Otis Gibbs
Mount Renraw
(Wanamaker)
Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Some artists strive to push envelopes, incorporate diverse styles and aim for new vistas. Otis Gibbs is not one of them.
Gibbs is a folksinger and proud of it. He’s as unaffected as the title of his seventh album, recorded at home in his living room and christened after the nickname he gave the East Nashville area where he lives. His austere approach relies on simple strummed acoustic guitar, a gruff emotional voice, occasional stark fiddle accompaniment and a passel of beautifully realized songs. He’s the archetypal troubadour, spinning stories in his music as he does on his longtime and highly recommended podcast Thanks for Giving a Damn, now 141 episodes long. As he says in the opening to one of them, “there are only two people in art that matter; the creative individual and the person experiencing it.” Recording with seemingly no net for his own label brings that as close as possible to reality.
With a voice that combines the windswept everyman vibe of James McMurtry with the country minimalism of Steve Earle along with tunes that take complex concepts like survival (“it’s like a wheel that never turns”) and make them easily digestible without being simplistic, Gibbs is the living embodiment of the clichéd “the real deal.”
Continuing the wandering minstrel/poet tradition of Woody Guthrie and early Bob Dylan, armed with only a guitar and some stirring songs, many such as “Great American Roadside,” “800 Miles” and “Wide Awake” about traveling, Gibbs connects on the most visceral and basic level. He spins his tales in a compact fashion — no track is over four minutes, half of these 11 selections are under three — but there is never a sense he is rushing them. On the contrary his loping drawl, reliance on ballads and originals titled with the names of people he probably knows (“Kathleen,” “Sputnik Monroe,” “Lucy Parsons,” “Ed’s Blues,” “Blues for Diablo” [about you know who]) use simple melodies and clear, unaffected words to create lasting images. In “Bison” he tells the history of the titular animal, how it became extinct, wrapping that into a personal tale, all under three minutes. The moving “Empire Hole” explores both his upbringing and how it coincides with the story of mining limestone.
These aren’t songs you’ll dance to or hum while riding in your car. But, like the bards of the past whom he clearly loves and has been inspired by, Otis Gibbs and his lone, stripped-down guitar will keep you entranced and riveted to music made the only way he knows how.