Daily Discovery: Ferrill Gibbs, “Insurmountable Things”

Updated:

February 18, 2016 7:05 pm

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ARTIST: Ferrill Gibbs

SONG: “Insurmountable Things”

HOMETOWN: Mobile, Alabama

CURRENT LOCATION: Mobile, Alabama

AMBITIONS: To master something

TURN-OFFS: Lies; the inability to revisit or change one’s opinion

TURN-ONS: Compassion

DREAM GIG: Saenger Theatre, New Orleans

FAVORITE LYRIC: “I’ve heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah” – Leonard Cohen
SONG I WISH I WROTE: “Bohemian Rhapsody”

5 PEOPLE I’D MOST LIKE TO HAVE DINNER WITH: (Besides my family, them first): Louie CK, Pope Francis, Colin Cowherd, Steven Hawking, and Lois Lowry.

MY FAVORITE CONCERT EXPERIENCE: I walked upon a 3-piece band in Memphis called The Dempseys. The trio spewed hurricane-force rockabilly and bounced around like a bunch of coked-up Looney Tunes characters thumping cat-whisker bass and radiator drums in some sort of Hanna-Barbera junkyard band. Best band I ever saw. Don’t tell my wife (Clapton fan).

I WROTE THIS SONG BECAUSE… I write a song each year for my wife on our anniversary. This was 2013’s song. I always try to encapsulate the year and put it to music. This particular year, we went to New York City to see Wynton Marsalis at the Lincoln center. Afterwards, back at the hotel, we watched Jameis Winston win the Heisman Trophy and ate room service. Suddenly, we got a call from back home in Mobile: our house had been flooded. A quarter-sized slit had ruptured in our washing machine hose causing $55,000 worth of damage. We flew back home to be eventually displaced. This is what the song is about, or at least half of it. Now, we have the mental picture set to music, thanks to the help and expertise of a few of our great friends: Jeff Reilly, Robby Handley, JoJo Glidewell, Andy Carlson, Dan Nettles, and Tom Lewis.