March/April 2009 - Dirty Linen

Shaking Out The Sheets (back of magazine feature)

"Gibson's daughter, singer/songwriter Meridian Green, has overseen the re-release of Gibson's recordings during this era (1970s/1980s) on the new Bob Gibson Legacy label, bringing a significant body of work to light that had hitherto been accessible only to the most intrepid used record collectors."

2/26/09 - Chris Spector

www.midwestrecord.com
www.myspace.com/midwestrecord

BOB GIBSON LEGACY
BOB GIBSON/Uptown Saturday Night: 1984. Bobby Dylan had long since copped his style and with disco having come and gone, it didn't matter to a club owner whether he played no rock and roll or not. But, just like he discovered Joan Baez more than a generation before, Gibson discovered Anne Hills, started a label with her and set off into the uncharted wilds once again. Leaping into the void without the consumer cache of a Leonard Cohen, Gibson surrounded himself with the love from those that cared to give it and made a singer/songwriter album that showed the "Gibstein" collaboration was still in full flower and why taste makers that had the public cache looked up to him. A classy album made on his own with nothing but himself to fall back on, this album might have been the best kept secret of his living legend years but it's certainly one that you must check out. A generation later, there's a new generation that could really learn from this album as well as simply enjoy the grand musical gesture it was/is.

BOB GIBSON/Perfect High: If this was an ep with only "Mendocino Desperados", "Middle Aged Groupies" and "Leaving for the Last Time". it would be worth the price of admission. Rounded out with the rest of what a Gibson show was like at the turn of the 80's with the Gibstein songs rocking the house, this was more of a personal statement than people probably realized at the time as he headed into acting for a while after this. Another grand example of why folk music took such a hold at one time in out musical history and how a handful of hotshots kept it viable long after it's shelf date. A delightful walk down memory lane.
Volume 32/Number 118

CHRIS SPECTOR, Editor and Publisher
©2009 Midwest Record

2/2009 - Rambles.net

Bob Gibson Legacy Series Review

"These records, long missing, are finally here again and that is cause for celebration. ... the packaging is beautiful, the sound crisp and balanced. ... You can sample the project by ordering the single disc Bob Gibson: The Living Legend Years, which offers a range of music from the four CDs, along with three new songs, one of which is another Gibson and Camp duet. You might as well go ahead and buy the package, though, because after you hear the sampler, you're going to want it."

You can read the full review at www.rambles.net/gibson_legacy08.html.

1/7/2009 - Folk and Music Exchange (FAME)

Reviews of all five CDs:

Bob Gibson - Funky in the Country
"... (a huge chasm in the field) that's now being repaired by his daughter Meridian Green ... with this marvelous exposition of root-bottom folk singing and superb 12-string playing, as the audience's reception well demonstrates."

Bob Gibson and Hamilton Camp - Homemade Music
"... a great showcase of ground-level writing and musicianship. Especially when singing harmony with Gibson, Camp's voice takes on an almost eerily (Paul) Williams cast, and when he affects that tremulous high falsetto…yow! Gibson complements him not only vocally but on 12-string as well ... Homemade Music is a delight, topped only by Gibson's The Perfect High ..."

Bob Gibson - The Perfect High
"Gibson's voice, humor, playing, sense of high harmonics, and general exuberance surpass anything he'd done to the point, infectious to a incredible degree: witty, sarcastic, campy, warm, tender, caustic with a panoply of incisively humorous takes ..."

Bob Gibson - Uptown Saturday Night
(Anne Hills') presence instills (upon) Uptown ... a better sense of the past, affecting an Emmylou Harris-ish backing role, sweet and fragile. ... Gibson's individual voice shines through clearly in cuts like Lookin' for You ... . Thankfully, too, the guy picked up the banjo again, adding to his 12-string mainstay."

Bob Gibson - The Living Legend Years
"The fifth in the re-release Bob Gibson Legacy series, this is an anthology of the previous four with three previously unreleased cuts. ... This CD is recommended for those unsure of or unfamiliar with Gibson's materials. Once again, I have to turn to The Perfect High, which is oddly only excerpted once here, as Gibson's most untouchably superb release, but this will do quite nicely in lieu, quite nicely indeed."

