| He has nut loaf on his plate and a song in his heart. Sam Gibson's
eating '90s, singing '30s and bridging the 60-year gap with his
conversation. "The music as well as the times have evolved so
quickly," he says over lunch at Essential Edibles, "but in a way that
it's almost unfamiliar and unstable. With industries downsizing and
things becoming less clear, people begin to go back to a time
when they felt more comfortable, when they felt like they knew
what life was about. So that means reaching back to music from
those times."  For Gibson, that means
standards by the Gershwins,
Hoagy Carmichael, Irving
Berlin, Cole Porter and
others. They're on his new
disc, An Affair to
Remember, a cohesive
journey of love that starts
with yearning (Someone to
Watch Over Me) and ends
with goodbyes (I'll Be
Seeing You).
The music is beautiful,
romantic and sincere in a
way that seems impossible in the jaded '90s. And Gibson's voice
is Nat "King" Cole smooth. He sings with just the right mix of
nuance to get the lyrics across without being overwhelmingly
emotional.
He recorded in New York and at Aire Born Recording Studio in
Zionsville, mixing and mastering it with engineer Michael Graham
at the Lodge studio in Indianapolis. The disc is available at
Borders Books & Music and through Gibson's web site at
www.indymall.com/samgibson.
At a time of retro elegance, of cigars and martinis, Gibson's music
would appear to be the perfect musical complement. And it is.
But that's not why he does it.
"The music is so great," he says, taking another forkful of his
vegetarian entree. "There's a wealth of beautiful songs out there.
Just because they were written in the '30s and '40s doesn't
devalue them."
In fact, Gibson has made a career of revisiting beautiful old songs.
When he's not performing around town, he sings the male lead in
Sophisticated Ellington, the musical revue of Duke Ellington music
crafted by Ellington's granddaughter Mercedes.
That tour had taken him from New York to Hawaii and places in
between for performances with symphony orchestras.
"I was walking around Hawaii," Gibson says, "and I was thinking,
You know, you're just here for your singing. You couldn't have
bought your way here. You couldn't have afforded the ticket any
other way. It's just because you have this gift that you're able to
visit these places. That's really neat."
A longtime love of music Gibson's affair with music stretches over
decades, though he grew up with strict Seventh Day Adventist
parents who considered these songs "devil's music." ("Everything
was a sin," he says. "Everything.")
When he joined the Army in 1964, after he returned from Vietnam
in 1966, and all through the years he earned his degree in
psychology and worked as a counselor, Gibson became exposed
to a world of music he'd never known.
The standards caught his ear.
Fast-forward to 1986. Gibson was on vacation in the Virgin
Islands. The band in the hotel bar invited people to come up and
sing. The woman he was with suggested he try. Nervous, he got
onstage and sang Since I Fell For You.
"I just closed my eyes and got into the music,"
he says. "The audience really responded."
That opened his eyes-to the possibility of a singing career. He
spent the next few years saving to buy equipment, musical charts,
clothing and the other accessories he'd need.
Then, six years ago, the desire for a smaller city and slower pace
brought him to Indianapolis from his hometown, Chicago.
He's slowly built a following here, working mostly corporate
shows and private parties but more recently branching out into
clubs. You can see Gibson singing a somewhat uptempo set from
5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesdays at Loughmiller's, 301 W.
Washington St.
On Friday and Saturday nights at Mariah's Dining and Spirits,
2408 Lake Circle Drive on the Far Northside, he concentrates
more on romance, ballads and letting the lyrics tell their story.
"It's one thing to have a voice," Gibson says. "But then to take that
voice and try to tell a story with it is really serious. I used to do a
lot of vocal gymnastics. But to try to not do any of that-to have
pure tones, hold the melody and at the same time have some
emotional expression of what the writer meant and articulate your
words-that's really not easy."
Marc Allan is popular-music critic for The Indianapolis Star
and The Indianapolis News.
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