Taos, New Mexico is home to Eliza Gilkyson. She relocated from Austin during the Covid lockdown when she purchased a “rambling 100-plus-year-old adobe” in the town that was founded back in 1615. She has just released her new album, HOME, and it is right up there with her best work across a career that has seen her revered as one of the leading lights in Folk music. We caught up with Eliza recently to get her thoughts on the new album and much more besides.
Congratulations on the release of the new album, HOME. If my counting is correct, this is your twenty-sixth official album?
I’m so glad that someone is keeping track because every time I try to do it, I forget something. There was that MORE THAN A SONG album (2021) with Iain Matthews and Ad Vanderveen, plus the Red Horse project with John Gorka and Lucy Kaplansky. It’s adding up, and I guess when you divide it into my seventy-two years, it’s not that many records.
With your previous album, SONGS FROM THE RIVER WIND, you started a process of returning to the places of your youth and falling in love with the environment that shaped you. There also seems to be a sense of returning home as a theme that runs through the new album.
That is so true, I think there is a sense of settling into myself and my environment, my home, and my relationships. My circle has gotten smaller in that sense, and I’m enjoying it, and I think there is a peace that comes from that and an appreciation of what is exactly around me, and the people that are around me. My love life is good, and I think that comes through in the love songs and, indeed, a sense of place.
Unfortunately, I’ve had long Covid for a year and a half now and I fear my flying days are over. I’ve been pretty well grounded for almost two years, but I’ve ended up making a bunch of records so that part has been fun. I just can’t tour.
Looking back at your earlier album, 2020. It was a very socially and politically aware album and written on the cusp of the Covid lockdown. How did you find the immediate aftermath?
Well, I had to stop touring and it was like ‘Here’s my record, but now I can’t go out on tour.’ There was a feeling of frustration because the whole purpose of making that record was to have a statement about the election year, even if I didn’t have the chance to get out there and rally my troops and like-minded souls. I felt that we were all on the same page anyway, so didn’t feel that I didn’t do my duty. The songs got out there, they went where they could go and for me personally, I felt satisfied that I had gone on record during that really important election year.
There is always a thread of service that runs through your albums. I know that you have reached out in support of many activist groups and causes over the years, and I wondered if this was still very strong with you?
I feel very grounded by my illness and there has been an element of surrender involved with that. I don’t feel that I am an activist anymore, I probably wasn’t the most front-lines activist, as I was older. But I always felt that I could show up at places and be on stage and talk about projects that were important to me. Even if I can’t tour much anymore there are still things here that I care about. I’m much more involved with the New Mexico Acequia Association and our own little DITCH* group of four hundred and fifty people. I’ve just gone local, and if I’m needed to do a benefit for a project around town, I’m available, and have just become very home-based. I’m fine with that and I think that the young people are doing a killer job getting out on the front lines and I think they are energetic and have good politics and they don’t need an old white woman like me shouting ... “this way” (laughs). I don’t think it's necessary and it’s timely and appropriate for me to back off now. But I still want to make music and I still want to write, that part is really fun for me. I do love touring, but I just can’t.
You live in the little town of Taos, New Mexico, which has a large Hispanic community and is home originally to many Native American tribes. It also has a strong artistic community.
It really is a very artistic community and the Anglos are not the majority population. It is Native American and Hispanic. It is interesting to be in such an egalitarian community and it feels very good to us, we love it. Even our DITCH association is an egalitarian society where water rights are involved, you have to put in ‘x’ amount of work and you get back ‘x’ amount of watering days in a season. It can be very loaded and emotional, but everybody has to work it out, and it’s kind of a socialist organization and I find it very satisfying. It’s a great microcosm of how those systems can work. I love the cultural thing; I love the art scene here. It’s not as much of a music scene as I had in Austin, and I just can’t compare the two music scenes, one from another. I do miss the music scene in Texas. I had so many friends there and started a women’s musician group with all these young women whom I love, and I do miss them. But overall, this has been the right move and, in general, I’m pretty satisfied.
