Susan Gibson & Al Barlow @ The Redbird - 4 pm

1260 Business IH 35 South,New Braunfels TX 78130

10 October, 2021

Description

Susan Gibson & Al Barlow @ The Redbird Susan Gibson knows all about blessings. Roundabout 28 years ago, she wrote herself a wish that grew up and went off on its own to become one of the biggest country songs of all time. Smiling at its success from afar, Gibson went on to happily live her own best life, free to hit the open road with a van full of happy dogs and a heart full of songs to share with attentive audiences across the country — and all the room in the world to "make the big mistakes" that a wide-eyed dreamer kinda gal could ever ask for. All that said, though, Gibson is not a lives-in-la-la-land kinda dreamer. Blessed as she's been, the award-winning songwriter also knows all too well that in the real world, sometimes there's just no avoiding "the hard stuff." Mind, not the kind she consciously swore off way back on Valentine's Day, 2010; after nine years of humble sobriety, it's easy enough, relatively speaking, for her to resist the temptation of a bottle of wine at a friend's table or politely decline the occasional unasked-for drink sent to the stage by a fan. But positive life choices and willpower alone offer no proof or protection against the kind of knock-you-on-your-butt shots that life itself can serve up on the regular. The best you can do, she's learned, is take each hit as it comes, get back up again, and try to find your wits and center of gravity before the next wallop lands. Because as sure as hearts break, van transmissions fail, and loved ones (both two- and four-legged) pass on, you can always count on another one coming. That's the kind of stuff that Gibson writes and sings about on The Hard Stuff: the stuff that hurts. So why then do so many of her songs on the album — the follow-up to her 2015 EP Remember Who You Are and first full-length collection of new material since 2011's TightRope — have the effect of leaving the listener feeling not depressed and beaten down, but wiser, lighter, and ultimately uplifted? https://www.susangibson.com/ She will be joined by Al Barlow. There is no scientific way to prove it, but Al Barlow may very well be the happiest man on the face of this big ol' goofy world. You think this when you see him from across a room, when you listen to any of his songs live or on your home stereo, even when he’s just a big, sunny East Texas voice twanging on the other end of a phone line. Any way you encounter him, Al Barlow is pure, unadulterated and relentless Happy personified. And he knows it. "I’ve never met anybody in my life that I would consider a happier person," Barlow readily concedes. "I’ve met a lot of happy folks but I don’t know anybody more blessed than me. I’ve had my share of heartaches and grief, but I’m not gonna let that part of life dominate me. But not only am I gonna be happy, I’m gonna make damn sure that I try to make everybody else happy that I come in contact with." He chuckles. "It’s just one of my mental problems. "