Otis Gibbs – Fanning the Flames of Discontent
Venue: Mick Murphy's Bar, Ballymore Eustace, Tuesday August 30, 9pm Sharp. Adm: €12 on the door. More details: Roy Thompson 086 3270780. Join the Ballymore Acoustic Gigs mailing list by emailing ballymoregigs@gmail.com
Otis Gibbs is a man in search of an honest experience, who is performing at Mick Murphy's Bar as part of Ballymore Acoustic Gigs presented by Roy Thompson.
Some people refer to him as a folk artist, but that is a simplistic way to describe a man who has planted over 7,000 trees, slept in hobo jungles, walked with nomadic shepherds in the Carpathian Mountains, been strip-searched by dirty cops in Detroit, and has an FBI file.
Much of his work concentrates on the world that is ignored by pop culture. Sometimes forgotten, obsolete or simply marginalized, it is a world that doesn’t fit into a 20-second sound bite or a White House talking point.
Otis grew up in the rural town of Wanamaker, Indiana. He first stepped on stage at the age of four, when he sang Jimmie Rodgers’s 'Waiting for a Train' at a neighborhood honky tonk.
He started working when he was in high school. He stacked concrete blocks, flipped burgers, drove an ice cream truck, pumped gas, and did countless other crummy jobs. After discovering writers like Edward Abbey, Henry Miller and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, he started questioning what he was doing with his life. Tired of working jobs that didn’t stimulate, or interest him in the least, in his own words, he decided to just “drop out.”
Over the next four years, Gibbs earned and lived off less than $3,000 a year and had never been happier. He got rid of his car and shared apartments with artists, musicians and radicals (often living with 5-10 people). He also took advantage of the free time and wrote hundreds of songs. The next few years were spent touring and releasing four indie records.
In 2004, his critically acclaimed, 'One Day Our Whispers' was released. It was an unpopular time to speak truth to power, but the album’s optimism and anti-war undertones resonated deeply with people who felt uncomfortable with the direction America was heading. One song from that CD - 'The Peoples Day' was later included in a Wall Street Journal list compiled by Billy Bragg of the 'Top Five Songs with Something to Say'. This placed Gibbs in the company of Bob Dylan, The Clash, Sam Cooke, and Chuck Berry.
If Gibbs’ current album, 'Joe Hill’s Ashes', leaves you with one lingering thought, it might be that the great challenge of adulthood, is keeping your idealism once you’ve lost your innocence.
