One of the reasons Susan Gibson always keeps a banjo close at hand, be it in the studio or at every show she plays, is because she likes the “lift” it brings to counterbalance a particularly heavy lyric. “It’s almost like it’s got a smile attached to it,” she says. But as much as she loves the instrument, the fact is, she really doesn’t have to reach for it that often. Not because she shies away from such material, but because her naturally buoyant melodies and warmly reassuring, conversational singing and writing voice more often than not provide all the lift she needs to light up any song, room, or mood.
For proof, just listen to The Hard Stuff — the award-winning Texas songwriter’s seventh release as a solo artist and her first fulllength album since 2011’s Tight Rope. Much like the EP that preceded it, 2016’s Remember Who You Are, the aptly-titled The Hard Stuff is rooted in grief; Gibson wrote the album in the midst of coming to terms with the death of first one parent and then the other in the span of four years, a time during which she says
