Revisited: Eliza Gilkyson Covers
Dylan, Guthrie, Greg Brown, World Party, The Bare Necessities and more!
March 2nd, 2010 — 08:47 pm
Austin’s Eliza Gilkyson was the focus of our second post here at a fledgling Cover Lay Down, and the very first artist to get the full treatment; I had recently discovered the long-standing singer-songwriter, and was eager to get things off on the right foot by tapping into my own excitement with the folk world as I experience it.
Of course, back then, the vast majority of you weren’t here – a truth that justifies the occasional repost, I think, especially for those artists who really do form the core of modern folk identity. But it’s also true that things have changed since October 2007, when my daily readership was in the single digits, and we only posted two or three songs per post.
Since we first featured her, Gilkyson’s 2008 Red House Records release Beautiful World was named “Eliza’s masterpiece” by the All Music Guide; her two-track appearance on Down at The Sea Hotel, a lovely if not entirely consistent collection of folk and pop songs reinterpreted for children by a select cadre of established folk artists, turned out to be among the albums greatest, strongest gems.
That same year, Eliza was chosen to deliver the keynote address at the national Folk Alliance conference, and Joan Baez included two of Eliza’s songs, Requiem and Rose of Sharon, on her own Steve Earle-produced album Day After Tomorrow. And – perhaps as a result of all this recognition – in two-and-a-half years, Gilkyson’s Wikipedia entry has grown from a single sentence to a slightly more substantive entry, which acknowledges the down-to-earth artist for her own canon and her tireless work for social justice and peace, not just her family connections.
I’ve also unearthed several more of her albums, thanks in no small part to our local public library system, and found more covers as well – most notably a sweet live-album audience sing-along take on her father Terry Gilkyson’s most famous cultural contribution, a song called Bare Necessities, which most folks will recognize from Disney’s The Jungle Book. Here’s the original entry, as-is, plus a generous helping of newly-added covers from Eliza Gilkyson’s beautiful world. Feel free to sing along.
Eliza Gilkyson has apparently been flying under the folk radar for quite some time now — her Wikipedia entry lists no birth date, guesses at her age, and is comprised entirely of a single sentence about her musical family connections and a list of her 15 studio albums over a 28 year career.
I must admit, it was a surprise for me to find Gilkyson so unwritten. If her regular appearance on folk collections is any indication, she’s well-respected as a solid voice within the folk community, appearing with names from Ani to Shawn Colvin. Heck, someone whose 2004 album was nominated for a Grammy in the Contemporary Folk category, and who played a feature set at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival back when her 2000 cut “Hard Times In Babylon” was all over the folkwaves, deserves more than a stub.
To be fair, her relatively recent rise in familiarity, if only within the apparently non-wikipedian folk community, is also due to her appearance on two cover albums — 2002 Greg Brown tribute Going Driftless and 2001 Dylan recast A Nod To Bob. The former is a masterpiece of the modern folk community; the latter is a generally solid all-folk tribute album to Dylan; both contain covers from a wide breadth of excellent folkies and singer-songwriters, and will surely come up again here on Cover Lay Down.
Gilkyson’s cuts on these albums are equally powerful, melodic, raw and twangy; though you can hear the weary age in her voice, there’s something plaintive, simple, even hopeful about her interpretations. But don’t take my word for it. Take an earful, and hear for yourself.
REPOST BONUS TRACKS:
- Eliza Gilkyson: Peace Call (orig. Woody Guthrie)
(from Land of Milk and Honey, 2004)
- Eliza Gilkyson: Is It Like Today (orig. World Party)
(from Paradise Hotel, 2005)
- Eliza Gilkyson: Bare Necessities (orig. from Disney’s The Jungle Book)
- Eliza Gilkyman: Jokerman (orig. Bob Dylan)
(from Your Town Tonight, 2007)
- Eliza Gilkyson: Children Go (trad.)
(from a live Christmas concert bootleg, 2004)
- Eliza Gilkyson: Child of Mine (orig. Carole King)
- Eliza Gilkyson: Midnight in Missoula (orig. Nanci Griffith)
(from Down at the Sea Hotel, 2007)
Her catalog is vast, and most of Gilkyson’s older work is out of print. But though I can’t claim to have heard it all, what I have heard is worth owning. Especially recommended: penultimate album Paradise Hotel, which includes that wonderful cover of 80s one-hitter World Party’s Is It Like Today, and her 2000 Red House Records release Hard Times in Babylon, and not just for the title song. Get them direct from the label — Red House deserves your support. You can hear more Gilkyson on MySpace, too.