Blood: Beauty Way

Eliza Gilkyson: Beauty Way
[purchase]

For the next two weeks, our theme is Blood, vaguely derived from the classic heart symbolism for Valentine’s Day which falls during this period, but also because we thought it was a good idea.

Sometimes, when a theme is announced, I need to search my iTunes library for a song, and other times something just jumps into my head. And for some reason, that is what happened here, despite the fact that there are many more obvious choices.

The amount of music out there is staggering. I’m sure that there are many people whose musical taste and collection (tangible or virtual) has basically stagnated. But for me, and other music fanatics, it is impossible to keep up. I have a pretty significant collection of music, and a pretty broad range of musical likes, but I simply can’t know everything, or keep up with all of the new good things. I hear all of the time about music I should like or should check out, and often when I do, I realize, yeah, that’s pretty good. And maybe I’ll download a few songs and check them out more.

Which is a long way of getting to my point—there are people making great music out there—music you might really like, if you heard it, but you just haven’t had the chance. Eliza Gilkyson is one of those musicians who has had a long career in the industry, great reviews, but not a huge amount of name recognition outside of the Austin area. Although, to be fair, she has been pretty popular in these pages, having been tagged in 6 prior pieces, more than Aimee Mann, Alejandro Escovedo, Pete Townshend and Harry Chapin, to randomly choose a few people with bigger profiles.

Gilkyson comes from a musical family. Her father Terry was a folksinger in the 50s and 60s, and then became a songwriter for Disney movies—his songs include “The Bare Necessities” from The Jungle Book. Her brother Tony was the guitarist in Lone Justice, and for a period, X, and also produces. Her sister Nancy is a singer and an executive at Warner Bros. Records. Eliza began her career singing on her father’s demos and soundtracks, including a couple of Disney TV shows. She moved from Hollywood to Santa Fe, New Mexico in her late teens, started a family and began releasing records. Her musical and personal journey took her to Austin, then back to Los Angeles, then to Taos and to Europe, before returning to Austin. Her son Ryder has produced some of her albums, and her daughter Delia has sung on some of them. Her songs have been covered by Joan Baez, Lucy Kaplansky, Bob Geldof, Roseanne Cash and others. She even has a couple of Grammy nominations, and was inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame.

Our featured song, “Beauty Way,” from Gilkyson’s 2000 release, Hard Times In Babylon, is a semi-autobiographical tale about the hard life of a musician who comes close to, but just misses, hitting it big. What always struck me about the songs were her lyrics, which make it almost seem like her desire to play music was irresistible, and that she simply had to keep going, no matter what the result:

I worked the clubs along the Sangre de Cristos 
Polished the diamond in the rough 
By the time I hit L.A. I was hotter than a pistol 
But you're never hot enough little darling 
You never really hot enough 

I felt the lights on the big, big stages 
The fire burning in my soul 
I've had those nights when my guitar rages 
But it's not something you control little darling 
It's not something you control 

And there’s the blood reference—the Sangre de Cristo mountains, which run from Colorado to just north of Santa Fe. But I also think of the metaphorical blood that Gilkyson spent trying to make it in the music business.

A little side note--back in the days before iPods and CD burning, I was one of those people who made mixtapes, which I listened to on a tape player or in the car. In 2001, I included a version of “Beauty Way” on a tape, followed by a Los Lobos song, “Down on the Riverbed.” At some point, I was listening to the tape, and realized that the two songs mentioned red-tailed hawks, making it a great subconscious segue. Which is something that only ex-college radio DJs think about.

Sleepsongs: You Might As Well Go To Sleep / Sleeper

Greg Brown: You Might As Well Go To Sleep

[purchase]

Eliza Gilkyson: Sleeper (orig. Greg Brown)

[purchase]

As a chronicler of the human condition, Greg Brown is well-known for a particular emotional depth and wonder-at-the-world attitude which rests heavily on concrete, often wry imagery. He's strong in every life-stage, too, from death to parenthood, from hormone-crazed lust to love's end - and his deep signature growl only frames the journey all the better. Sleeper, which we hear here covered by his contemporary and labelmate Eliza Gilkyson, is a great example, running through a patient sequence of life's moments and metaphors verse by verse and stage by stage fluidly, like the streams and hills of his native rural Iowa.

