“April 14 marks the anniversary of three awful, fabled events: the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865; the Titanic striking an iceberg in 1912 (it sunk in the wee hours of the 15th); and the Black Sunday dust storm of 1935. Gillian Welch first brought attention to this foreboding historical confluence on her 2001 album Time (The Revelator), which has two songs chronicling the events of April 14: ‘April the 14th, Part 1’ and ‘Ruination Day, Part 2.’ I caught up with Welch to discuss how she first made the connection, and how the songs in question came about.”
- Julia Wick