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It wasn't that she was feeling any external pressure to crank out another record, but she just didn't feel she was ready. In the interim, she released a live album, "Your Town Tonight,'' and did a lot of touring, but no recording.
"Usually, I put one out every two years, so I guess it's been a while," Gilkyson said in a recent phone interview from a tour stop in Norfolk, Va. "I didn't feel like I had the material yet to do another recording.
"I wanted to come up with some dramatically new material, but you can't force the
With "Beautiful World,'' the wait was worth it as Gilkyson has delivered another winner, following in the footsteps of 2004's Grammy Award-nominated "Land of Milk and Honey'' and 2005's Paradise Hotel, which earned Gilkyson Folk Music Alliance Awards for best album, best song ("Man of God"), best solo artist and best contemporary artist. "That was nice," said Gilkyson, who will be at the Seabury Center in Westport tonight with John Gorka and Cliff Eberhardt. "I appreciate being honored by my genre. It's very flattering. Certainly, sort of late in my life, getting some notice has been very sweet for me."
Gilkyson knew expectations would be high for the follow-up to
"I thought 'Paradise Hotel' was the best thing I had done and I was nervous about coming up with something that was still a social commentary, but also intimate and personal," she said. "I think I pulled it off on this one and I'm very happy with how I was able to walk that line."
The Grammy nomination and Folk Music Alliance Awards were nice, but Gilkyson received an honor in February of 2003 that blew her away as she was inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame. She lived in that Texas city for four years in the '80s before putting down roots there for good in 1998.
"That was a big shock," Gilkyson, a Southern California native, recalled about joining a Hall of Fame that includes the likes of Willie Nelson, Joe Ely, Billy Joe Shaver and Nanci Griffith. "The Austin Music Awards don't tell you what you've won, they just tell you to go there. In a million years, I hadn't thought I would [get inducted], because I'm not from Austin.
"That they thought of me as one of their own was very sweet. I was so flabbergasted that when they handed me the award I couldn't think of anything to say, which is very unusual for me."
That Gilkyson chose a life of music isn't unusual as her father, Terry Gilkyson, was a songwriter and folk musician, whose songs have been covered by everybody from Johnny Cash to The White Stripes. He also was nominated for an Academy Award for his song "The Bare Necessities" from Disney's "The Jungle Book."
Eliza Gilkyson recorded two of her father's songs on "Your Town Tonight'' and also a song she wrote about him. "It was really my chance to honor my dad in a way that I didn't think I was going to get a chance to do again," she said. "My brother [Tony, formerly of the band X] and I actually just booked studio time to do a recording of all of his kids' songs, so we're going to do that in the winter." Until then, Gilkyson will be spending a lot of time on the road promoting "Beautiful World.'' Now in her late 50s, she is a self-admitted "road dog" when it comes to touring.
"It's partly because I never really did it in my earlier years," she said of her extensive touring schedule. "I reached this point, right when I hit 50, that if I didn't do it now, if I didn't put myself out there and say 'yes' to everything, then I would regret it.
"I had really only one shot left in terms of my energy and ability to pull it off, so I just completely dedicated myself to touring for the last many years and it has been a lot of fun.
"You don't see a lot of grandmas out on the road doing it like I do," she added with a laugh.
Eliza Gilkyson, John Gorka and Cliff Eberhardt will perform tonight at 8 at the Seabury Center, 45 Church Lane, Westport. For tickets ($45), call 222-7070 or visit www.westportartscenter.org.
