They're One of the Most Indelible Pairs in American Music. A Tornado Didn't Manage to Stop Them.

For 30 years now, Gillian Welch and her partner David Rawlings have been making music together. Their country-folk songs, delivered in beautiful two-part harmony and often featuring Rawlings' intricate guitar work, are steeped with a century's worth of American tradition. But the songwriters also chronicle contemporary uncertainty with a gimlet eye: "Everything Is Free" remains the best song ever made about forging a music career in the internet era, and their "Hard Times" speaks to every American who's battling it out with 21st-century economic trouble, even as it embraces the spirit and language of the Great Depression to beautiful effect.

Welch and Rawlings' new album, Woodland, is a little more lush than many of its predecessors, featuring strings and steel guitar alongside the pair's usual two-guitar setup. But like all their albums, it remains a testament to the power of two people who deeply love making music together. I called to ask them about their many years in Nashville and the new record.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity. Dan Kois: Tell me about Woodland Studios, where you write and record in Nashville. How did you two end up owning that space? David Rawlings: We had worked at Woodland first in the mid-'90s on the first record that we made.

It was one of the first recording studios I think we ever worked in. Gillian Welch: And then strangely, we were on one of the sessions that was probably the last sessions that happened before it clos.