Folk singer Eliza Gilkyson gets political with 'Dark Ages'

Folk musician Eliza Gilkyson is fired up.

She will celebrate the release of her bold new album, “Dark Ages,” with a concert at the San Miguel Chapel in Santa Fe on Friday, June 27, and the South Broadway Cultural Center in Albuquerque on Saturday, June 28.

“I’ve been trying to find a way to live in the chaos and the uncertainty of this time in our country,” Gilkyson said. “So, that had to be reflected in my music.”

The album’s title track contains some of the most pointedly political lyrics in the singer-songwriter’s decades-long career.

“Alpha white boys thumping on their chest,” she sings in the song’s final verse. “F*** those little f***ers, they can f*** right off.”

“It’s one of the few times ever that I’ve used an expletive in a song,” Gilkyson said. “I don’t usually, because all it does is limit my ability to get on the radio. So, it’s not really a very smart thing to do.”

Still, she felt it was necessary.

“I really agonized over it, and I talked to other people about it,” Gilkyson said. “But the whole song builds towards that. If you take that out, then, in a way, it felt compromised. It didn’t reach the apex of frustration and anger. So, I left it in.”

Gilkyson said her audiences have appreciated the raw, expressive power of “Dark Ages.”

“You should see what happens at shows with it. It’s just so cathartic and so honest,” she said. “It’s so much of what people are feeling right now, so angry that this group of talentless clowns are running our country and demolishing democracy. It’s really scary, and it’s really frustrating. So, I think right now is a time to push back, even in music.”

Gilkyson’s said her fan base generally shares her political views.

“This is my 26th album or something, so my fans kind of know where I’m coming from,” she said.

But she recognizes that some of her fellow folk musicians have faced backlash from their more conservative fans after speaking out against President Donald Trump this year.

“My friend Mary Chapin Carpenter has been political and pro-women’s rights for as long as I have,” Gilkyson said. “I was just talking to her the other day, and she is getting an incredible amount of backlash for just coming out in support of Bruce Springsteen’s statement.”

Springsteen made a series of strongly worded anti-Trump statements in recent weeks, including calling the administration “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” during a June 11 concert in Berlin.

While Gilkyson admires musicians who are willing to make bold public statements like that, she said she also appreciates artists who take a more nuanced approach to communicate across party lines.

“What they do is very subtle,” she said. “What they’re trying to do is open the heart a little bit, so that people will have some compassion or maybe change their perspective. You can’t do that with radical rhetoric. You have to be really subtle and gentle.”

Not all of the tracks on “Dark Ages” are political. Gilkyson said she wanted to “balance out” the more acerbic messaging with songs that spoke to “all the precious things that are worth living and loving and fighting for.”

“I wanted to balance this record out with a sense of gratitude and wonder for those things — nature and relationships and people — that are of value,” she said.

Folk singer Eliza Gilkyson gets political with 'Dark Ages'