SEE Magazine
Copyright © 1998. All Rights Reserved.
ROOTS
BY STEW SLATERPREVIEW
Jennifer Gibson
Sidetrack Café
Monday, July 13For Jennifer Gibson, the claustrophobic confines of a tiny apartment provided the spark for a wealth of new songs, and the wide-open freedom of playing back-up in another person's band provided the spark she needed to get out and start performing them again.
"I remember Mike McDonald always used to get bugged because (his band members would say), 'well, you're standing in the middle, so you take all the shit.' Whoever stands in the middle, it's their gig," Gibson said of her experiences playing back-up guitar for fellow country/folk singer/songwriter Cori Brewster, who in the past year toured Germany and played the South By Southwest music festival in Austin, Tex.
"It was neat to go, be a part of a band doing exciting things and not have the whole pressure be on my shoulders. It was a lot of fun and I fell in love with playing again."
Gibson was once in the thick of Edmonton's singer/songwriter scene, performing at the Winnipeg and Edmonton folk festivals, doing a showcase at Vancouver's MusicWest music industry schmoozefest, and garnering radio play on both CBC and country radio stations after releasing her début album in 1992. But for the past five years, her name has cropped up only occasionally on the club circuit, opening for Veda Hille a few months ago at the Rebar or on the semi-regular Sonic Sisters gigs organized by Brewster to showcase local female talent.
"I got really burnt out. The last couple years were really heavy on the publicity grind and promoting the album. You know, it's frustrating to try and book gigs and that sort of thing so I took some time off to try and figure out what I wanted."
Now Gibson is back, stronger than ever. With a gig Monday, July 13 at the Sidetrack Café (10333-112 St.), she celebrates the release of her new CD Be the Woman. It's a recording full of Gibson's simple, attractive melodies and observant lyrics, but it also displays a certain energy that comes from that combination of newfound performance freedom and the new songs Gibson wrote while holed up in a tiny apartment shortly after moving back to Edmonton from Mayerthorpe, Alta.
"A girlfriend put it to me; she said, 'y'know, when you were in your apartment, it was as if you were really regrouping and really being very introspective.' The space was tiny and my stuff was really close around me," Gibson said. "I could wake up in the morning and pick the guitar off the wall and sit down and start writing. And I could come home after a night out and sit down and start writing. I had that time, that freedom."
That meant a bunch of the songs she had written while living in Mayerthorpe had to be dropped from the CD's songlist, but she was thrilled that after five years, she would still be able to present new material to her audiences.
Not all the old songs were dropped, however. The title track is an older tune and Gibson definitely wanted it to stay. Her only dilemma was how prospective listeners would perceive it, considering its title - Be the Woman.
"I didn't want it to be a feminist kind of thing. Because the song isn't really about that. If I was a man, it would have been Be the Man. It's more of a song about growing up and taking responsibility for yourself and how you can choose to have other people make the decisions for you or you can make them yourself."
In the end, she decided the music would speak for itself. And if people took it one way or the other, that was their decision and not hers. "If they hear the music, they'll realize that I'm just talking about things that happen in life and it's not really for or against anybody. It's just trying to be who I really am."
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