Back to HOME, the new album. Co-producer Don Richmond has joined you for the second album in a row.
Yes, he has a studio in Southern Colorado which is only an hour and a half from me. It's only a hop up the road and a beautiful drive so it’s really easy. When I said earlier that there’s no music scene, he is the music scene in this part of the world. He is an amazing person and an amazing instrumentalist and just a lovely human being. That has worked out really well for me, we love working together.
You used other studios as well in the process of recording the album.?
It was all file sharing which can be tricky. Sending it out to Nina Gerber in California for guitar and sending it out to Cisco (Ryder) to do a drum track. It’s tricky but we’re all doing that now, it’s pretty much how we roll right now. It’s not as much fun for me to say ‘ok here’s the song’ as opposed to being there and involved in the song’s direction and as a producer it’s more fun to work in the studio with the artist. But I’m working with artists that are so good that I can trust that they're going to nail it, with a couple of tries back and forth, so it networks all right. If we didn’t have file sharing for recording, I don’t know if I could have moved here to Taos.
Has that been the key change in the music process for you when you look back? Has technology freed you up to be more in control of the music now?
I do like that control, I really do. I’m older now and I know what I want. I like starting with just me and Don in the studio and I play the guitar part first, and then I start adding on. I want to keep things centered around ‘What does this song sound like if it’s just by itself?’ I think especially in folk music and we’re also hearing it a lot in Americana too; that things can get really stripped down now and get right into the song. If I’m writing good enough songs, I don’t want to put too much stuff on there. I’ve got to get it straight right on that track when I lay it down and that is very different from the old days when we all went into the studio at the same time and I could lose control so fast if the band went off in a different direction. Nowadays Don and I are in control, like riding the herd!
The album does sound like you recorded it live, off the floor in one studio. There is such an intimacy in the music.
Well, that has a lot to do with really connecting with that first track when I lay it down. Sometimes I’ll go back and think ‘That didn’t really work, let’s try playing it a whole other way’ and I love that freedom. Because on that first track, I lay a rough vocal on top and I can say to myself ‘this sings and this works’ and the players can really tune into that and it’s not a myriad world of options, they’re tuning into what I got there initially, and they can play off that.
Your brother, Tony, plays on a few songs and he is such an intuitive guitar player. You also channel your father, Terry, on the album and even invite some of his old music friends to play along. The song Man In the Bottle is especially poignant. Did it bring up childhood memories?
So much so, it’s been almost painful. With that Man In The Bottle song, I had that idea twenty-five years ago, I found it in a notebook and I’m so glad that I’m doing it now as opposed to then. I cried when we recorded it, it just brought me back to him doing that song and having Rod Taylor (The Rifters), sing those parts of my dad’s band. It just killed me, and I once again appreciated what a great writer he was. I picked three songs of his that not everybody knows because he has his hit songs but there’s a great back catalogue of amazing songs and I picked those three. It was a way to honour him but also the grief around him and the alcoholism, how that affected me as a child, and how badly the child of an alcoholic wants that relationship with their parent but it’s so complex. This record goes back and forth between the child longing for something and then the adult, his genius, and his weakness. It was a tricky thing to try and pull off.
You reached out to some old friends to join you on certain tracks. Robert Earl Keen sings on How Deep and Mary Chapin Carpenter appears on Sparrow, which I believe is a tribute to your fan base?
Sparrow is a tribute to my fan base, thank you very much, not everybody got that. When I write songs, I imagine my fan base listening. It pulls the songs out of me and until the fans witness the songs, they don’t really come alive for me. I know that Mary Chapin Carpenter really relates to that too.
During the Covid lockdown, you did a lot of live streaming. How enjoyable was this for you?
