There are a lot of worries keeping Texas singer-songwriter Eliza Gilkyson up in the wee hours of the morning. Environmental destruction. Global economic collapse. Death.
Not light-hearted stuff. But late-night anxieties that Gilkyson successfully translated into art on her latest release, “The Nocturne Diaries,” which received a 2015 Grammy nomination for best folk album.
“I’m a certain age where I don’t sleep through the night anymore,” Gilkyson, dressed all in black, told the sold-out crowd at Caffe Lena on Sunday night. She said all of the original songs on her latest album were penned in the dead of night, when doomsday scenarios consume her mind.
In the first of her two sets at the Caffe, where she last appeared five years ago, Gilkyson explored the depths of those dark thoughts. Accompanying herself on acoustic guitar, she was joined by Massachusetts guitarist Jim Henry, who switched between acoustic and electric throughout the night.
“You’ll never know just what was lost in our spiral down from grace,” she sang on the spare “Midnight Oil,” a letter written to her grandchildren about the world she fears they will inherit. “Eliza Jane” (a reference to the traditional fiddle tune “Liza Jane”) was a lighter song that mocked her own anxiety. And the delicate “No Tomorrow” was a plea for the kind of intimacy and personal connection that can over-ride feelings of loneliness and angst.
It all sounds pretty dark, but in reality was not a downer. Gilkyson has a great sense of humor about her worrying ways, and an engaging manner that easily won over the crowd early on despite the seriousness of some of the songs.
After opening with the first three tunes from “The Nocturne Diaries,” Gilkyson offered up “Death in Arkansas,” a song about a directionless ghost written by her musician and record producer brother Tony, known for his role in the seminal Los Angeles bands Lone Justice and X.
Despite being apocalyptic, Gilkyson, who is married to University of Texas journalism professor and activist Robert W. Jensen, is “lucky in love,” she said before “Roses at the End of Time,” a song that managed to combine both romance and end-of-the-world sentiment.
The lovely “Rare Bird,” and railroad-chugging “Fast Freight,” a frequently covered folk classic written by her father, professional songwriter Terry Gilkyson, closed out the first set.
During a brief intermission, Gilkyson signed CDs and took requests from fans to fill a second set of fan favorites from albums dating back to the 1990s: “The Party’s Over,” a politically charged song wherein a post-party hangover doubled as a metaphor for global warming; the life-affirming “Emerald Street,” about having one glorious day of spring in Austin, Texas; “Jedidiah 1777,” based on the Revolutionary War letters of her ancestor, Brig. Gen. Jedidiah Huntington; and “Rose of Sharon,” her touching tune that Joan Baez covered on her 2008 album “Day After Tomorrow.”
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