Just months after winning the most coveted honor in bluegrass last fall – the prestigious International Bluegrass Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award – The Gibson Brothers are preparing to release their new album They Called It Music on March 26th.
Longtime band-mates Mike Barber (bass), Clayton Campbell (fiddle) and Joe Walsh (mandolin) join in on a set of songs that feature some of the brothers' best originals coupled with a varied collection of creative covers of songs by Loretta Lynn, the Delmore Brothers, Joe Newberry and Shawn Camp.
According to Eric and Leigh, the original songs on the new album – inspired largely by the loss of their father last year – come from a more emotional place than on previous albums. Eric explains: "Although this isn't a grieving album some of that energy found its way into the music." But it was a comment that bluegrass icon Tim O'Brien made after listening to their last album (2011's award-winning Help My Brother) that proved to be the emotional rudder for the new project. "Tim told us to 'keep digging deeper.' We thought about that comment a lot and I think we've accomplished that with the new CD,” comments Eric.
Standout originals on the new project include “Something Comin’ To Me," and “The Darker The Night, The Better I See,” a hell-raising, tongue-in-cheek hint at the Gibson Brother’s resilience over the years. The album’s title track “They Called It Music” is a soon-to-be classic that praises bluegrass music for the power of its simplicity and universal appeal. The cover of Mark 's upbeat “Daddy’s Gone to Knoxville” is sure to garner a lot of radio attention as well.
The Gibson Brothers are the latest in a long line of brother vocal duos in bluegrass and country music. Like many other brother acts, their musical path was paved by earlier duos like the Louvin Brothers, Jim & Jesse, the Blue Sky Boys and the Monroe Brothers. But, unlike those duos, The Gibson Brothers are northerners with roots extending far north of the Mason-Dixon line. Initially that created some controversy - when the Brothers received the Emerging Artist of the Year award from the BMA in 1998 there were some who were skeptical. "Other players would say to us, ' guys are from New York—how do you anything about bluegrass!?' I was so intimidated playing in the south because all of our heroes were from the south and we weren't," says Eric.
But, after all, the Brothers do share an agrarian upbringing with many of the iconic artists in the genre – it's just that the small family dairy farm where they grew up happened to be in the shadow of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. And over time the controversy over their Northern-ness began to ebb. Eric remembers: "We were slowly accepted and I finally felt like I didn't have explain our credibility to anyone. Leigh and I have barnyard credibility if you need that."
These days The Gibson Brothers are at the pinnacle of bluegrass music bringing their unique northern take on the music to audiences from coast to coast and earning praise from critics and fans alike. As bluegrass legend Del McCoury says: "When I hear the Gibson Brothers, I know it’s them from the first note. They have that little thing in their voices that no one else has.” Eric adds, “Bluegrass has so much heart and soul. That’s what I hope comes from our music.” Emotionally charged and spiritually uplifting, that heart and soul comes through loud and clear on They Called It Music.
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