I had no problem with the live streams. I loved them and I’m going to keep doing them because I can’t tour. It meant a lot to me to set up a stage, with lights, a monitor speaker, and working on getting the sound really good. My husband worked the computer side of things and I ended up really getting into it. People would check in and type ‘hi’ and the revenue stream has been fairly consistent for me. I have friends that did them every week which I did at the start of Covid and it always paid some bills and I made sales. It also let me reach people that I’m obviously never going to see again in person, so I’m going to keep doing them and hope that people will continue to check in on Facebook or get on my mailing list because I post them on YouTube too. I really think it's an essential part of my having to be semi-retired from touring. I love it, I feel I’m making a connection, and it makes me feel good. After a show, I get the same old thrill, which is satisfying. Let’s hope I can keep it going (laughs).
The intimacy of your performance still comes through in these live streams. You did a memorable stream with Nina Gerber which was such a highlight.
That Nina Gerber stream that you were talking about, that’s where we did that song World Keeps On Singing. Nina is a one-off player, she never does anything the same way twice but I have on record what she did that day and it was so pretty that when it came time to do the record, I called her and said to her ‘this thing you’re doing here I can build a whole song around it. So, when you go into the studio give me that as a foundation’ and she did it beautifully. It just came out of the top of her head in a live stream show.
The new record starts with the song True North which I see as a love song to us all. A beacon to guide us. You finish the album with the title track, Home. Coming home to the source.
Home is such an amazing and timeless song. It works through any age; may we all write one timeless song like that. I couldn’t decide whether I should open the record with Home and close it with True North and I played around with it for a while, but it felt so right to start with True North and end with Home, which is really getting back to that sanctuary. I love the song and the original writer, Carla Bonoff, has been very supportive of me doing the song.
I also get a feeling that there is a greater acceptance and forgiveness of all the wrongs you see in this world in these new songs?
I’m not a radical leftie anymore. Over time I’ve become more of a centrist. I still believe in the leftist principles but I don’t think they can get the job done, and we have to work with what we know we can actually do. That does change the narrative a bit for me and I think that maybe I’m not as angry, but I am sad. It’s more down to this environmental catastrophe that is coming down the pike so that’s more of a concern for me. Because I’m coming to be more accepting of my own mortality, I’m also becoming more accepting of this huge cycle that’s happening in nature that I’m powerless to stop, so there is an acceptance in that. The song Here Comes The Night is about how, perhaps the earth will find a way to deal with what we have done to her. It’s coming, and it’s scary but there’s something upbeat about that song because I trust that the earth can deal with it. I don’t know how that’s going to play out, but that’s where my hope lies.
Your empathy and hope ultimately win out in your songs, despite your concerns. Do you ever think that the moral and environmental bankruptcy we face in society is at times overwhelming?
They are overwhelming, but your life is too, and I always want to write redemption into my music because that is who I am. I look for redemption even in the worst of human nature and the stories. I don’t want to write stories about the end of everything, without the angels of human nature figuring into the equation. That’s just me, I don’t think I’ve been entirely doom and gloom, but I do have a sense of foreboding about the future, but I do believe in the redemption of the human spirit and I believe in the earth’s redemption. That’s what I cling to.
People find great strength and joy in your music and the willingness to go on. Does this give you great satisfaction?
That would be my sense of service which I pretty much have to maintain in my records and which satisfies my natural desire to serve, and maybe that’s more realistic. I can’t go out there and do anything but from this little place here I can make my small way in the world and that should be enough for me.
The cover of the new album shows a painting of a lovely Adobe building. Is this your home?
I thought about doing that but my home is so rambling. My granddaughter had actually fabricated a gingerbread construction that was of our house and I was going to have that as the cover but it was so weird and we were desperate with only a week to go to hand in the cover. So, I went on eBay and put in ‘vintage adobe house’ and there was this little painting that was old school from the 1980s. Someone’s grandmother did it, I looked her up but couldn’t find her, she’s an amateur artist. She nailed it, the cottonwood tree, the red vines on the old adobe wall, and the turquoise blue trim. I got it on eBay for seventy-five bucks and tried to find her because I wanted to pay her royalty for it but I couldn’t find her. Little did she know she was going to make it onto an album cover.
Interview by Paul McGee
*Acequias, or community ditches, are recognized under New Mexico law as political subdivisions of the state. Owners of water rights can govern the neighborhood ditches.