Southern Gothic

The lawyerwriter's trials and tribulations with wicked, wicked women are not yet over. More editing needs to be done on the book. Unfortunately, the whole experience has left me completely drained and broke. I am starting to emerge into the normal world again, and looking for work--copywriting, corporate communications, you name it. Going back to the book is not something I'm looking forward to. Even lawyerwriters need a break.

To distract myself, I went to see C.Gibbs play at the Galleria in the Gershwin Hotel--the only hotel in New York with stained-glass horns growing from the front of the building. The galleria is bright, then dark, and C.Gibbs played in a gothic little room in the back. Whatever wasn't covered in dark mahagony paneling was covered in red velvet, and though there were a few gold chandeliers, the light was all red. C.Gibbs is hard to describe--he's honky-tonk, bluegrass, with piano and steel guitars, all played fast and loose . When I last saw C.Gibbs, his music was lost and Faulknerian--lots of songs about haunted highways and loneliness at the bottom of a glass. His latest CD Parade of Horses, though, has a lot more fire in it. He's a journeyman musician who spins both heartbreak and admiration into spooky, Southern Gothic lyrics and hell-raising tunes. I don't like country and I don't like sensitive guitar balladeers, but C.Gibbs plays like a man who's lost a bet with the devil, who drives to Vegas in a Chevy convertible with a bottle of bourbon in his lap, who's contemplated russian roulette on dark Saturday nights. Live, C.Gibbs rocks with good old-boy rowdiness. When he sang of never holding a woman sacred again, the dark room pulsed with the beats, like a red velvet heart. He reminded me that even the worst of troubles can make the best of stories.