Otis Gibbs
Album: Souvenirs Of A Mis-spent Youth
Label: Wanamaker
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.otisgibbs.com

I see no reason to amend my original assessment of this artist - "grizzled and gritty, with enough of the hard-done-by-troubadour about him to impress Billy Bragg, Otis is one of those uncompromising guys who just keeps on turning out classy rootsy albums without making any waves yet always satisfying his fans". He's been faithfully touring the UK for a while too - he was last over here in 2012 in support of his sixth album Harder Than Hammered Hell, and he returns to these shores this July to promote album number seven, Souvenirs Of A Mis-spent Youth. Like its predecessors (well, certainly albums five and six) this new CD exudes all the sheer dogged perseverance of the downtrodden through the intensely lived-in character of Otis' singing, this in turn completely reflecting the character of the writing.

This new record takes its thematic cue from Otis' memories of his father, who encouraged him to do all he could to pursue a creative life against any and all odds and, like him, take no sh** from anyone. Indeed, Otis quite openly avows: "I'm a hell of a lot more like my old man than I'd care to admit", and his typically uncompromising "so what, I'm gonna do just as I please" stance is carried on through into the unashamed parade of musical styles on display on this album, which also makes a virtue out of simple, gently adorned and uncluttered musical backdrops where the "usual suspect" instruments (guitar, pedal steel, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, just drift companionably in and out of the textures.

The disc kicks off in old-timey-balladry mode (Cozmina) then veers into rollin' Glen Campbell/Gentle On My Mind territory (The Darker Side Of Me and Nancy Barnett), diving headlong into the honky-tonk bar for waltzer Wrong Side Of Gallatin. and indulging in a morose late-night easy lounge shuffle at Kokomo Bar before ending up With A Gun In My Hand. This was evidently a hard-won moment, for it tells the story Otis was unable to tell as a kid in exploring the ambivalence he felt towards accompanying his father on hunting expeditions (where he loved being there in the woods in his company yet was repelled by the idea of killing animals for "sport").

Hobo or hitch-hiker stories form the loose basis of several of the other songs, and such is Otis' skill in the retelling that they too are imbued with a keen sense of the direct personal experience. What's more, his compositions are also infused with a pride in achievement (the artisanship of No Rust On My Spade being a good example). My appreciation of Otis' skill as a songwriter is, however, mildly dimmed by a rather inescapable sense of pastiche (as opposed to authenticity) that pervades some of the musical styles he adopts along the way; in this purely musical regard, Otis doesn't always thoroughly convince in the way that his lyrics do.

David Kidman