But although Brown's songs of age increasingly resonate with me, my favorite parts of his songbook are those which take on the lens of parenthood in all its hopeful, aching glory. And where Say A Little Prayer - perhaps my favorite from his songbook - lulls us slowly through a sick child's love lullaby, on You Might As Well Go To Sleep, we get the other side of love: I love you, but it's late, and my job is to get you to let the day go and get some sleep, so let's get moving, already.

Both Say A Little Prayer and You Might As Well Go To Sleep, of course, reveal the father figure as deeply sensitive, caring and gentle, the dad each one of us yearns to be at his best moments. But like Sleeper, the former is pure poetry, while in his kiddie sleepsong, the long, repetitive language culminates in what amounts to a paragraph of highly recognizable too-wired-to-sleep kid language bounced back gently yet firmly from the bedside. That the punchline still doesn't break the tone of lighthearted, slightly exasperated poignancy is just one more piece of evidence for his genius - and one more perfectly articulated facet of the "how to live right" model which Greg Brown provides for us, over and over again.

The moral: though several of us have proselytized about him before, it's time to buy some Greg Brown. The whole catalog is solid, but if you, too, have kids or just know some, Greg Brown's Bathtub Blues, the 1993 kids album which today's track comes from, makes a wonderful addition to the library. And if you, too, love strong female singer-songwriters and coverage, it's worth noting that the Red House collection Going Driftless: An Artist’s Tribute to Greg Brown is on this coverblogger's eternal top ten.

Thanks and Appreciation: Prayer 2000

Eliza Gilkyson: Prayer 2000

[purchase]

Today's offering is a tip of the proverbial hat to Vesta_66, who chimed in last week with how much she (guessing on the gender) appreciates the "wisdom, maturity and respect" of the SMM contributors and commenters (as well as specifically likes the music of Eliza Gilkyson) - thanks for reading, enjoying and sticking around...

I've previously described my circuitous route of discovering female contemporary folk artists, from Joan Baez to Dar and beyond - a seminal influence in my growth process was The Women of Kerrville CD, from which I was introduced to the music of Susan Werner, Cheryl Wheeler, Catie Curtis and so many more. As soon as I heard Eliza's breaking voice and aching lyrics, I knew I had to find out more... and rushed right out to buy Redemption Road (prior to her Red House Records label signing) - I now own all of her catalog, but that remains a favorite, 10+ years later...

Prayer 2000 is an homage to all the gifts of nature and nurture we tend to take for granted... with a more than melancholy nod to the "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger" philosophy - it is a reminder that we wouldn't recognize the joy without the sorrow with which to compare, and that the cycles of contrast are what mold and bless us, even (or maybe especially) in what feels like the blackest/bleakest time...

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." - perspective is everything...

Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse: Break the Cycle Edition

To wrap up my thoughts on this week's theme, I wanted to span the various ways women (and song) have dealt with domestic violence: confusing abuse with love... getting revenge on the abuser... walking away from the situation to make a better life - as Maya Angelou says, "when we know better, we do better"... and there is much emphasis these days, with the current generation, to Break the Cycle and do things differently...

FIVE THINGS TO SAY TO SOMEONE IN A VIOLENT RELATIONSHIP:
1) It will only get worse.
2) I'm afraid for your safety.
3) I'm afraid for the safety of your loved ones.
4) You don't deserve to be treated this way.
5) There's help when you're ready. Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233

The Motels: He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss)

[purchase]

Since I do not own, and was unable to find, the original version of this song by The Crystals, I am sharing The Motels' cover - from Wikipedia:

"He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)" is a pop song written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King and recorded by The Crystals under the guidance of Phil Spector in 1962.

Goffin and King wrote the song after discovering that singer Little Eva was being regularly beaten by her boyfriend. When they inquired why she tolerated such treatment, Eva replied, with complete sincerity, that her boyfriend's actions were motivated by his love for her. The song was written and intended as a sort of protest song from the point of view of an abused woman. Phil Spector's arrangement was ominous and ambiguous.

“It was a brutal song, as any attempt to justify such violence must be, and Spector’s arrangement only amplified its savagery, framing Barbara Alston’s lone vocal amid a sea of caustic strings and funereal drums, while the backing vocals almost trilled their own belief that the boy had done nothing wrong. In more ironic hands (and a more understanding age), 'He Hit Me' might have passed at least as satire. But Spector showed no sign of appreciating that, nor did he feel any need to. No less than the song’s writers, he was not preaching, he was merely documenting.” — Dave Thompson (AllMusicGuide)

Upon its initial release, "He Hit Me" received some airplay, but then there was a widespread protest of the song, with many concluding that the song was an endorsement of spousal abuse. The song soon became played only rarely on the radio, as now. More here...

