Video Premiere: Eliza Gilkyson, “Fast Freight”
Eliza Gilkyson’s new album, ‘The Nocturne Diaries,‘ is “inspired by the sort of thoughts that keep us awake at night in this modern world, where the news always seems to be bad”. This video for the record’s lead track “Fast Freight” captures that feeling and combines two elements that the singer is strongly associated with: Austin, TX and her father, the late folk singer, Terry Gilkyson.
The video was directed by her son, Cisco Ryder and shot in her hometown of Austin. It shows Eliza wandering the train yards while she plays her fathers song – a folk standard since the 1950’s and has been covered by artists like The Kingston Trio, Tim Hardin and Gordon Lightfoot.
There is a bonus element that may be new territory for Eliza: absolute creepiness, and that is meant in a good way. “Fast Freight” is a dark song about someone who is tempted by the sound of the trains and the railroad to go back their past life of being a bum. It could be compared to an addict being tempted by their vice. Gilkyson claims she included her version of “Fast Freight” on her latest album, The Nocturne Diaries, to represent “a page from my dad’s nocturne diaries, a window into what he was thinking about late at night back then.” Her mission is very much accomplished. Her version of the song makes you wonder and worry about what her dad was going through at the time.
The special appearance in the video of the self-proclaimed “Roaming Blues Musician and Poet” Ray Bonneville – playing harmonica as the “kind of alter-ego” – seals the deal for the chills that this video sends down your spine. Plus, it’s hard to imagine the lovely Eliza Gilkyson as a bum who hops trains, so Bonneville fills that role quite nicely.
Highlight of the video: the pair playing music around a hobo campfire with a can of a certain Texas beer set upon a concrete block. The lonesome black and white images showing Gilkyson standing alone in a graffiti covered railway, match perfectly alongside the daunting melody of this creepy folk standard.
