Author: Michael Witthaus

Gibson Brothers bring Darkest Hour tour to Rex

If great musicians wanting to get in the studio with a performer is a measure of success, the Gibson Brothers are a breed apart. The bluegrass duo has been produced by Ricky Skaggs, Dave Ferguson, Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys and most recently Jerry Douglas, on Darkest Hour, released in early 2023.

They even recorded a soundtrack album with T-Bone Burnett, a project that was shelved with the never-made movie.

“My brother says that we’re the Forrest Gump of bluegrass,” Eric Gibson said in a recent phone interview. “I mention something like that [Burnett] to people, and they look at me like I’m lying. I’m like, ‘I don’t have any proof, the record never came out.’ … but some of those records did.”

While 2018’s Auerbach-helmed Mockingbird had a burlier tone and modern touches like a cover of REM’s “Everybody Hurts” with the Flaming Lips’ Derek Brown on slide guitar, Darkest Hour featured more of the sound that’s made the Gibsons a force in bluegrass music for over three decades.

A new wrinkle, though, was a focus on the duo’s songwriting. Before starting recording in early 2020, Douglas asked them to bring their best tunes that hadn’t made it to other records. Among them was “I Feel the Same Way as You,” which became an album standout, with Alison Krauss providing a backing vocal.

Leigh Gibson wrote the song in 2000. Eric remembers wondering, “Why the heck did we wait so long to record that? Then I thought, if we’d done it earlier, Jerry Douglas wouldn’t be playing Dobro on it, and Alison Krauss wouldn’t be singing harmony … it was meant to be later.”

The Dobro master’s presence spurred the two to reach musical heights, as on “Dust,” when Eric follows Douglas’s soaring solo with a blistering banjo run. “You cannot help but be inspired,” he said, calling it “a pinch-me moment — that’s Jerry Douglas, and we’re playing with him right now.”

A big chunk of the LP was done live in the studio.

“We had some separation; if we messed up, we’d go back and fix it, but he’s about capturing the feeling and capturing the moment,” Gibson said.

“What a Difference a Day Makes” was the first track recorded. Gibson called it “real meat and potatoes bluegrass … kind of a Jimmy Martin-feeling kind of song.”

A Northeast tour in support of the album kicks off Jan. 13 in Manchester.

The brothers will be joined by Mike Barber on bass and drummer Sam Zucchini, with Eric O’Hara on Dobro. O’Hara was their first music teacher while the two were growing up on a dairy farm in Ellenburg Depot, in upstate New York.

“He’d just graduated from college, we were 12 and 11, and he started showing us how to play the banjo and guitar,” Eric recalled. “All these years later, he’s playing music with us.”

There’s more history in the onstage configuration. Their longtime bass player is the son of Junior Barber, who played Dobro with the Gibson Brothers when they were starting out. “Jerry went on and on about him when we recorded with him,” Gibson said of the elder Barber, who died in 2017. “He was a legend in this area, and people like that would take an interest in us.”

It’s testament to their talent that two players from a town just below the Canadian border could rise to the top of a genre dominated by Nashville pickers, but Gibson recalls a collective purposefulness in their far-flung milieu. A memory of one band preparing to go on at an American Legion years ago is still fresh.

“They took it as seriously as if they were gonna go play the Opry,” he said. “That stuck with me… wherever, whatever that stage is, you make it count.”

The Gibson Brothers released their first album in the mid-’90s; years later, Eric Gibson is happy to be part of his genre, and sees bright days ahead.

“I think the roots scene is very strong,” Gibson said. “Every so often you hear, ‘oh, bluegrass is dead.’ How is it dead when you have Billy Strings playing bluegrass? Molly Tuttle has found a heck of a big audience. Hopefully, there’s a trickle-down effect for the rest of us, but I feel like that old John Hartford song. I’m still here, we’re still doing it. We must be doing something right.”

