Review by Norman Bissell
Eliza Gilkyson
24 Jul 2009 in Highland, Music
Tartan Heart Festival Fringe, Roy Bridge Memorial Hall, 24 July 2009
Eliza Gilkyson (Photo - Adam Piggott)
SOME THINGS in life are just meant to happen, and unexpectedly meeting one of my all-time favourite singer songwriters in Roy Bridge was certainly one of them.
My partner and I were on our way to Skye for the weekend, and we had tried phoning umpteen B&Bs in Invergarry without success before finding one near Spean Bridge. Even then we had planned to eat at a restaurant in the village but it was full, so we drove another few miles to an Inn in Roy Bridge where we eventually got a table.
Halfway through the meal I noticed a woman pass by in an long, elegant black coat and sit with two men at the back of the room. I peered through the crowd later and grabbed my partner’s arm, “It’s Eliza Gilkyson!”
I had met her some years before at several of her Glasgow concerts organised by the late, much missed Billy Kelly of Soundsfine Ltd, but couldn’t for the life of me think what she was doing here. She left before us, but I dashed out and caught up with her in the foyer to learn the startling news that she was on her way to play at the nearby Memorial Hall.
It was a large barn of a place with dark, old beams straddling the high roof and a mass of tables and chairs set out for BYOB. Luckily we had packed some wine and a couple of glasses in the boot of the car so we were sorted for the night.
From the opening ‘Not Lonely’ from her 2004 Grammy nominated Land of Milk and Honey CD she filled the old hall with the mellow tones and expansive range of her rich, weathered voice, backed by the tight, seasoned playing of her ‘Austin band': Mike Hardwick on slide and steel guitar and her son Cisco Ryder (how cool a name is that?) on percussion. Looking with his goatee beard like some rangy Eugene Gant out of Look Homeward, Angel, Cisco bestowed gentle rhythm and lovely, understated harmonies on us throughout the night.
Several of the songs from her latest CD, Beautiful World, expressed her heartfelt concerns for the future of the planet, and are destined to take their rightful place with her many other classic numbers.
‘The Party’s Over’ (“it’s not about George Bush” she told us, but it could have been), ‘Runaway Train’ (“my metaphor for corporate capitalism gone crazy”), ‘Great Correction’ (so prescient about the recession) and ‘Wildewood Spring’ (“come down where the wild birds sing, come down where the water’s clean, down in the Wildewood Spring”) strongly conveyed her love of nature, which she described as “the most powerful force around” and sent out a clear message that we keep trashing it at our peril.
It is her amazing ability to express deep-rooted global and personal considerations in eloquent lyrics and music that don’t sound preachy but perfectly natural that marks her out from other songwriters today.
Between numbers she told us that they had driven a long way from a gig in London the previous night to this, their only Scottish show on their UK and Ireland tour, but found when she got here that the air was so pure it filled her with inspiration. This was borne out in her bold rendition of the “medley of her hit”, ‘Beauty Way’, with great bottleneck playing by Mike Hardwick, her gallus version of ‘Dark Side of Town’, which had us all bopping along, and in her poignant ‘Tender Mercies’, probably the only song ever written by an American which portrays a young female suicide bomber with pity and compassion. Like her songs, Eliza is life affirming in every way.
Among the requests she invited were two of my favourites, ‘Coast’ (“I think I’ll go down to the coast for a while, find a little cabin by the sea, I think I need to be alone for a while, find out whatever became of me”), and ‘Walk Away From Love’ (“When you took the back seat off the Harley I got the message baby no one’s hanging on to you”) from her brilliant Hard Times in Babylon album.
She even had us whistling along on her new love song with attitude, ‘Emerald Street’, though it has to be said her whistling was much better than ours. Where have all the whistlers gone?
Towards the end of the night she confided in us that she had been trying to figure out what kind of venues she played and had come to the conclusion that she played communities rather than folk clubs or stadia – an observation that prompted a spontaneous round of applause from the rapt crowd.
It felt strangely unreal to have stumbled across this wonderful singer-songwriter right in this unlikely setting, yet also very fitting somehow. When she started to worry about how late the show was running and that some kind of curfew might be imposed by the hall-keeper, a voice from the dark proclaimed, “This is the West Coast, Eliza!”, and all was well.
Her marvellous songwriting talents must be in the genes – her father Terry Gilkyson wrote a string of hits in the 50s and 60s, like ‘Green Fields’ and ‘Memories Are Made Of This’ – so it seemed to sum up the genuine warmth and feel good nature of the whole concert when she led us and his grandson Cisco in singing his classic ‘The Bare Necessities’ from The Jungle Book to send us off happy into the night.
The promoter of this opening show of the Tartan Heart Fringe, Rob Ellen of Medicine Music, got the prescription right this time for sure, and is to be congratulated on outdoing every other music promoter in the country and bringing this outstanding talent back to Scotland. I for one will be making sure I’m on his and Eliza’s e-mailing list so I don’t leave an encounter of this quality to chance again.
Norman Bissell will be kicking off the HI-Arts Read Bed Stage at the Tartan Heart Festival with music by Mark Sheridan in The Atlantic Islands Suite (7 August, 1.15pm).
© Norman Bissell, 2009
