Songfacts®:

• "The Bells And The Birds" is a haunting chamber-folk ballad steeped in minor chords and introspection. At its heart is Gillian Welch's voice, clear and ethereal, drifting above a weave of ringing guitars.
• The song's opening lines immediately pull us into its evocative world:
  
  Listen how the bells ring in the morning
  What do they say to you, my love?
  Some hear a song and some hear a warning
  What do they say to you, my love?
  
  With these words, Welch explores the deeply personal ways we interpret shared experiences, touching on how perspective shapes meaning.
• Musically, the track showcases Welch and David Rawlings' signature interplay, their guitar work mimicking the tones of bells in one moment and the delicate flutter of birdsong in the next. Welch revealed to Uncut magazine that the song began with an intricate fingerpicking pattern she stumbled upon while noodling on the guitar. The rest of the composition was a challenge until Rawlings brought his distinctive touch to the piece.
  
  "Of course, he came up with these beautiful lines," Welch said. "He kept speaking in unexpected places - responding to what I was doing vocally. Then I could key off what he was doing. His guitar is the emotional epicenter of that song. It's a joy to hear him play, but it sort of hurts. I often find that his solos are the most painful part of a song."
• "The Bells and The Birds" appears on Woodland, the duo's first album of original material since 2017's Poor David's Almanack, released under Rawlings' name. It was recorded at the Rawlings and Welch-owned Woodland Sound Studios in Nashville.
• The album title, Woodland, honors their studios, which was severely damaged by a tornado in 2020. It took them more two years to rebuild it.
  
  "The tornado hit the building in the middle of the night," Welch told The Sun. "It tore the roof off and then it rained for eight hours - oh my goodness!"
  
  She and Rawlings were fortunate to have been at home because they "managed to save everything."
  
  "We might have lost all our instruments, equipment and master tapes," Welch said. "Our entire career, 30 years of music, would have been gone."