Bitter Susan

I wrote a while back about seeing Susan Gibson at the Mucky Duck, shortly after the breakup of one of my favorite Texas bands, The Groobees. I was not impressed with the performance, and was especially turned off by Susan's seeming bitterness towards her old mates.

Over a year later, Susan Gibson still seems like a terribly bitter person, if this American-Statesman article is accurate (and I think it is).

I can sympathize up to a point with her regarding "Wide Open Spaces." That song has made a ton of money, and she did write it before she was part of the Groobees. But as I wrote to my friend Sean earlier, there are tons of great songs that never make it big (like "Fallen Angel Palace" by Brent Mitchell, a great unknown Texas songwriter now living in the UK). Her association with the band brought that song to the attention of Lloyd Maines, who brought it to the Chicks' attention, and the rest was history. That same thing might have happened to any number of Groobees songs that Susan did NOT write. So I can see the rationale for pooling the publishing of the songs for the band the way they did, and one would think it would build band cohesion.

But it didn't quite work out that way, as the article notes:

Devers says things started to sour when Gibson bought an RV in 2000 and traveled separately from the group. "It didn't feel like 'all for one' anymore," he says. The infusion of cash through the publishing side, which was supposed to help keep the band healthy and united, played a big part in breaking up the band. Gibson and Devers can agree on that irony.

Traveled separately from the group?! I hadn't heard THAT part. Of course the band had to break up. One person decided she was much bigger than the rest (and I'm REALLY resisting a cheap shot here). Ugh.

And what about Susan's suck-up attorney? This is too much:

Gibson's Nashville attorney Deborah Magnon says, "You can either think of Susan as incredibly naive or as a very giving person. I like to think of her as Mother Theresa."

Mother Theresa?! Gawd, that almost sounds like the Chron writing about Enron's Andrew Fastow or Jeffrey Skilling! And it's just about as believable.

[Posted at 22:17 CST on 08/11/02] [Link]