Billy Bragg once memorably wrote “If you got a blacklist I wanna be on it,” ('Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards'), but it might just as well have been written by Indiana's OTIS GIBBS.
This mid-western native is no stranger to life at the thin end of the wedge. Down the years he has played everywhere from labour rallies in Wisconsin to anti-war protests in Texas, Austria the Czech Republic, not to mention working every crummy job you can imagine until he finally decided to drop out and begin a nomadic, but outspokenly erudite musical career. This sea change has so far given birth to six albums, brought Gibbs reams of critical applause and (inevitably) provoked the FBI to open a file on him.
The fifth of those six, the superlative 'Grandpa Walked A Picketline', introduced this writer to Gibbs' world. It's a tough and relentlessly real place where the marginalised are brought vividly to life and the line between the personal and political is blurry to say the least. Crucially, though, Gibbs' songs always come from a humanitarian perspective first and foremost and – when allied to his gravelly, emotion-laden drawl – ensures he towers above most of the singer/ songwriter fraternity.
Album number six is Gibbs' latest, 'Joe Hill's Ashes'. Again recorded with producer/ guitarist Thomm Jutz, it's mostly an intimate, close-miked affair, although the duo drafted in several simpatico Nashville sessioneers as and when required and they flesh several of the best tracks here with grace and poise.
Thus, it's perhaps a marginally more low-key and reflective record than 'Grandpa...' was. The opening title track finds Gibbs musing on a world “full of lonely fools staring at each other 'cross crowded rooms” and provides a thoughtful, plaintive entrée. 'When I Was Young', meanwhile, takes us back to Otis' childhood: a place where things were simple, safe and secure. It's gentle and introspective, sure, but never mawkish or sentimental and the band's kid glove treatment merely adds to the allure. Hell, the jaunty two-step 'Cross Country' and 'The Ballad of Johnny Crooked Tree”s upbeat treatment of a wild-loving oddball (“he was long and lanky and ornery and mean”) could even be construed as 'fun' songs.
The album has its' plentiful share of gravitas, however. 'Twelve Dead Men In Sago' may be driven along by Dean Richardson's lovely, skirling fiddle, but there's no disguising the hurt in Gibbs' tribute to those left to bear the loss after a mid-western mining disaster (“broken families are left behind...God help the men who labour down in the mines”). 'Outdated, Frustrated & Blue', meanwhile, provides not only one of the year's best titles, but its' stark, acoustic evocation of a world gone mad is virtually impossible not to relate to right now.
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Even more pointed are a couple of fine dissections of the music industry's rotting corpse. The low down blues of 'The Town That Killed Kennedy' is an all-too visceral account of endless miserable journeys undertaken on Greyhound buses due to financial constraints (“no-one chooses to ride the Greyhound/ the only reason you're here is you're too broke to fly”), while the brilliant 'Where Only The Graves Are Real' is one of the most vividly-realised accounts of survival in this foul business (“everyone's your best friend when you're closing down the bars/ God bless the ones who really are”) this writer has ever heard. And God knows, he's heard a few.
Great though all these are, it's the final track 'Something More' which scoops my Gold Medal here. In it, Otis looks back on holidays in Nova Scotia and visiting Jack Kerouac's grave and muses on “tryin' to believe there's something more to this world than keepin' score/ but frankly I'm losin' faith as all my friends pass away.” It's heartbreakingly elegiac stuff and it's one in the eye for anyone who has previously dismissed this larger than life character as merely a protest singer with a big beard.
'Joe Hill's Ashes', then, is every bit as melancholic, brave and empathetic as it is outspoken and angry. Rather like Michael Weston King's new album it is broadly a 'protest' album, but it shoots with conviction and humanity and puts people first. It may be an old-fashioned standpoint, but surely it's one more of us should be adopting in these trying times.
Otis Gibbs online
Otis Gibbs Myspace page
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