Happiness Is Gileah

By Chris Manson November 30, 2006 Issue

Gileah and husband Chris Taylor are wrapping up their appearance at Rosemary Beach’s Christmas tree lighting event. As I walk past the unique shops and restaurants--and the ubiquitous Starbucks Coffee--I catch the very end of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The lyrics are projected on a screen, perhaps more for Gileah’s benefit than the potential sing-alongers gathered here.

“I’ll tell you a little side note,” the 26-year-old singer says. “I didn’t grow up celebrating Christmas. In the last four years we’ve been married I’ve been celebrating, but I don’t really know the songs that well.” This makes me wonder where Gileah grew up. It turns out she did hear Rudolph... Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, and others during her childhood in Niceville. She just didn’t sing them, and singing is knowing.

It’s extremely rare to find Gileah and Chris performing together. “We haven’t really combined (our styles) that much,” Chris says, although he produced, engineered, and played guitar and bass on Gileah’s current CD The Golden Planes. “I was a fan before we got married,” he says, referring to an earlier disc Gileah released when she was just 19. “She felt the songs. Her songs are just amazing.”

Gileah has been around longer than that, first playing church youth group events at age 13. At 16, she joined the first of many bands. “I was really influenced by the Cranberries and 10,000 Maniacs,” Gileah says of the early years. Now she has her own backing group, the Ghost Train. They’re scheduled to perform on Dec. 9 at Panama City’s Gallery Above, followed by an appearance at Joe Crocker’s The Sound the following Friday. Gileah hints that she’ll probably do some “mini-Radiohead covers” in lieu of Christmas carols. She hopes her father—also a musician—will join her for the gigs.

“He was into Peter, Paul and Mary and the Beatles,” Gileah says of the preacher father who also filled her songbook with traditional hymns. Gileah doesn’t play such overtly religious music these days, but her husband leads Sunday morning worship at the Rosemary Beach chapel.

At this point, I’ve only heard one track from The Golden Planes CD--Medicine, available as a free download from www.greyhatrecords.com, the website for Gileah’s homegrown record label. It’s catchy, and I like the lyrical refrain: “No doctor in the world could heal me now.”

“That song was actually written to God at a low point,” Gileah explains. “I closed the album at a happier point. The songs are about love and loss and life in general.” I observe that one track, White Florida Sun, might appeal to the locals, but Gileah points out that the song is set in Las Vegas. “Be the One is the hit single!” she insists.“My goal is to make beautiful music, pretty songs that are uplifting. Maybe there’s some sadness in them, but I like to meet people where they are. I like to write songs they can relate to. They can put it on and say, ‘This girl gets me.’ I really haven’t changed that much musically. I’ve done folk all these years.”

But fear not, Joan Baez haters. Gileah’s favored folk idols are independent modern-folk acts like the Innocence Mission. And she promises that she and her band “definitely rock out live.” She’s pretty much avoided the Destin scene—and my radar—preferring half-hour sets of original tunes at coffee houses to three hours of cover versions in noisy bars.

The Golden Planes, released in late 2005, has gotten great reviews from CD Baby customers and many of the “indie” websites. The Golden Planes is a professional effort in terms of packaging, but if you don’t have the quality tunes, nobody’s gonna listen. The myspace.com revolution has allowed Gileah’s music to reach the other side of the world.

“I have a nine-month old child and I really don’t get out to see music like I’d like to,” Gileah says when I ask about local musicians she admires. “But I love, love, love Dread Clampitt.” Daughter Clara hasn’t picked up a guitar yet, but she’s probably getting better lullaby time than any other infant in Okaloosa and Walton counties. “I’ve got her on auxiliary percussion,” Gileah laughs. Five years ago, Gileah wrote a song called Clara for her future child.

I suspect the name Gileah has Old Testament origins, although my Internet searches turn up nothing but matches for the Ghost Train’s front woman. “Gileah basically means happiness,” she says. “I’m really a happy person. If you know my personality apart from my music, there are such extremes. I get all the icky stuff, the anger, out in the music.”

Postscript: Gileah’s CD really does live up to all the cyber-hype. I still favor Medicine as a potential smash, but all 10 tracks on The Golden Planes are first rate. The convincer here is Wrap Your Arms Around Me, a marvel of subtle production and a vocal tour de force for Gileah. Lyrically, every song sucks you back in for another listen—“Your head will never be too heavy for my pillow” and “I always take the finest roads when I need to escape” are just a couple of high points on an album that’s full of peaks. I’d call The Golden Planes Gileah’s masterpiece, but she’s still young. And she’s probably going to get even better.

Chris’ Disc Recommendations:
Ornette Coleman: Sound Grammar (Phrase Text)
Citizen Cope: Every Waking Moment (RCA)
...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead: So Divided (Interscope)
The Who: Endless Wire (Universal Republic)
Don Byron: Do the Boomerang--The Music of Junior Parker (Blue Note)
Chris Knight: Enough Rope (Drifter’s Church)
Tool: 10,000 Days (Volcano)
Daryl Hall & John Oates: Home for Christmas (DKE)

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