Tim Gibbons

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Tim Gibbons – Top Hat

Tim’s album is recorded, mixed and mastered and we’re just waiting for some finished artwork. So we’ll have it available for sale in the next month or so. It’s been a real pleasure working with and getting to know his songs. I love working with people whose songs become more intricate and detailed the more one listens. Being in charge of all of the production duties on an album project (producing, engineering and mixing) can be, at times, a very tedious job. One has to listen to each song scores of times as they make the journey from demo to finished master and it’s the rare set of songs that can stand up to that much repeated listening and scrutiny. Tim has such a natural way of writing and singing that he leaves the listener leaning a bit further into the song each time through. One hears a line, deciphers it and then does an auditory equivalent of a double-take as the imagery of the line takes hold.

Here’s a sampling of a couple of verses from some of Tim’s songs; from the weary road song Deal (Had this gal drank Balantines / she would punch me up the head / making love through hangovers / ’till she said I felt dead / Her deal was the regular life / my deal it drove truck / now razorblades won’t bring her back aww thas jes my luck); the impossibly beautiful Medicine Girl (Sad songs on the radio / thinking bout ya baby so far from home / wonder if you’re listening or talking on the phone to another guy / did he leave you dry? like a blister across the sky / the night coming on I’m gonna tell you why / put the weight on me was such a sad song / You’re my medicine girl / I’ll set you free if that’s what you want); and the dark, brooding High Treason (I’ll fly away tonight and skip through all the tanglin’ / I’ll cast away sweet memory / all that’s left inside is the feeling i’m left dangling from some lonesome hanging tree / High treason, a seasons obsession haunting you)

And how about this gem from Top Hat: She leaned back and her face appeared / her cigarette glowed in a dusty mirror / she said all her deeds were still born / leaning on a fire escape waiting on the dawn. Take a listen to the finished song:

Here’s an earlier blog about Tim, in case you missed it:

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Tim Gibbons – an Introduction (Medicine Girl)

For the past couple of years I’ve been doing some recording with Hamilton based singer/songwriter Tim Gibbons, who I was introduced to by Tom Wilson (aka Lee Harvey Osmond). He dropped in to our studio one day with just his banjo and sang six or seven songs and I was hooked. There is naturalness to his singing and playing that is all too rare: when he starts to play there is an almost physical transformation that overcomes him, the song envelopes him, he becomes the song. I also love his song writing, it touches on so many of the styles that originally pulled me into music: the folk-blues vibe of Townes Van Zandt; the basic rock-n-roll-blues of The Stones, the soul/blues vibe of singers like Bill Withers. We have taken things slowly. Every now and then Tim would come in and lay down a few more songs, some old ones from his vast repertoire and some new ones, freshly minted. Once we got a critical mass of material together we invited Ray Farrugia (my studio drummer of choice and someone that has played with Tim many times over the years and who has an affinity for his style) to join us and we expanded some of the songs with bass and drums. Tim is one of those guys that can pick up any stringed instrument (and a couple of non-stringed) and play it (I hate those types of guys, but I love working with them), so he went back and forth between banjo, guitar, bass and vocals and backup vocals. We got most of the songs in a day. We then sent a few of the tracks west to Joby Baker in Victoria to lay down some of his soulful B3 grooves. I’m halfway through mixing the material and I’m approaching it with the same relaxed attitude that we took with the recording: squeezing in a song or two when my schedule opens up, going back making small adjustments, trying not to lose the energy and immediacy of the sessions. The entire album should be out on Latent in a couple of months. In the meantime here is a taste of one of Tim’s more beautiful songs, Medicine Girl, in which he channels all of the warmth, passion and weariness of Townes.

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