Paradise Hotel

Product Description

Recently nominated for a Grammy in the Contemporary Folk category for her album LAND OF MILK AND HONEY, this stunning Austin, Texas-based singer/songwriter returns with PARADISE HOTEL. Featuring special guest appearances by Shawn colin and Slaid Cleaves.

Amazon.com

Warm reflections, strong convictions, and spiritual grace inform the veteran Texas-based troubadour Eliza Gilkyson's latest,
Paradise Hotel. Offerings are even more eclectic than usual, with the Spanish-sung border balladry of “Bellarosa,” a surprise cover of World Party's “Is It Like Today,” and the hymn-like original “Requiem” extending Gilkyson's interpretive range. She sticks closer to straightforward country on “Calm Before the Storm” (with vocal harmony from Shawn Colvin) and the album-opening “Borderline,” while returning to her folk roots on “Jedidiah 1777” and the title track (though the latter finds her humming a coda that evokes Bach or Procol Harum, depending on the listener's frame of reference). The album's most powerful track, “Man of God,” represents Gilkyson's strongest political statement to date, an indictment of religious hypocrisy that uses Christianity to justify war, with Colvin, Marcia Ball, Slaid Cleaves, and Ray Wylie Hubbard among those offering chorus support.
–Don McLeese

Review

” . . . her work is too good to be ignored. She sings with plaintive power and writes with soulful strength.” —
Dallas Morning News

“At times joyful, stark, and poignant, her music dances through a span of human emotions.” —
Billboard

“Gilkyson doesn't pull any punches…a lush and passionate voice, dark and lonely sound, …and edgy lyrics with piercing imagery.” —
New York Times

“Her gift is the ability to mask razor-sharp words in deceptively easy melodies.” —
Austin Chronicle

“Intimate, delicate-voiced. . . her honest voice and understated, life affirming lyrics remain the core of her songs.” —
People Magazine

About the Artist

Eliza is a third generation musician who grew up in Los Angeles knowing that her life would revolve around music. “I got into it for all the wrong reasons, more as a survival tool than anything else, but it proved to serve me more than I dared to imagine.” As a teenager, she recorded demos for her father, Terry Gilkyson, an accomplished songwriter whose songs have been covered by artists as diverse as Dean Martin, Johnny Cash (“Memories Are Made of This”) and the White Stripes (“Look Me Over Closely”), and whose credits include such standards as “Greenfields,” “Marianne” and “The Bare Necessities” (from the Disney film Jungle Book).
At the end of the sixties, she moved to New Mexico with likeminded souls, eventually raising a family, all the while writing songs, performing and developing a loyal fan base in the Southwest and Texas. She spent considerable time in Europe as well and cut numerous well-received recordings over the next two decades. In 2000, Eliza made the move to the Red House Records label, and released three highly-acclaimed recordings “Hard Times in Babylon,” “Lost and Found” and the decidedly socio/political “Land of Milk and Honey,” an album that was nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Contemporary Folk Album. “Paradise Hotel” is here exciting fourth release on Red House.
Eliza has appeared on NPR's All Things Considered, Austin City Limits and in February of 2003, Gilkyson was inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame. The induction places Gilkyson alongside an exclusive list of Austin Music Hall of Fame greats, including Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt, Nanci Griffith, Billy Joe Shaver, Butch Hancock, Joe Ely and others.