was clear I was never going to be able to do exactly that; I'm a songwriter.

In addition to the strong country influence, Welch also draws on a repertoire of such Rock 'n' Roll artists as Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Neil Young, the Grateful Dead and the Velvet Underground.She has noted alternative rock bands Throwing Muses, Pixies and Camper Van Beethoven "don't directly inform my music, but they're in there."Welch has recorded songs with a variety of notable artists, including Ryan Adams, Ani DiFranco, Emmylou Harris, Jay Farrar, Alison Krauss, Old Crow Medicine Show, Bright Eyes, Robyn Hitchcock, Steve Earle, Ralph Stanley, The Decemberists, Solomon Burke and Mark Knopfler.

Welch and Rawlings' contributions on Hitchcock's album Spooked was described by Christopher Bahn of The A.V. Club as "subtle but vital".Mark Deming of Allmusic wrote that their work on Ryan Adams' album Heartbreaker "brought out the best in Adams".Artists who have recorded songs written by Welch include Jimmy Buffett, Alison Krauss and Union Station, Trisha Yearwood, Joan Baez, Allison Moorer, Emmylou Harris, and Kathy Mattea.