THAT LONE STAR STATE OF MIND

Tony Peyser
Mirror contributing writer

   Eliza Gilkyson’s Dad, Terry, wrote “Memories Are Made Of This” for Dean Martin and “The Bare Necessities” for Disney’s The Jungle Book. Her brother, Tony, was in X and Lone Justice. So, it’s something less than a surprise that she’s gone into what is essentially the family business. 
   Gilkyson’s made six albums since 1987, the most recent of which is Hard Times In Babylon. She now lives in Sante Fe, but recorded it with a bunch of top musicians from her former home town of Austin. It’s a passionate and stirring album.
   The opening track, “Beauty Way,” chronicles a) her musical lineage b) how she got interested in music as a child c) life on the road’s lower rungs and d) coming to terms with her inability to ever give up the singer-songwriter dream. And she manages all this in three minutes. Whoosh! These lines really hit me: “By the time I hit L.A. I was hotter than a pistol/But you’re never hot enough...” I doubt that anyone who ever tried to make it in Hollywood didn’t feel way that at some point. Gilkyson’s turned her frustration into a touching and triumphant song. 
   The title track was inspired by a friend’s suicide. It’s a heartbreaker in which time has helped her replace anger and disappointment with sorrow and wisdom. “Hard Times In Babylon” is about the things we find when someone is lost. Gilkyson’s a searcher and it’s a thoughtful journey she invites listeners to take with her on this quietly compelling album. 
   Another compelling (but not especially quiet) album is Delbert McClinton’s Nothing Personal. He looks like he was born in a roadhouse and sang Texas blues before he could talk. McClinton was a teenage harmonica prodigy who gave lessons on that instrument to a kid from Liverpool named John Lennon. He reminds me of the late Doug Sahm, a fella who’s as at home with pounding Southern rockers as he is with  “I’m-drunk-cause-she-left-me” barroom ballads. (He’d be perfect to replace Sahm in the Texas Tornados but I gather that Freddy Fender is now content with his solo career.) 
   Anyway, McClinton’s new album is a doozy. It’s impossible not to love a CD that opens with these lines: “My ship came in and she sunk it/I was the toast of the town and she drunk it.” McClinton has a knack for writing about women who are misbehaving (“Livin’ It Down”) have taken a powder (“When Rita Leaves”) or whom he’s desperate to be with (“Birmingham Tonight”) He also has a way of finding that small detail that perfectly reveals the larger picture: “Took all her clothes but one red dress/The one she knows I like the best.” On another, up-tempo track, McClinton tries to make a romantic date with his career-obsessed girlfriend by seductively suggesting, “Honey, can you squeeze me in?” He’s taken a line everybody’s heard a million times and turned it into the sexiest come-on imaginable. 
   CDNow has Hard Times In Babylon for $14.49 and Nothing Personal for $12.58. 
   *Gilkyson, by the way, will be at The Mint on June 23. Go check her out. 
   *On that same night at Lunaria, Peach (whose nifty new album I will be writing about in a few weeks) is having a CD release party. 
The Goofy Band Name Of The Week is ...Puppets Of Castro.