By Paul T. Mueller
Eliza Gilkyson probably couldn’t have made a timelier album. The Austin-based singer-songwriter’s recently released 2020 captures the essence of the troubled times we’re currently enduring. And if she unflinchingly depicts the anger and despair many are feeling, she also channels more positive counterparts such as faith, sympathy and hope.
“We’re on fire, we’re on fire,” Gilkyson acknowledges in the opening track, “Promises to Keep,” before stating her resolve in the chorus: “Thoughts and prayers will never make things right/and I have promises to keep.” That’s followed by “Peace in Our Hearts,” an anthem to what some might call hippie sentiment – “Gonna stand for the earth and our children too.” But there’s toughness, too, as revealed in the final verse – “Gonna stare into the face of the hateful mind/with peace in our hearts.”
Songs such as “One More Day” and “Beautiful World of Mine” take a softer approach, exploring themes such as love, forgiveness and the beauty of nature. They’re essentially the kind of “secular hymns” that have become a Gilkyson trademark in recent years.
Gilkyson bares her lyrical fangs on the ominous “Sooner or Later,” in which she recounts the sins of the oppressors – “They take the oil from the earth, put their coal dust in the sky/Their poison in the water, they don’t care if people die” – before warning, “Sooner or later, it’s a natural fact/Gonna rise up, gonna take it all back.” Age has taken its toll on Gilkyson’s voice, but she’s in excellent form on this track.
Most of 2020 comprises Gilkyson’s writing, either alone or with co-writers, but there are some notable covers. “Beach Haven,” a plea for racial harmony that sets Woody Guthrie’s words to Gilkyson’s music, is described as an adaptation of Guthrie’s 1952 letter about a segregated Brooklyn apartment complex called Beach Haven that was owned by Fred Trump, father of the current president. Gilkyson also gives a haunting rendition of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” and an impassioned take on Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” – both sadly still relevant after all these years.
The album closes on a gently hopeful note with “We Are Not Alone,” an ode to community that she wrote with Robert McPeek. “A flickering flame each soul holds high/Searching for another kindred spark,” she sings. “We are not alone/We are not alone/Not alone.”
Gilkyson’s son, Cisco Ryder Gilliland, contributed drums and percussion, as well as fine production. He had plenty to work with in the way of contributors – an all-star cast of Austin notables including Mike Hardwick on guitar, Chris Maresh on bass, Bukka Allen on keyboards, Warren Hood on fiddle, Kym Warner on mandolin, and BettySoo and Jaimee Harris on vocals.
Don’t look for Eliza Gilkyson at your local arena any time soon, but with 2020, she has produced a highly relevant musical chronicle of our times that both describes the trouble we’re in and prescribes what we need to do about it. There are voices that need to be heard in times of crisis. Eliza Gilkyson’s is one of them.