The music of Otis Gibbs is as crisp and clear as an autumn morning in Brown County. It’s as warm and as trusting as a Hoosier vegetable stand run on the honor system. And it’s as humble and plainspoken as a family farmer.

In many ways, Otis Gibbs represents the artistic conscience of Indiana. Over the course of many years and many more songs, he’s remained true to himself and to his ideas of championing the working man. If Woody Guthrie was alive and hitching rides through Indiana, Otis Gibbs would pick him up, cook him a meal and swap stories.

Gibbs’ notion of ethics comes through especially clear on his new album, One Day Our Whispers, which contains 16 slices of Midwestern life, from haunting lost-love songs, to finely detailed stories of everyday people, to populist anthems to counterbalance John Ashcroft’s America.

“I don’t think of my songs as political,” Gibbs says. “There was a time when people would talk about things like that as part of their everyday lives. We’ve been taught that it’s a strange thing for someone to speak out on how they feel, so when someone does, people think you’re an incredibly loudmouthed guy.

“I met a kid who was telling me how boring his history class was. I said it was because they don’t teach the interesting things about history. You don’t learn the things that might relate to you as a person.

“It might be class. I may be coming from a perspective that maybe a George Bush wouldn’t write from if he were a songwriter, because he’d write about what he knows. I know about growing up in a working-class family and the things you see along the way.”

Dissent is marginalized
When you’re patriotized
Dissent is marginalized
When the fear starts to rise
And if you speak your mind
You better quote the company line
—”Big Brother John”

“I don’t think either party even comes close to representing average everyday folks or their interests,” Gibbs says, stroking his long beard. “It’s just that sometimes the Democrats stumble onto something that’s a little better. What’s that phrase? ‘The evil of two lessers’? It seems like the Democratic Party has done everything it can to distance itself from its working-class roots. They don’t seem to walk the walk very well.

“I could give a damn about Republican or Democrat or whatever. There are people you either agree with or you don’t. When it’s one on one, it’s neighborhood, it’s so much better. You can communicate and you care what your neighbor thinks. When you fall into these molds of political parties and their dogmas, it doesn’t help anyone.

“It doesn’t sell ad space on television if people find common ground and get things done. It’s a lot easier to get two heads on there screaming at each other with opposing viewpoints and then you can get people to consume or buy soap.”

Remember that preacher when we were kids
He’d talk about love and non-violence
When he said, “Jesus was a pacifist”
it all made sense
Wish we had more men like him
—”Small Town Saturday Night”

Born in Ohio but raised in Wanamaker, Ind., Gibbs played hundreds and hundreds of shows in hundreds of juke joints, smoky bars, out-of-the way clubs and basketball arenas throughout the United States and Europe. He once drove 21 hours to play a gig in Austin with his band, played a 45 minute set, then turned around and drove 21 hours back to Indiana.

Next month, he starts a promotional tour where he’ll play farmer supply stores in places like Britt, Iowa, West Bend, Iowa, Leroy, Ill., and Rabbit Hatch, Ky., concluding with a show at Wanamaker Feed & Seed.

“I’m not going to claim to be the hardest-working guy on the planet, but I definitely believe a person should see the fruits of their labor,” he says. “It’s not getting any easier for the little guy. The people who control the money do so at the expense of the little guy and it keeps getting harder for him to survive. I guess that’s the American spirit, working hard enough so you don’t have to be under someone else’s thumb.”

Gibbs says he would like to be able to put out a lot more, because he’s always writing. A lot of his inspiration comes from the lonely hours on the highway, driving to and from gigs. “When I’m out there, I try to find a little country station to listen to. There are pockets of nice things to listen to on the radio around the country, but they’re getting harder to find. But if it’s the middle of the night, I might listen to Art Bell and make myself scared.”

He also gets ideas from just hanging out, whether it’s a fancy hotel in Tennessee or a small-pay lake in Indiana. “It’s fun when you go to places like the pay lake and see the people fishing. It’s its own little world. You don’t see those people around anywhere else. I may not agree with a lot of the ways they look at things. But the most beautiful parts of America are the little pockets of culture like that that we need to preserve, because they are truly indigenous. Maybe the pay lake is the great melting pot, because all the people are sitting around with one common goal. They’re sharing dough balls, bloodworms, just trying to catch fish.”

Gibbs says, “If you are a creative person, you should turn out a lot of work, even when you don’t feel inspired. If you write every day, when you finally do get that moment of inspiration, you’re more likely to have developed your craft enough to carry it through to something meaningful. A creative person has to create.”

Got strip-searched inside a tunnel
Roughest cops I ever met
They didn’t find anything on me
I’m not one to mess around
They thanked me when it was over
And said stay out of Detroit town
—”Get Me Out of Detroit”

“I’ve been strip-searched twice in the Detroit tunnel trying to get into Canada,” Gibbs says. “I’ve been detained two other times. I’m the guy that whenever I go to an airport, they’ll wave 20 people through, and when I’m next in line, it’s, ‘You! Stand over there!’ So, yeah, I had to take it all off. It wasn’t very fun.”

