Eliza Gilkyson

From Eliza '69 to Paradise Hotel

Eliza Gilkyson was born on August 24, 1950 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, and made her first album, Eliza '69, in Santa Fe. Early records were credited as Lisa Gilkyson: Love from the Heart (1979) and No Commercial Potential (1982). She moved to Austin in 1981, to Los Angeles after Pilgrims (1987), and back to New Mexico in the early 1990s, and sang vocals and lyrics on Andreas Vollenweider's Eolian Minstrel in 1993. She signed to Red House Records in 2000, and moved from Austin to Taos, New Mexico in 2020. Wikipedia says she tours about 150 dates a year and runs songwriting workshops near Taos.

Her albums include Redemption Road (1997), Hard Times in Babylon (2000), Lost and Found (2002), Land of Milk and Honey (2004, a Grammy nominee for best contemporary folk album), Paradise Hotel (2005), Beautiful World (2008, with "The Great Correction", later covered by Joan Baez on Whistle Down the Wind), Red Horse (2010, with John Gorka and Lucy Kaplansky), Roses at the End of Time (2011), The Nocturne Diaries (2014, a Grammy nominee for best folk album), Secularia (2018), 2020 (2020), Songs from the River Wind (2022), Home (2023) and Dark Ages (2025). The Texas Music Hall of Fame inducted her in 2003, and the Red House biography adds the Austin Music Hall of Fame, a role co-founding the 5604 Manor activist resource center in Austin and work with Save Our Springs. "When You Walk On" appears in the documentary Dying to Know and, per her site, a CBS News list of 250 essential American songs in June 2026.