Eliza Gilkyson

Eliza on Austin City Limits,
October, 2001

Hello, I'm back, finally winding down a loooong touring season. We put a lot of miles on El Presidente this year and we'll put on even more next year with the release of my new CD, Land of Milk and Honey, due out in March. Cisco, Mike and I have heard each other's stories more than once driving back and forth across the US, and we have all watched "Pootie Tang" enough to wear the tape down, not to mention each other. My accelerator foot has got a whole new muscle, and Cisco, my new road manager, is being worked overhard by his employer.

Mark Hallman and I are putting the finishing touches on the new CD. It will include the songs you have all been writing in about: "Tender Mercies," "Hiway 9", "Not Lonely," and others yet to be unveiled. Some of you have heard the fabulous Woody Guthrie song "Peace Call" at the Woody tribute shows. Our version of it is awesome, with Fats Kaplan on fiddle, Rob Djersoe on dobro, and some special "guest stars" sitting in and sounding like an angel choir. We discovered this song in an old out-of-print Woody songbook while tooling around in Slaid Cleaves' Blue Whale last winter, and its message of peace is more timely than ever as we go into an election year with a real battle on our hands to vote down the current regime and put a believable leader into power. Any one of our current Democrat contenders would do a better job than Bush at dealing with our national and global economic/health/environmental/war crisis, a situation W has done more to create than eliminate. I hope everyone is looking at ways they can contribute to voter registration and vocal resistence to our president's greedy, polarizing and dangerous agenda.

OK! Enough already.... let's get back to my favorite topic.... me. I just want to thank you again for coming to the shows and for sending me the e-mails.... which I have not answered! For now, there just isn't enough time, so I thought I would answer a few that get asked a lot right here in this letter, so here goes:

Songbook to be released this winter, with tabs for over 20 songs, mostly old faves. Sign up for e-mail and we will let you know when it is finished.

"Hiway 9" is definitely on the new recording, with a nice cameo vocal from Slaid Cleaves. We hope to make it an anthem of resistance next year, along with "Peace Call."

"The Ballad of Yvonne Johnson," the true story of a Cree woman's journey to find herself through horrific circumstances, is definitely on the new CD. Many of you have written about this song and I think you will appreciate our new version of it.

"Sleeper" is my version of a Greg Brown song, from the Red House Records release, Going Driftless, the Songs of Greg Brown. The proceeds of this recording go to benefit breast cancer research and the connection between environmental toxins and the growing rate of this cancer in women.

We will be touring the Netherlands and the UK in the spring—see the calendar at the website, dates posted soon.

I am trying to get the rights back for Through the Looking Glass and will release it myself when I do.

Cisco plays a wooden box called a "cajon." It's a South American instrument that is very versatile; we call it a "kit-in-a-box." A lot of Flamenco artists use them these days.

My apologies to the fans in Tampa... it was an unconfirmed gig that was never on our books as far as I know. We will be back and will let you know.

We will try to get lyrics posted online at some point... sorry, we are a slow train!

Thanks again for the great letters. I read and enjoy them all.
Best,
Eliza

December, 2003