Author: Max Brzezinski
If you’d like us to send you/your group an Artist Questionnaire, message ncmusic@dncr.nc.gov
Capsule summary-style, describe your band(s) (its members, home, history)
Let’s see. We’re a two-person-plus band called Gibson & Toutant. Some people want to know which one of us is Gibson and which one of us is Toutant. And that’s fair enough, but it’s more a “band name” than it is two stage personas. We make several flavors of rock and pop music, including lo-fi, faux-leather, and novelty. The whole thing of the band is trying to stir up some of the energy of the DIY music worlds that we imprinted on. That’s our musical tradition, so to speak. The songs we write are kind of mini fantasies and character evocations. And often we’re using something else as a template, like a keyboard program or a Fine Young Cannibals song played backwards. You know, that kind of thing!
Most slept-on, underrated North Carolina artist?
An artist from North Carolina who inspires us is Eugene Chadbourne. Who is he? A banjo player and singer, on paper, but in practice something all his own. He invented “the electric rake” and has a discography longer than a phone book. We got to play a gig with him last fall outside All Day Records in Carrboro, and that was an experience that felt really affirming… artistically, sure, but also just in terms of people coming together around music in a spirit of play. It’s great knowing, or remembering, that a show can be like that. It helps when you also have a promoter who cares a whole heck of a lot, and sets up sound equipment plus tents for shade. (Thanks, Charlie!) And when the “front row” is kids on a blanket eating watermelon. What we’re saying is: go to see Doc Chad play live! Our hearts are in this recommendation.
Earliest North Carolina memories?
Josephine McRobbie: Shortly after moving to the Triangle, we visited the Nasher Museum for a fantastic exhibit called Southern Accent. If I remember correctly, it included a photograph (from Catherine Opie’s photography series Domestic) of Tammy Rae Carland and Kaia Wilson in their then-backyard in Durham. Suddenly I remembered - Carland and Wilson’s Mr. Lady Records (The Butchies, Le Tigre, Tracy + The Plastics), one of those life-line music purveyors whose mail-order catalogs I received in high school, had been based here! It was a first pinpoint in what would become a much deeper mental map of the region’s queer/feminist music community and history.
What are the important shared sensibilities between you and your collaborators? Divergences?
Joseph O'Connell: I’ve thought about this a lot and I think there is one central difference. One of us likes a very, very thin layer of Vegemite on toast. The other likes a more generous amount. But the cool thing about working together is that it’s not always obvious who is going to argue for which kinds of decisions. It’s pretty undogmatic as a project, and I think that gets us to some creative places that neither of us is likely to reach alone. Which is how collaboration should work, probably!
How has your work changed over time?
Jospeph O'Connell: We noticed that as we got more experience as a project and worked up to making a full-length album we became a bit fussier and a bit less certain. “Don’t worry the album,” Steve Albini said. I mean, not to us he didn’t say that. He said it to someone like Kurt Cobain, maybe. But anyway, don’t worry the album. And we made a good album, which Sleepy Cat Records generously shared with the world. A little bit more cautious than our tapes? Maybe. But with some good moments of daring. Next time: we want to lift some of those album-type inhibitions.
What makes good music? Bad music? What do you love in a great song, hate in a bad one, and what renders you indifferent in a blah one?
Josephine McRobbie: Possibly a more potent question - what is there to love in a bad song and to hate in a great one? We think about the St Anger-era Metallica line “my lifestyle determines my deathstyle” more than anyone ever should… it’s probably a bad lyric, but saying it when taking out the trash in the winter can really get the dopamine flowing. In G&T, good and bad are pretty permeable. And for those who feel that music can be categorized into simple good and bad, there’s already an exemplary guide to this philosophy co-created by NC’s own Jon Wurster / Ronald Thomas Clontle – Scharpling and Wurster’s “Rock Rot and Rule”.
Image: Libby Rodenbough