Eliza Gilkyson: The Ballad of Yvonne Johnson

[purchase]

From the Austin Chronicle:

In her autobiography, Stolen Life, Canadian Cree Yvonne Johnson spares little in the telling of her life of abuse, incest, rape, physical deformity, poverty, and crime. Yet Johnson, who won't be eligible for parole until 2014, doesn't point fingers, make excuses, or otherwise deny guilt for the murder that got her a life sentence. Instead, she has used the experience to not just rehabilitate herself, but to redeem her battered, brutalized spirit. When Eliza Gilkyson ran across Stolen Life in a Canadian airport, she was stunned.

"I just inhaled it. I knew then I wanted to write her story in song, but I didn't know how to do it right. So much detail; how was I going to get all these elements in, this history of abuse, the murder, how she found herself? How to convey that and the emotion? It was so daunting."

The rest of the article here...

Kristina Olsen: Keeping This Life of Mine (Song for Battered Women)

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This song won the New Folk songwriting contest at the prestigious Kerrville (Texas) Folk Festival in 1985 - in Kristina's words:

"I wrote it about a friend of mine who was in an abusive relationship. She ended up in the hospital and at that time realized she had to get away from this very abusive man, but she had no self-esteem left. She finally said, "I'm keeping this life of mine" and walked away. I was so impressed with the courage it took her to do that that I wrote this song from her point of view. The nice tag to her story is that she's doing great now."

Questions: Is It Like Today?

World Party: Is It Like Today? [purchase]

Eliza Gilkyson: Is It Like Today? [purchase]

As someone who worked in the service industries through much of the ubiquitous Top 40 radio nineties, I must have had this song buried in my brain somewhere, but it was Eliza Gilkyson's 2005 pensive folkcover that sent me to the stacks to rediscover it, and finally listen to the lyrics.

Turns out the original is pretty deep. Plus it's got a great British janglepop thing going on.

Oh Mama: Mama's Got A Boyfriend

Eliza Gilkyson: Mama's Got A Boyfriend

[purchase]

Austinite Eliza Gilkyson -- daughter of folksinger and Disney songwriter Terry, who wrote both Memories Are Made Of This and The Bare Necessities, and sister of X guitarist Tony -- was a hardened performer of fifty when she finally hit the big time on folk radio with Hard Times in Babylon, an album which she has aptly described as "a diary of a season of loss." Two years later, she had turned her life around, and though the lighter lyrical tone which resulted wasn't as successful on the circuit, it did lend a strong smile to her increasingly road-weary voice as she continued to tour festivals and coffeehouses.

But though Lost and Found, her follow-up album on recently-featured label Red House Records, sold on the strength of her earlier work, it still contained some powerful tracks, framed by Gilkyson's stellar vocal delivery and some exceptional production. Case in point: the deceptively simple, heavily electrified blues dirge Mama's Got A Boyfriend, which practically begs for a roadhouse movie soundtrack placement.

Record Labels: Red House Records

Greg Brown: The Poet Game [purchase]

Eliza Gilkyson: Hard Times in Babylon [purchase]

Like so many of our favorites, acoustic roots label Red House was started by a musician looking to release his own records outside the mainstream corporate model. The move was a such a success, in fact, that after two albums in 1981 and 1982, Greg Brown soon had no time to make both the music and the records, so Red House briefly went dormant after its second release.

In many stories, that would be all she wrote. But happily, in 1983, Brown met Bob Feldman, who took over the label, and soon amassed a stable of singer-songwriters from the upper midwest -- Spider John Koerner, John Gorka, and Peter Outrushko among them -- before growing to encompass a more national set of artists of a particularly poetic, usually raw, and generally intimate roots/folk bent, from Eliza Gilkyson, Rosalie Sorrels, and Lucy Kaplansky to Guy Davis and Ramblin' Jack Elliot.

Feldman passed in 2006, but the label which he nurtured lives on. In fact, Danny Schmidt, the newest addition to the Red House Records stable, is playing at my house tomorrow, just two weeks after the release of Instead the Forest Rose to Sing.