Featured photo: Gibson Brothers. Courtesy photo.

Mia x Ally take viral act on tour

The curious lockdown revival of a 600-year-old folk tradition was the catalyst for an inventive pairing that has, among other things, produced a recasting of “Free Bird” for violin and bagpipes. In late 2020 a Scottish singer posted a pair of sea shanties — collective songs from the maritime trades — to TikTok. Another vocalist added a bass harmony layer, and soon more began stitching in parts.

It caught the attention of electric violinist Mia Asano, who dueted on a subsequent batch of videos. Bagpiper Ally Crowley-Duncan was also taken by “musicians adding their parts and creating this massive session-style experience with all this instrumentation.” She collaborated on a few with a mutual musician friend.

Out of this digital milieu the two became mutual fans and eventually collaborators. The world of rock music has never seen anything like Mia x Ally, but the duo’s unique approach to their instruments has won kudos from some of the genre’s best, including Metallica. It’s also amassed that most coveted of modern currencies, internet virality.

Before joining up, both were building big audiences on TikTok, Ally on her traditional bagpipes with a custom key-extending chanter (the note-producing tube at the bottom of the bag) that she helped design, and Mia with her seven-string Flying V electric violin. In a recent Zoom interview, the two discussed how they came to see their instruments in a different light.

Mia was classically trained from age 5.

“I had a deep love for classical music, but a deeper love for alternative styles,” she said. “In middle school I discovered electric violins; after that I knew what I was going to do for the rest of my life.”

The violin, she added, “is a really gate-kept instrument, and the classical community is really intense. Both Ally and I have a lot of similarities in those ways with our upbringing and our experience with our instruments, so we both have a deep love for showcasing everything they are capable of.”

Also the product of a musical household, Ally played multiple instruments growing up, taking up bagpipes at age 12 as a way to bond with her Scottish stepfather after he legally adopted her. “I’ve been able to see the saxophone, piano and flute transcend their more traditional and classical roots,” she said, “but there aren’t a lot of avenues where the bagpipes have been able to do that.”

In high school she transcribed Ozzy Osborne’s “Crazy Train” to bagpipes and played it with a rock band she’d formed.

“The reaction kind of flipped my brain around into wanting to see the bagpipes in that light more often,” she said. “I love that style of music, always have, and it was really cool to be able to offer it to people on an instrument that I love, but in a way that they weren’t expecting.”

After an extended TikTok friendship, the two performed together for the first time in Boston, on St. Patrick’s Day. Mia was attending Berklee, and Ally had a show sponsored by Barstool Sports. “She messaged me and said, ‘Would you like to meet up and record some collaborations together?’ and of course I said yes,” Mia recalled.

Their version of “Shipping Up to Boston” was a viral smash, and they soon hit the road for a run named after the Dropkick Murphys song, their first release as a duo.

“We like to say it sold out our first tour — that’s how a lot of people found out about us, and the first time we realized how many people love us,” Mia said. An accompanying video, shot across the city at Fenway Park, City Hall and other landmarks, was “essentially a love letter to Boston.”

The current tour, which stops in Derry on Jan. 6 and includes shows in Boston and Vermont, comes in the wake of their debut, Mia x Ally: The Viral Hits. The EP includes their distinctive reimagining of the Lynyrd Skynyrd hit that’s arguably the most requested song in rock history. Both released it solo before recording it together.

“We realized there was actually an appreciation for hearing ‘Free Bird’ in that way,” Ally said. “We knew that we wanted to make it something bigger.”

Playing live, the duo is about more than classic rock covers, even playing some original songs. “Our shows have every kind of music from pop, rock and Celtic,” Mia said. “We have jazzy moments; I play a classical piece at one poin t… we throw everything in there. It’s to showcase our diversity. Music is the most important thing to us; it’s not just about the showmanship, but that’s also important. We have a lot of musical integrity.”

Featured photo: Mia x Ally. Courtesy photo.