Laura Gibson
A Peacefulness That Belies An Old Melody, A Long Gone Soul
Dec 29, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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Spirited
original version appears on Beasts of Seasons
A few summers ago, we found an old washtub in the antique store around the corner. We bought it to use as a fire pit in the backyard, and there began a nightly ritual of sitting and watching the fire go out, tracing the smoke as it rose and weaved through the trees. The summer passed so quickly, and as we observed the glowing embers melting into the black night, we often felt we were watching time slip from our grasp. I wrote Spirited thinking of that washtub, of faces reflecting orange and gold, and of the longing to press ourselves inside of a moment as soon as we realize it is escaping us. The washtub itself escaped us, borrowed by the neighbors to be returned the following spring. Left to the autumn rain, it's now a skeleton of rust and ash. (A note about the performance: The drums are a combination of Sean and Micah. Micah masters the clickety-clack while Sean, is playing piano with one hand and Floor Tom and cymbal with the other).
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Where Have All Your Good Wo…
original version appears on Beasts of Seasons
Upon finding myself at a loss for words, always finding myself at a loss for words... I decided to follow my frustration, and began thinking of mortality as having nothing left to offer the world - no rhymes, no poems, no words of kindness or clarity, no truths to pull from my gut. Even more frightening, the idea of looking back and finding so many words wasted on sarcasm and half-truths. It's a terrifying way to think about death. (Note the live version is quite different from the recorded version, as it's lacking the luminous viola of Eyvind Kang but features the haunting saw of Micah Rabwin and Sean Ogilvie balancing melodica, ukelin and drums).
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Glory
original version appears on Beasts of Seasons
Glory is a collection of images, moments of tenderness and reverence, of loss and of new life. Not about my family exactly, but certainly reminding me of my family.
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O Frailty
original version appears on Bridge Carols
I don't remember a moment of writing this song, but I have hummed and sang the melody to myself for a long time, with different lyrics floating through. At some point, it just shaped itself into a song. I had intended to include it in Beasts of Seasons. But in the end, Beasts of Seasons was a record dwelling in the human body, where O Frailty seemed to dwell out in the stars. It's more of a cosmic view of mortality. It ended up fitting perfectly in a collaboration with sound artist Ethan Rose (to be released this February). The version with Ethan is much more fluttery, pitchy and strange, broken down after running it through a tape machine for several hours. Sean and Micah and I sat down at the piano one day and came up with a more classical chorale approach.
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Funeral Song
original version appears on Funeral Song
Despite the title, I'll always consider this a love song. Understanding love in a way that if death comes, I won't fear the letting go, or being let go. Like most people, I often wonder if I'm capable of such love. But I suppose the song is less a testimony of my own selflessness, and more a hope, or perhaps faith, that my love might be realized in this way. Although it's such a simple composition, I chipped away at Funeral Song for a long time, and of all the songs on Beasts of Seasons, it's probably the most meaningful to me. I hope to sing it as an old lady someday.
What always gets wondered when Laura Gibson's here, around us, just exuding that peacefulness - a shyness that is hesitant peacefulness - is where her dresses have been, what their history is. It's easy to think about their long and prosperous lives, filled with afternoon socials in the town squares of cities that don't exist in the same way that they now exist, if they do at all. These dresses have memories, we think, of the first color television sets, of sitting there on a carpeted floor in front of the living room radio, believing what Orson Welles was telling the world about an alien invasion. These dresses probably have so much caked in piecrust batter, from countless days cooking in a hot-ass kitchen - the apron not catching all of the excess and the smears. They seem to be gentle and as if they've been through a dozen owners or so, survived a hundred years in impeccable shape. She wears them - these breezy, flowered and non-flowered prints - religiously, and they hang down, well past the middle of the shin. They are pretty and antique, as if they could tell you so many unbelievable stories about the souls of those who have inhabited them, a variation of the old idea of if these walls could talk, the things they could tell you. They've been washed and dried by the wind more times than they could possibly remember anymore. They've been the choice attire to join the bushel basket and the hands and arms in the apple orchard on a crisp autumn afternoon for a fruit picking - the selected to be cored, peeled and used in one of those tasty pies. Gibson, a Portland resident with a pastoral voice that seems to echo with the sounds of lost loved ones, the lights of love and haunting gorgeousness, all siphoned through an angelic filter that begs all to listen intently as her heart speaks, is there in the orchard, in the kitchen, receiving these signals from past eras and forgotten people. They shine through her new words and they speak of an old, elder everlasting beauty - the same as her simple, flowing dresses. Gibson and Ethan Rose released a record this year entitled "Bridge Carols," that was recorded in fields, forests and basements, and it sounds as if two people were navigating through such untapped past remembrances and sounds that they've always had within them that they're discovering like fossils and geodes. It's as if, under a silent approach, two people have come upon a mother fox licking her baby clean with her tongue, no more than two feet in front of them, not bashful and unaware that any scary humans were watching. Gibson sings about stars and dry bones, making sounds that she's likely never heard coming from her mouth prior to learning how to properly speak - intelligible words, partial phrases, and full sentences as an infant. They are sounds and music that are coming to both Gibson and Rose through luck and mysterious ways that defy time and period and are just showing up inside them. They seem to come from out of the clouds, arriving to them with their eyes lodged tightly shut, out of the brightness and out of the darkness. It's almost like the same place for these songs of majestic melodies and touching connections to feelings that have stayed hidden for a long, long time. They are here now, gathering form.
Laura Gibson MySpace Page
Laura Gibson's Debut Daytrotter Session
Hush Records
