“One More Dollar” is a song written by Gillian Welch with her musical partner David Rawlings. It appeared on Welch’s acclaimed 1996 debut album, “Revival”; the Nashville Bluegrass Band had recorded it slightly earlier.
The song is a Depression-era story written in a much older voice. Its narrator is a young man who has left home to find work, drifted into hard luck and gambling, and now sends word to his family that he is only one more dollar from the fare that would carry him home — a fare he seems unlikely ever to gather. That bleak, period-perfect storytelling was a hallmark of Welch’s early writing.
“One More Dollar” helped establish Gillian Welch as a major new songwriter in the roots-music revival, and it has since been recorded by a range of bluegrass and Americana artists drawn to its hard-luck tale.
