Margo Cilker is a songwriter who cut her teeth on the road. From her home in Enterprise, Oregon to the Basque Country of Spain, Cilker has travelled far and wide, her music not only inspired by these various locations but all the roads in between. Following in the tradition of Lucinda Williams, Townes Van Zandt and Gillian Welch, the songs of Margo Cilker are born in the constant change that travel brings and the competing wishes at its heart—the desire for movement matched by the urge to look in the rear-view, a yearning to go back to what has been and gone.
Out this autumn via Loose Music and Fluff and Gravy Records, the debut Margo Cilker full-length Pohorylle is very much rooted in these themes. The record assembles a stellar band, with Jenny Conlee (of The Decemberists) joining on keys, Jason Kardong (Sera Cahoone, Son Volt) on pedal steel, Rebecca Young (Lindsey Fuller, Jesse Sykes) on bass, Mirabai Peart (Joanna Newsom) on strings, Kelly Pratt (Beirut) on horns and Cilker’s sister Sarah on backing vocals, not to mention John Morgan Askew (Neko Case, Laura Gibson) who plays multiple instruments and engineered the album. Together they create a rich country sound capable of capturing not just the human spirit of the songs but the landscapes that inspired them.
Nowhere is this clearer than on latest single, ‘That River’. Written as Cilker returned from Spain to settle in Oregon, the track positions the dynamic present within a history of such journeys. “The road from California across the Great Basin to Oregon has been travelled, often afoot, by countless Basque expatriates,” she explains, “so much so, that in the early twentieth century it was said most Basques in Spain could name only two American cities: New York and Winnemucca. I drove that road a few years ago after returning from Bilbao to move to a small town in Northeastern Oregon and wrote this song on the drive.”
The song is therefore both highly personal and rooted in common experience, and in channelling the timeless features of the road it evokes something older and lasting. “I feel the band really captured the feeling of wide-open sagebrush desert and winding canyons in the moonlight,” Cilker continues. “I still can’t tell you if this is my own story or some other character speaking through me; some ghost of a well-travelled bride-to-be laying down to take her rest in Jordan Valley.”
Pohorylle is out on the 5th November via Loose Music (UK) and Fluff and Gravy Records (USA) and you can get it from the Margo Cilker Bandcamp page. or via the Loose website if you’re in the UK.
