A Conversation with Eliza Gilkyson (continued)

PM: As a person who considered himself as much Nashvillian as anything else--I mean, I've been on the move my whole life--it's great to drop into a town like this. I really like Austin a lot.

EG: Yeah.

PM: It's so--

EG: It's a well-kept secret or something.

PM: Oh, it's so funky and warm-hearted. It's a very sincere town.

EG: It's so good-natured. I know. It's like there's a lot of love in the room, man.

PM: Yeah, you know?

EG: You just can't help but notice. And you go outside and it's like leaving the sacred--like the happy valley, or something. I looked at a lot of places, and I wouldn't even think about living somewhere else. There are places I wouldn't mind having a cabin in the mountains or something in the summer, because it's so hot.

PM: Right.

EG: But I think this is a great community. It's really about the people here. Everybody looks out for everybody.

PM: And it's not a bunch of kids. There are a lot of cool grownups around.

EG: I know! There are grownups! And it's something about aging with your peers that really--especially in this industry, which puts such a premium on your age--we're all kind of going through it together, so it doesn't have that stigma of a youth-oriented industry.

PM: Nashville has that to a degree, but this is like the hippie and the post-hippie corner.

EG: You're right.       

PM: That works for me.

EG: I've checked out Nashville, and I thought there are some really good people there, but I want to go where the movement--where the love people are. And there's always something going on musically here. It's certainly connected to the global music scene, so you don't feel like--it's not like St. Paul--or was it Minneapolis--where there was a music scene, but it sort of felt closed, like all locals. But this is a traveling show, that coming in and out.

PM: And unlike Nashville in that way. People don't come to Nashville to play, because it's generally considered a lousy town to play in.

EG: I haven't played Nashville in five years.

PM: Nobody will come out.

EG: No, they won't come out, and the venue situation is so difficult. It's like a showcase thing, where you come in with your audience for a show and then they change the room over? That doesn't sound like fun.

PM: Yeah, I mean, here, not only do bands from other places come through, but the local bands have good audiences.

EG: It's true. Of course, you don't want to play every weekend in your hometown.

PM: No.

EG: But still, if you pace yourself, they just keep coming to hear you. That's what people want to do here is go hear music. That's the big thing. You just go out and hear music. And even if you're going to play one night and there are three other bands in your genre playing that same night, you still fill the room. [laughs] Everybody has a good night.

PM: I notice in Nashville, for instance, that most of my musician friends don't go out to shows.

EG: Yeah.

PM: I say, "Well, you like them, why wouldn't you go out and see that band?" "Well, I'm in clubs all the time, it's my work." I say, "Yeah, but this isn't work. This is going to go see so and so play. It's fun. What are you talking about?"

EG: I hear you. You might belong here...

PM: [laughs] It really feels like that to me, although there's more music business in Nashville. And if you're trying to land a song, well, then that's the town.

EG: I totally agree. I've often said that if you're coming here looking for music business, you're really in the wrong town. Don't pretend that it is, because whatever infrastructure industry is here, it's--

PM: It's puppet theater. And South By Southwest, of course, is the wrong time to fall in love with it, because hey, this isn't really what it's like.

EG: No, it's not. You're right. But if you live here, it's a really fun time of year to see this happen. It always puts a smile on my face to--

PM: Really?

EG: Yeah! I'm not like a grinch--I'm not like a bitch about it because it clogs everything up. I love it! This is what it would be like if we ran the world.

[laughter]

EG: We'd just be like out in the street playing music. I don't know, it's happy town.

PM: Wow, you're really a child of the '60s.

EG: I am. I don't even pretend not to be. I'm proud of our gang. A lot of us are still--we haven't lost our vision yet.

PM: No. Some of our hearing, maybe, but...

EG: Yeah, or sight, but not our vision.

PM: Hablas espanol? [Do you speak Spanish?-–I ask because there are indications in her lyrics that perhaps she does.]

EG: Yes, but my daughter speaks it much better.

PM: Ah.

EG: She is fluent. She's also fluent in Portuguese. She's married to a Mexican American, and so her whole in-law side of the family speak strictly Spanish.

PM: Wow.

EG: So they're raising their kids bilingual.

