“The best story is when I was driving in Montana in the dead of winter a few years ago,” says Eliza Gilkyson, seasoned musician and woman of the road. “I was by myself on this deserted road, and suddenly my car broke down in the middle of this frozen tundra. I pulled over and lifted my hood, and saw that a piece had broken off.”

“What piece was that?” I ask — despite all my own touring, my knowledge of cars is embarrassingly limited, and I wonder if Gilkyson’s answer will be something I’ve heard of. Her response, however, reveals that perhaps she and and I are in the same boat: “It was some bolt that was connected to a piece holding up something that made something else fall.”

Despite the lack of specific nouns, I’m too ignorant to ask any follow-up questions. (I am also aware any mechanic reading this article will be sure to overcharge me the next time I take my car into the shop.)

Gilkyson continues: “I was just sitting in my car, wondering what to do, and along comes this guy in a big tractor. He pulled it over and looked under my hood, and found where the broken part was. Then he towed my car all the way to his farm, and I rode on the tractor with him.”

Gilkyson perched on a tractor with a stranger in the middle of the Montana winter landscape — a great shot for a music video, no?

“When we got to his farm he went into his shop and he literally made me the part for my car, from scratch,” she says. “He somehow knew exactly what bolt it was and the exact thread for it. It was so impressive! He had me back on the road in an hour.”

Gilkyson doesn’t mention whether the farmer told her the name of the part he made. But that’s okay. Instead, she offers me her theory on ancient paganism: “It makes sense to me way back when, when we were hunter-gatherers, that there were different gods for different things; you would count on a particular god to provide a deer when you needed one, or a spring would appear when you were thirsty or something. And I think us musicians still rely on that; we count on there being tour gods.” I concur! (Though whether this means musicians are less evolved than the rest of the human race is something about which I’d rather not theorize.)

“Sometimes the tour gods seem vengeful, though,” I suggest.

Gilkyson laughs. “That’s very true. The other day I had been on the road for such a long time; I was flying home via Dallas and had only one more flight to take, but the flight to Dallas had been delayed, and there was no flight out to Austin until the next day; the whole airport was shut down. I wanted to crawl into my own bed so badly, and I was so close, I just couldn’t bear to go to a hotel — sometimes I don’t think they delay flights for any reason except to get more people on the next flight and save some money, you know? Anyway, there was only one rental car left in the whole place and I just took it and drove the last leg of the trip.”

“Did the airline refund you the cost of the rental car?”

“Are you kidding me?” Gilkyson replies incredulously. “They don’t even give you a pillow or a blanket anymore; they even charge you for a glass of water.” We then discuss our least favourite airline, United, and I can’t help but revel in the opportunity to give those bastards some bad press after all they’ve done to me and every other musician I know… Which leads us back to the tour gods — piss off a musician by pen or from stage you may regret it — it goes both ways! Here’s to the farmers. Airlines be damned.

Eliza Gilkyson plays the Arden Theatre on Nov. 7.