Web site: www.acousticmusic.com

12/2008 - ROOTSTIME

Review: Living Legend Years

A review of Living Legend Years (in Dutch): Living Legend Years Review.

Web site: www.rootstime.be

8/11/08 - Arthur Wood

Arthur Wood - Bob Gibson feature in Folkwax

A five part feature on Bob Gibson appeared in the free, weekly, online folk publication, FolkWax, starting in late July and running through August 2008.

The feature can be found in the Archive, in the Backstage area, on the FolkWax site.

You can subscribe to FolkWax at www.folkwax.com.

4/25/08 - Chris Spector

www.midwestrecord.com
www.myspace.com/midwestrecord

BOB GIBSON LEGACY
GIBSON & CAMP/Homemade Music: Did you know that Gibson and Camp didn't know each other until Gibson came home one day and found Camp sitting in his living room? Albert Grossman wanted his own power folk trio and saw Gibson, Camp and Jo Mapes being his version of Kingston Trio. He was savvy enough to see the magic between Gibson and Camp before they even played together and that's why their 1961 duo set is still such a landmark today. When Grossman couldn't make these three tow the mark, he threw up his hands and invented Peter, Paul and Mary instead. They might have been unruly, but the magic in the music couldn't de denied. 17 years later, Gibson & Camp reformed the group that never really was, made a genre busting set in an old folkie's basement and gave it a valiant go in the face of disco. This set wasn't folk, singer/songwriter or anything that could fit under any easy label other than good. Originally released on an out of the way folk label in the face of disco and an immanent industry collapse, it fueled a PBS special that needs to be dug out of moth balls as well. A hold over from an era that gave us other duos that should have been like Martin & Neil, this is set that any folk fan needs to complete their collection of the era and to enjoy in real time. A delightful, one of a kind set that's great to have back in print.

April 11, 2008 - Chris Spector - Midwest Record

www.midwestrecord.com
www.myspace.com/midwestrecord

BOB GIBSON LEGACY
BOB GIBSON/Funky in the Country: With the entire folk music era being reduced to either what you can take away from "A Mighty Wind" or PBS specials with old, fat, bald guys talking about Eisenhower and McCarthy, it can be a challenge to put Bob Gibson in perspective. He was one of the prime movers of the folk era but hounded by his own demons, you don't think of him in the same thought as Kingston Trio, Peter Paul & Mary and several others unless you were incredibly precocious or are well into your retirement years. Gibson gave us Judy Collins and Joan Baez, wrote most of the songs on the best Chad Mitchell Trio album, had the nascent Eagles back him up on his last major label release for quite a while and was in on a string of woulda/coulda/shouldas that hinges on unbelievable if it wasn't really so. When this DIY album was released in 1974, Chicago was the last bastion of folk music. It would take disco to kill it off in ways that even the British Invasion couldn't. But disco was a few years off and SoCal singer/singerwriters picked up the folk/acoustic music mantle and were trudging forward. Into all that, Gibson hit us between the eyes with "Living Legend" on this record. If you were a snotty college kid, you knew it was a great song and performance but you didn't realize it hit you so hard because the lyrics were painfully truthful and autobiographical. You knew him as an amiable folkie that had a cup of coffee in the show, not as someone that almost ran the show. Just like he had 20 years before, Gibson picked up his 12 string, sang his heart out and gave you what you came for. Reprising his hit, kicking it on some Shel Silverstein co-writes and serving up something that was not only right for the times but stands the test of time, this is one of the lost gems of the 70s. You had to have missed this first time around and this is a great time to catch up on what you missed. This is one cat that always had it.
1002

BOB GIBSON/The Living Legend Years: A best of collection culled from the 4 albums Gibson did in the 70s and 80s with some added tracks from the vaults. Eventually, all the albums represented here will be individually released but until they are, this is contemporary folkie delight.
1001

April 10, 2008 - Mike Regenstreif - The Montreal Gazette

BOB GIBSON, The Living Legend Years (Bob Gibson Legacy) This fine compilation of solo tracks, and duets with Hamilton Camp and Tom Paxton, includes three previously-unreleased gems, and another 10 songs drawn from four LPs the late folk legend recorded between 1974 and ’84. ****

MIKE REGENSTREIF