PM: So she speaks fluently, wow.

EG: She's totally fluent. Fast, rapid-fire fluent. And she can speak rapid-fire Portuguese, too.

PM: I would kill for the right Mexican girlfriend, because I could get fluent in a heartbeat.

EG: Yes, that would take you over the top. Because in the home, because of the kids, they speak Spanish in the home because it's very hard to get a kid to come up bilingual when you're in one culture more than the other. Have you met my brother Tony? He's married to a Mexican girl.

PM: No. [But the next day or two, I came upon him paying a casual gig outside--he's a monster guitar player. Check out the video clips of him in this issue.]

EG: They've been together eighteen years. They weren't able to raise their kids bilingual.

PM: I have Tony's record. I got to listen to that, and I'm going to cover that if I can.

EG: He's here in town if you want to find him. He's such a good guy, and such a great player. I'm a huge fan of Tony's.

PM: Wow. And does your son play with you as well?

EG: Cisco plays with me, yeah.

PM: He's a drummer.

EG: Yeah. And he sings with me, too.

PM: I love a family thing.

EG: Well, my daughter sings on the record, too. She sings on "Requiem." That's her. She has that beautiful soprano voice.

PM: Oh, God, that cut is so unbelievable. [There's a clip of it in the selection on the Listen page.]

EG: Well, she's the one who makes it unbelievable. It was she and I singing this duet. And I wrote it as a duet. But as I was writing I was going, well, shit, I can't even sing this. So I wrote the second part, and I then I knew it had to be her voice. And she was like, "Mom, I can't sing this. It's too hard." I was like, "You can, and you will." And she just sang it so beautifully. There's a purity, an innocence.

PM: What's her name?

EG: Delia.

PM: Oh, yeah, she does a wonderful job on that song, as does her mom.

EG: Thank you.

PM: I mean, the song itself is a major piece.

EG: Well, there's something about that innocent voice and that world-weary voice together--

PM: Ah.

EG: --that I think gave it this--encompassed a range of emotional feel that really got me, too.

PM: Beautifully put. What about the writing of that song? How did that come to be?

EG: Sitting right here on my couch, watching the Tsunami victims with a channel changer. I had a moment of awareness where I realized that I was watching suffering via a channel changer. And it made me sick. I knew I had--I felt that we were disconnected to the suffering, that that's the disease in this country, our disconnect. And it's the nature of our being on an island. It's the nature of seeing everything through a little box, it's the nature of our incredible level of comfort as opposed to the way other people live. But all of those things combined, I felt like I wanted to write something that would be a true vehicle to grieve so that I could hook up with the reality of what other people were experiencing. I wanted it to be a requiem, an old-fashioned almost like a Catholic mass. I'm not Catholic, but I looked at a lot of other deities, too. As you can tell, I'm a deity freak.

PM: Yeah. There is certainly no shortage of them.

EG: But I wanted to invoke the feminine. And I kept coming back to Mary. I thought she's really the archetype of compassion in the West, female archetype of compassion in the West. And I think it goes beyond religion with her, so...

PM: Yeah, me, too. I mean, you hear Mary in a song, and it just kills you.

EG: You know what that is. It's the mother, it's the all-caring compassionate goddess. So, yeah, that's--and I looked at other deities, like Hindu and Muslim deities, but it felt very inappropriate for me to invoke a deity that I culturally wasn't in any way connected to.

PM: Right. And Buddhism really doesn't have exactly the--

EG: They have Mahakala, and they have Avalokiteshavara, who is one of those ones that comes again and again to help human beings through their suffering.

PM: Those are both female deities?

EG: Mahakala is a male deity who has a consort who accompanies him. I can't remember her name. But Avalokiteshavara is female. They actually have quite a number of female deities who have to do with compassionate mother. But once again, I don't know enough about it to feel comfortable invoking them. And they don't sing as well as Mary, either. Let's face it.

PM: Yeah, Avalokiteshavara just doesn't have that [snaps fingers]--

EG: No, it doesn't.

PM: It doesn't roll off the same way.

EG: No. And it really puts you in that New Age prayer chant kind of Yoga music to get a massage to kind of thing.

PM: Right. Enter sitar.  continue

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