Your New Best Friend: Austin Gibbs

Face it, musicians are intimidating — they have cool hair, cool clothes, fans and pride. Walking up to an adored musician can be one of life’s scarier moments, but it doesn’t always have to be that way.

“A lot of people expect to talk music at my shows, but I always talk movies or I talk TV or I talk ‘Lost’,” Austin Gibbs says. “I would hate for someone to come to a show and think if you don’t talk music with me, I don’t want anything to do with you.”

Gibbs is a local indie-rock songwriter who has begun to gain some notoriety around the Valley. He’s been on his own since August 2007 after his former band, Austin Gibbs and The States, split.

Gibbs says he feels like he’s accomplished a lot in close to two years. He says he likes it on his own because of the process of bands writing songs, breaking up and no one being able to use the songs.

“I enjoy just being Austin Gibbs, because being self titled, I don’t ever lose those songs,” Gibbs says. “Before I started, this is what I wanted to do — write songs and have it be under my own name, and also, I wanted to be known as a singer-songwriter.”

Gibbs says he grew up with not many musical influences. “I’ve always been really into movies, so I feel like I was late with music,” he says. He started off with The Get Up Kids and Weezer in eighth grade, with his favorite band now being Wilco. He also feels for female vocalists such as Carol King, Priscilla Ahn, Sixpence None the Richer, and says he is starting to fall in love with Sara Bareilles. Friends often make fun of him.

Gibbs’ self-titled EP was supposed to be released April 6, but a miscommunication with iTunes has delayed the big day. Despite the un-release, Gibbs still had a digital release show on stickam.com that night. “Having a digital CD and having a digital show is kind of like I am there with [fans], like we’re all in the same town, Digitaltown, Earth,” Gibbs says. “If it’s my only option right now, I’m going to take full advantage of it.”

Gibbs says once he has made enough money through Internet sales to make physical copies of the EP, he will have a CD-release show. “The Internet is a huge resource for people like me,” he says. “If it wasn’t for the Internet, I would probably have 15 fans.” He says he also hopes to record some more songs to eventually expand the EP into a full-length album. Gibbs wanted his current work to be a five-or six-song EP, but says he ran out of money. As for now, “I felt like those songs needed to be recorded.”

Gibbs says he wants his next move to be a tour. “I’m dying to get out there,” he says. “I’m dying to get out there and spend the day with [fans] and play music.”

Getting To Know Gibbs:

Favorite Color: Mustard Yellow
Favorite Movie: “Sleepaway Camp”
Favorite Comedian: Demetri Martin
Favorite Show: “Lost”
Celebrity Crush: Alexis Bledel
Favorite Holiday: Thanksgiving
Favorite Bar: Anything with beer
Favorite Bar Game: Photohunt
Favorite Clothing Store: H&M
Favorite Stallone Movie: “Daylight”
Worst Fear: Snakes/Sharks
Favorite Decade: 2040
Favorite Candy: Reeses’ in the freezer

Reach the reporter at lauren.cusimano@asu.edu