Spotlight Album Review: Eliza Gilkyson "2020"

One of the folk world’s most compassionate – and politically astute – songwriters, Eliza Gilkyson, has released an album that really fits this moment in time. Titled 2020, it was intended to resonate during this election year. As she explained to Folk Alley, “This is where we are, and then this is how that feels, and then this is what we do to move through it as a collective. We sing together, we march together, we fight together.” What she couldn’t anticipate was the coronavirus pandemic and how it pulls us together in totally different ways.

The activist tone of the album is set in the first song, “Promises to Keep”:  “I’ve been counting on my angel choir/To put some wings upon my feet/Fill me up with inspiration’s fire/And get me out into the street.” Obviously, getting out in the street is risky right now, and surely Eliza doesn’t approve of the protests to end shelter in place restrictions.

The second song, “Peace in Mind,” also has to be taken metaphorically: “Gonna walk together arm in arm/With peace in our hearts.” She invokes the environment, both in ecological terms (“Gonna stand for the earth and our children too”) and political (“Gonna stare into the face of the hateful mind”). The combination of urgency and optimism flows through another song, “Beautiful World of Mine,” which she calls “a love letter to the earth.” But despite its beauty, Eliza describes a “weary world” on “One More Day” and asks hopefully, “And with these hearts/And with these hands/Could we learn to love again?”

There are a couple of notable co-writes. One of them is “My Heart Aches,” a collaboration with one of her songwriting students, Tim Goodwin, which addresses 50 years of racial prejudice.  That’s followed by “Beach Haven,” in which Eliza applies a melody to Woody Guthrie’s words, in this case a letter written by Woody to Fred Trump in 1952 about his racist, segregationist renter policies in Brooklyn. Ah, she can’t escape Trump, even the ghost of his father.

Two of the songs are classic covers, drawn from the Cold War, in the spirit of Joan Baez (who I’ve often considered Eliza’s older sister): Bob Dylan’s epic, apocalyptic “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” (with backing vocals by fellow Austinite Jaimee Harris) and Pete Seeger’s pacifist hymn, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.”

One of the most political songs, “Sooner or Later” is a call to action that alludes to income inequality, women’s rights, and fossil fuels: “Sooner or later-it’s a natural fact/Gonna rise up, gonna take it all back.” The song is driven by the sizzling guitar of Eliza regular, Mike Hardwick, the drumming of Eliza’s son, Cisco Ryder (also her longtime producer), and the Wewim Choir of Austin.

For all the pent-up anger in Eliza’s songs, there’s always a deep well of humanity. The album’s closer, “We Are Not alone,” another co-write with a songwriting student, Robert McPeak, could have been written for this shelter in place moment: “We are conjuring our forces/And coming face to face with every fear/But there is comfort in our voices/Reminding us of all that we hold dear.” Every year she digs a little deeper in her songwriting and reminds us what a heartfelt voice for good Eliza Gilkyson is.