PLATTSBURGH — Nothing sparks North Country Christmas like the Gibson Brothers Holiday Show at the Strand Theater, 25 Brinkerhoff St. Plattsburgh.
The show is 7:30 p.m. Friday. Dec. 20, and tickets $25/$35/$45 can be purchased online at www.strandcenter.org.
The Gibson Brothers, Eric and Leigh, (lead vocals, guitar, and banjo) will be joined by longtime band mate Mike Barber (upright bass), and Sam Zucchini (drums) and Eric O’Hara (steel).
A new Christmas song hasn’t settled on Eric Gibson yet.
“I can’t come up with anything that is any good,” he said.
“I’m probably going to lean on the ones I’ve done before. People want to hear the good, old-time Christmas songs, anyway. And, that’s what we’re going to be doing a lot of the old stuff.”
Family guests include Kelley John Gibson, Eric’s son, and Erin LaClair, Eric and Leigh’s sister.
“Leigh’s daughter, Annie, is going to join us on a song,” Eric said.
“That will be the first time she’s joined on stage with us. She’s a good little singer.”
Special guest is singer-songwriter and fiddler Sara Milonovich.
“Leigh lives down in the Albany area, she’s very active in the music scene down there. He told me about her and I heard her, and she’s great, a really good player. This is the third year in a row that’s she’s been our special guest for our Christmas show. She’s so great, we hate to switch it up with different people every year. She played with us at Grey Fox (Bluegrass Festival) this year. A good singer, too.
“We will be playing Christmas music. Some of which we wrote, but others are standards, a mix of country, bluegrass and standard Christmas songs. It’s become a popular thing for us.”
SERIOUS BUSINESS
The Gibson Brothers had an interesting year. “We played quite a bit, but our year was kind of scary,” Eric said.
“Mike ended up having to have open-heart surgery. The healthiest-looking one in the whole crew. We knew that was on the horizon for him. He ended up missing about a month and half of shows. He’s back, and he’s doing great.
“But it was a very uncertain time. Nerve-wracking time. He’s doing great now, but it was serious. To me, when I think I look back on this year and years to come, that’s all I think about, the uncertainty of it all. Not that we ever took Mike for granted, I don’t think we ever did. He’s like a brother to us. But that first show back down in Maryland, our hearts were in it, I’ll tell you that. Just happy to have him back and playing so well. Each time we’ve seen him since he had his surgery in early September, he looks better. He seems stronger. Thank God, we got him back.”
The band did a lot of playing, though they weren’t touring with a new release.
“Darkest Hour,” the band’s last project, was a self-produced on Bull Run Records.
“We also didn’t go into the studio,” Eric said.
“Mike was having some problems, and we just didn’t. So, let’s just hold off and wait until he’s full steam.
“We will probably make one in 2025. It was more important for us to fill in the gaps. We did some trio shows without a bass. We have a few guest players a few different times. We went to Texas, and we ended up hiring a different bass player. We had a different bass player when we were in North Carolina one time. For the two months without Mike, we made do the best we could.”
Eric is writing a lot, and Leigh is doing some.
“The thing is Leigh might write one or two songs, and they’re the best songs we’ve got,” Eric said.
“Where I might write the others, he comes up with the best ones. Leigh is the kind of writer that he agonizes over every line, not that I don’t. He will take years to write a song sometimes, and usually I don’t, an afternoon. Then, I’ll change it when it’s time to record. I’ll say, I don’t like that and I’ll change a line on the spot. Years later, sing it differently than I recorded it. Leigh really agonizes over each line. He’s a good writer. We just have a different approach.”
They haven’t discussed whether their next project remains on Bull Run or goes elsewhere.
Eric’s main writing partner is his son, Kelley, who recently released his debut album, “The Keeping Kind.”
“He’s just full of ideas and has really kept me sharp,” Eric said.
“He always wants to write. He won’t let me get lazy. ‘Come on Dad, let’s write.’ Who can say no to that? Even days where I don’t know if anything is going to happen, we come up with a song. and now, I kind of forget about the song, and he starts playing it several months later. I said, ‘Shoot, where did you get that?’ He says, ‘We wrote it.’ That’s been a wonderful thing for me.”
August marked 31 years that Eric, Leigh and Mike have played together, and their brilliant talent has taken them to the hallowed stage of the Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.
“That’s unreal, huh?” Eric said.
“We were playing before that, but I always kind of look at that as when we really took it up a notch. That’s when we started getting serious was 1993. Somebody shared with me an interview I did in 1989 with the Press-Republican when I said you can’t make a living playing bluegrass. I’m looking back at my 18-year-old self saying, ‘Way to sell it Eric.’
“I had no idea. I just thought this was something we would do on the side. I said we’re pretty much going to be done after this show. I didn’t think we could do it. It never entered my mind that well maybe we could make a living doing this. It’s hard, but I’m pretty proud that we’ve been able to do that.”
Bluegrass industry
Every time Eric thinks he’s got a read on bluegrass, he’s surprised.
“Billy Strings is a young guy in his 20s right now who is selling out arenas, sometimes multiple nights,” he said.
“I’ve always thought of bluegrass as kind of a niche genre. This young fellow has come along, and he’s taking world by storm. He’s on all the late night talk shows playing bluegrass. He’s in his 20s. He’s killing it.
“Hopefully, there’s a trickle-down effect in this in our case. Every so often, something big happens in the bluegrass world like the O Brother, Where Art Thou? movie gave it a shot in the arm. Alison Krauss and her emergence as a star gave it a shot in the arm. Way back, the Bonnie and Clyde movie with ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ on the soundtrack and ‘Dueling Banjos’ on ‘Deliverance.’ I can go back every decade or so, something big happens. But I never dreamed I’ll see a guy come along until Strings and really take it to the mainstream like that.”
When Eric and Leigh were his age, they were fanboys of the ones who cleared the way for them.
“I might be 54 years old, but I did get to meet so many of our heroes,” he said.
“That’s a trade off right? The new guys coming along they can’t say I met met Bill Monroe or Earl Scruggs or Ralph Stanley or Doc Watson. We met all those guys and played festival stages with lots of them. That’s something that I’m very happy that happened in my life. I got to breathe the same air as those guys.”