**Take advantage of advance ticket prices, as they go up the day of the show!** ADV: $18/$15 MEM; DOS: $21/$18 MEM
Eliza Gilkyson is a politically minded, poetically gifted singer/songwriter who has become one of the most respected musicians in roots, folk and Americana circles. A GRAMMY-nominated artist, she has appeared on NPR, Austin City Limits, Mountain Stage, etown, XM, Air America Radio and has toured with Richard Thompson, Patty Griffin and Mary Chapin Carpenter.
In February of 2003, she was inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame. In 2006, she was recognized with three Austin Music Awards and four Folk Alliance Music Awards, one of which was for Song of the Year for her tune “Man of God.” A scathing indictment of the Bush administration’s use of religion to manipulate the public, the song has become a political anthem to many and has received wide airplay around the world. Recently, Eliza’s meditative tune “Requiem,” written as a prayer for those who lost lives in the devastating tsunami in Southeast Asia, was recorded by the nationally recognized choral group, Conspirare, and was nominated for a GRAMMY. It was also featured on NPR’s All Things Considered.
Her new album, Beautiful World, is her first studio album in three years, an evocative collection of songs that explore an optimism and love for the world despite its violence and darkness. Smart, sensual lyrics combine with upbeat Americana, folk and pop sounds to create her most radio-friendly CD to date. Utne Reader proclaimed it “one of the best folk albums of 2008” while All Music Guide declared it her “masterpiece.”
Wise, tender, brilliant and biting, Ellis Paul is one of our best human compasses, marking in melodies and poems where we've been and where we might go if we so choose to. One of the leading voices in American songwriting, his charismatic and personally authentic performance style has influenced a generation of artists away from the artifice of pop and closer towards the realness of folk.
Though Paul remains among the most pop-friendly of today's singer/songwriters (his songs regularly appear in hit movie and TV soundtracks), he has bridged the gulf between the modern folk sound and the populist traditions of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger more successfully than perhaps any of his songwriting peers. His skyrocketing career is still legendary in the Boston folk circles out of which he sprang. Paul won an unprecedented 13 Boston Music Awards between 1993 and 2004, and director Peter Farrelly ("Me, Myself, & Irene," "Shallow Hal") has called him "a national treasure."
