On The Record #38: Gillian & Dave Return, Dolly Remembered and Robert Plant’s Record Shelf

Episode 38 of On The Record with Brian Wise and Michael Mackenzie begins with welcome news for Australian audiences: Gillian Welch and David Rawlings will return in 2027, making it three visits in as many years.

For a duo whose shows can feel like a form of secular communion, it is a remarkably generous run.

Welch’s spare, elemental songs and Rawlings’ endlessly inventive guitar work have built an especially devoted following here, and the pair’s upcoming itinerary includes Tasmania for the first time in this latest sequence of tours.

Mackenzie nominates Hobart’s intimate Odeon Theatre as a particularly tempting stop—an ideal room, he suggests, for music that thrives on detail, dynamics and the magic of a room held quiet.

Love Police are also bringing the Wallflowers back to Australia. Led by Jakob Dylan, the band will mark 30 years of Bringing Down the Horse while performing Tom Petty’s Long After Dark in full.

It is a double bill of American heartland rock with a clear lineage: Dylan’s connection to Petty’s catalogue was strengthened through his involvement in the Laurel Canyon documentary Echo in the Canyon.

For newcomers, Wise points directly to Bringing Down the Horse as the essential entry point.

The episode also pauses to honour Dolly Parton, whose death at 80 has prompted an extraordinary outpouring of affection.

Wise and Mackenzie celebrate not only the songs—“Jolene”, “Coat of Many Colours” and the landmark Trio albums with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt—but the compassion, business acumen and independence that made Parton such a singular figure.

Mackenzie catches Radio National’s tribute to Parton, featuring Fanny Lumsden and Alice Keath, and is reminded of the strength of Dolly’s bluegrass period, especially 1999’s The Grass Is Blue.

Wise recalls her sharp judgement in retaining her publishing rights when Elvis Presley sought to record one of her songs.

Later, Parton’s decision to make Rockstar for her Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction offered another example of her incredible work ethic.

From there, the conversation turns to preserving musical history.

Wise has been digitising a cache of old cassette interviews and radio recordings using his Nakamichi deck, unearthing conversations with Richard Thompson, Loudon Wainwright III, J.J. Cale, John Martyn and Art Neville.

One highlight is Cale’s dry response to the suggestion he had recorded the same album 12 times: he could hardly sack himself.

Television gets its usual look-in.

Mackenzie finds himself unexpectedly gripped by Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Apple TV’s sprawling Godzilla-world drama, while both hosts return to Dark Matter and its mind-bending multiverse mechanics.

There is also room for Suspicion, the British thriller centred on a kidnapping and a group of uneasy suspects, and Patrick Radden Keefe’s latest book London Falling, which Wise predicts has all the ingredients for a future screen adaptation.

Finally, Robert Plant’s eclectic selection from the Nonesuch catalogue provides a welcome listening list.

All the links are below…