Songfacts®:

• "Hashtag" is Gillian Welch and David Rawlings's tribute to their early mentor and champion, Texas singer-songwriter Guy Clark, who passed away in 2016. The song reflects on the transient nature of life and Clark's profound influence on their careers.
  
  "We knew Guy from when we first came to town," Rawlings told Uncut magazine. "He was an early supporter of ours, and we did a little tour with him in Texas. We'd hang out every night, and he'd tell us which truck stops had the best pimento cheese sandwiches."
  
  Welch described Clark as both a mentor and a tough teacher. "We learned the ropes from him - it was like troubadour school," she told The Sun. "He could be prickly but also very generous. It meant a lot to us because he didn't abide fools at all."
• "Hashtag" was inspired by the moment on the morning of May 17, 2016 that Welch realized Clark had died. "I checked my phone, as we do in this day and age, and I saw #guyclark," she recalled. "My stomach turned over and I felt sick because I knew it meant only one thing."
• The song took an unexpected turn in its creation. Though Welch had initially planned to sing it, Rawlings's work tape, recorded on his phone while his partner did household chores, captured the essence perfectly. "At one point, you can even hear Gill doing the laundry in the other room," Rawlings laughed.
• The title "Hashtag," with its modern social media reference, initially seems at odds with Welch and Rawlings's timeless country aesthetic. But that contrast is intentional, capturing the jarring way technology frames grief and legacy.
  
  You laughed and said the news would be bad if I ever saw your name with a hashtag
• The track was recorded for Woodland, the duo's first album of original material credited to Gillian Welch & David Rawlings. They named the album after their Nashville studio, Woodland Sound Studios, which was nearly destroyed by a devastating tornado in 2020.
  
  Rawlings recounted the challenges of recording in the aftermath of the storm. "The building was in s such a horrible state that we could only manage to play for an hour or so in the day," she said. "The rest of the time was damage control."
  
  Work on the album paused entirely at one point as rebuilding the studio became all-consuming.
• "Hashtag" was the first song the pair recorded in the newly refurbished studio, adding emotional weight to the track. "I was really happy with the emotion in it," Rawlings told Uncut. "It was one of the first things we did where we were truly recording alone, so there's a real intimacy there."
• The song's arrangement includes pedal steel doubling the French horns' line. "It reminded me of those Beach Boys records where you hear a sound but don't really know what it is," Rawlings said. "It's just pure feeling."