Afternoon Hang: Seth Bernard, C. Gibbs, Gregory Stovetop

Saturday Afternoon Hang.

Seth Bernard has a uniquely Michigan anatomy: knee deep in glacier-folk with a belly full of whiskey and peaches smuggled from the root cellar of a ’70s guitar god. Fingers resinous with fresh cut white pine, and sacred north star geometries whirling around his brow.

Born on April Fools Day, and playing the trickster-bard every day since, he’s grown from a potent young Interlochen idealist into a black-bearded surprise-eyed psych-rocker singing the woods and water, souls and soils of the Great Lakes.

The tools! He’s got a pine-box-full, from his Gretsch (and the chops to play it, mister), to the many iterations of Seth-music. I mean Airborne or Aquatic, bristling with fuzz-poem arena-anthems, to Starlight Six, the madly talented hybrid of Michigan royalty (May Erlewine, Joshua Davis of Steppin’ In It, Mike Shimmin of, well, everything, and the power duo of Dominic and Rachael Davis). Or he can roll solo, with a catalog of hundreds of original tunes, thousands of covers and millions of improvisational licks. And the waltzes. By god the waltzes.

His most valuable tool, though, doesn’t live in that box: two good ears. Seth listens like a priest. To his audience, to his community, to his deep-rooted intuitive star-born aurora borealis campfire ancestor soul. That alone makes every show – EVERY SHOW – worth the price of admission.
-Brad Kik, co-founder of the Institute for Sustainable Living, Art and Natural Design

C. Gibbs is an American singer and songwriter originally from San Diego, California, now based in Brooklyn, NY. He was a member of Jim Thirlwell’s band Foetus, played guitar in Modern English, fronted the rock trio Morning Glories and pursued a solo career when signing to Atlantic Records for one album in 1999.[1]

Currently he fronts the chamber-rock group Lucinda Black Bear.