Gibb Todd

(Profile by Jan Nary)

Scottish-born Gibb Todd’s love affair with Australia started with a can of peaches!

Wartime “bundles for Britain” were delivered to his home- town of Peebles; young Gibb didn’t know what a peach looked like and had no concept of Australia – but it was love at first bite and it lit a fire of Austrophilia that stills burns strong.

When his parents announced plans to emigrate “Down Under” Gibb launched himself into a frenzy of research on everything Australian – from kangaroos to meat pies –his little suitcase was packed and he was ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Peebles is a major market town in the Scottish Borders and Gibb was particularly fascinated with the thought of rural Australia.

“I remember Friday market- days in Peebles, where the streets were a sea of sheep, right up to the shop doorways. I used to work for pocket money leading sheep around in the sales rings and the idea of doing that on some big Australian sheep station filled my boy’s heart with an excitement I can’t describe.”

Gibb pauses, with the trademark Todd chuckle, a deep, warm sound that makes you grin just to hear it.

“I remember once being given 5/- (about 50c) to take a great herd of bullocks to the slaughter house. I lost them, they all ran off and I didn’t know what to do –so I went home and hoped they’d find their own way to slaughter house.

“Five shillings must have been the going rate then for market jobs for young lads. That was also what they paid you -and you earned every penny - for holding pigs while their ears were marked. You had to sit on their back with your legs around their neck –and get off bloody quick smart once the job was done!”        

To Gibb’s devastation, the family’s immigration plans were dropped. The family moved to Coventry, where they stayed in his grandmother’s house.

“Coventry at the time was a burgeoning honey pot of industry, and living there was just awful,” Gibb recalls. “There was Gran, our family of eight, seven lodgers - and one bathroom. It was a far cry from the visions I’d had of a little wooden cottage in the Australian bush!”

“Music was one good thing in those days. All his family are musical (my grandfather was a tip drummer in the Royal Scots) and Saturday nights were family session nights. Everyone had to so something, a song or a poem or a wee act; my dad would play guitar and sing his favorite Jimmy Rogers songs – music was just a part of our life.”

Gibb was in a band with his father and brother-in-law in the 60s and they shone at events like Kilkenny Beer Festival where in a field 190 bands they took out first prize in the Ballad Contest. Gibb’s father didn’t have the patience to teach his left- handed son how to play the banjo so Gibb taught himself –and is now an accomplished banjo player.(His current banjo is a gift of Finbar Furey’s, a long- necked “singing banjo” style designed by Pete Seeger).

Gibb escaped Coventry in the early seventies and worked and played in Bermuda for a year (“Not a good career move, but a lot of fun!”) and met Australian Dave Brooke – “Brooksie”, a descendent of the White Rajah of Sarawak – who was to become a lifelong friend and a significant influence in Gibb’s life.

Gibb went on to play a gig in Nantucket on his way back to the UK and was noticed by Arty Kraus who promptly offered him a seven- month contract at the Brotherhood of Thieves, one of Nantucket’s most popular venues. The head of Universal Television heard him play there and invited him visit while in New York – with the suggestion of a recording contract. Gibb went to New York but didn’t follow through on the contract possibility. (“Basically, I thought it was too good to be true, that it must be all bull –so I just let it go – wrong decision!” )

Gibb’s hard-earned confidence was given a body blow when on his return to the UK he found that far from welcoming home the conquering hero, many people on the folk scene thought that he had emigrated for good – or died.

Gibb gave the lie to the rumour by establishing himself as keystone in the Scottish folk scene; he has shared the stage with other such luminaries as The Dubliners, The Fureys, the Clancy Brothers, Tom Paxton, Archie Fisher , Brian McNeil, Dick Gaughin, Roy Bailey and American legend John Herald and is established as a central figure in Glasgow’s prestigious Celtic Connections festival.

But as successful as his career was now becoming, the fates had other plans for Gibb. One evening a burst of nostalgia moved Gibb to ring an old friend in the Bermuda bar where he used to play. Brooksie, whom Gibb hadn’t seen for many years, just happened to be in town - and in the bar.

Then the wheels really started to spin. Gibb had just met his wife Annie and Brooksie suggested that they should come over and sample the country of his dreams. Gibb’s emotional suitcase was still packed from his Peebles days and he didn’t take much persuading; in 1993 he stepped onto the land that he already thought of as “home”; the title of his recently – released CD Goin’ Home bears testimony to that long- held dream.

He helped Brooksie (“Got under his feet, more like!”) in his plant nursery, falling in love with the freshness and openness of the Northern Rivers district.

“I was as green as,” he recalls. ”I was hauling around some potted palms one day and asked Brooksie where he wanted them. ‘Oh, just put them up on the hill where the bangelows are,’ he said – I think he wanted me out of the way as much as anything. Well, I lugged the bloody things up to the top of the hill and back down again and I said to him ‘I can’t see any houses up there’ … I thought he’d said bungalows….”

Another experience and another song - that was the genesis of Where the Bangelows Are, a tribute to one of Gibb’s favourite places.

Though the dream of emigration finally came true Gibb is still in high demand in the UK . His rich, incredibly deep voice, impeccable musicianship and vast repertoire of songs –traditional, contemporary and original – have established him as one of the soundest musicians on the Scottish folk stage. Gibb is fast making his mark on the Australian music scene and for more than two years now has called Australia home in a very real sense. He and Annie became naturalised Australians soon after their arrival and are settled in coastal Queensland’s Windaroo - and yes, there are bangelows in the garden.