Despite his shoulder-length hair and billy-goat beard, Gibbs isn’t, and has never been, a stoner or drinker, although he gets profiled as one by people who don’t know him. “I’m square to some people. I don’t care about doing any drinking or drugs or anything, but some people look at me and that’s what they see. The only time I haven’t been harassed at the airport was earlier this year at the Amsterdam airport, which they say is the most secure airport in the world. They just waved me through. So they must know what they’re doing.

“It’s hard to get Europeans to understand where Indiana is,” he says. “You can say it’s ‘south of Chicago,’ and every now and then you’ll meet an auto racing fan who knows about the 500. Maybe Bobby Knight. I think their view fits the stereotype: fat and lazy and bad-tempered sometimes. Those are the stereotypes, but I think anytime when you meet people one on one, it’s completely different, because there’s none of the dogma.”

He says, “Supposedly Europeans hate Americans. They don’t hate Americans at all. They just aren’t really fond of our government of late. Everybody knows that governments don’t necessarily represent the wants of their people. That’s the beautiful thing about small-town life. You just smile and wave.

“That’s also the best thing about Indianapolis. We’re a small town. But I think our leaders are trying their best to get away from that and make us some kind of world-class city. Everything that’s great about Indianapolis stems from the fact it’s a small town with a million people in it. People are so nice in Indianapolis. Maybe I don’t put out the vibes of a jerk, but people are so nice to me here that it’s ridiculous.

“If I’m backpacking through Europe, it’s so inspiring that I just have to create. I love my day-to-day life and my neighborhood, but Indianapolis is not the most inspiring place. I remember going to a restaurant a year or so ago and seeing these Israeli kids. They were all wide-eyed about Indianapolis and it was new and exciting. It’s just strip malls to me but to them it was a foreign land. I wish I could see my town through their eyes. When I’m traveling, I can see the world through those eyes.”

Hard times and yellow lines
Make their way across the road
Singin’ songs about love
Singin’ songs about pain
Just a hard-drivin’ long road man
—”Ballad of the Highway”

Gibbs’ new album has the sound of a long-lost country and western classic, something that a buddy of Hank Sr. or Willie might have recorded back in the day. But Gibbs doesn’t like to be painted into the country music corner.

“It’s traditional country instrumentation,” he admits. “I’ve never had pedal steel guitar on a record before, which was great. It’s fun to have different kinds of instruments. But every song I’ve written is just a song. If I played the same songs with a rock band, they’d still be the same kinds of songs, just with different instrumentation. I’m a firm believer that music is music. Genres might lead somebody to a band, but once you like it, it doesn’t matter. Ray Charles didn’t think about blues, or jazz or country, just music. I believe that, too.”

The disc ranges from personal songs to tales from the road to just good old stories, such as “Murder At The Read House,” based on a story he heard while traveling.

“There’s a hotel in Chattanooga called the Read House and supposedly, in 1927, a hooker named Margarite brought her john to room 311 there. It was a very, very fancy place. And the guy ended up being some kind of wacko and cut her head off. And it’s said that she still haunts the place. They don’t even check the room out to customers, because people leave an hour later saying they’ve seen her ghost. I thought it was an intriguing story. We drove there and talked them into giving us the room for three nights. And nothing happened.”

Elsewhere he sings of small-town burger joints, daughters of truck-drivin’ men and shouts the praises of Emma Goldman, Sacco and Vanzetti and Medgar Evers, whatever’s on his mind at the moment. “I try to stay true to the source of the song. I’m a guy who has things on my mind. Sometimes it’s relationships and sometimes it’s other things.”

He chose the material for One Day Our Whispers from more than 40 songs he wanted to record, and he has three more albums worth of material ready to go. “I wish I’d been back in the time when an artist like the Stones could put out a record every six months. But then I’m lucky to live in these times, when an artist on my level of the food chain simply can make records. Back when, you had to have the machine behind you to make a record at all.”

Gibbs’ last three albums have been on Indianapolis-based Benchmark Records, an outfit he wanted to sign up with after watching label head Josh Baker at work while riding with him to an out-of-town gig.

“On the way down, he made over 100 phone calls working [Benchmark band] Loretta for radio. On the way back, he made 100 more calls. That’s 200 people that he’s trying to get doors open for one of his bands. That’s a beautiful thing. That’s exactly what I want to be a part of, somewhere that has that work ethic. That’s what’s great about Midwesterners. We work hard.”

They’ve given him the freedom and the space to be himself, and it shows on the new album, which was recorded with top Hoosier musicians in three area studios. “Recording is a lot more fun now than it was before,” he says. “The caliber of players is better, the technology is better and I’m better. I think the material I’ve written in the last five years is better than the all of the material I wrote before that. ‘Better’ is a little strong, because I don’t think you can say something is better than something else. I feel like I’m getting closer to the source, and that’s the most important thing as an artist, to get as close to the source as possible.”

The band on the album is mostly his longtime friends: people like Jeff Downey, who Gibbs has known for 20 years, John Byrne, vocalist Amy Lashley, Boyd Thaxton, Dean Metcalf, Tad Armstrong and others. It’s a who’s-who list of top-notch musicians.

He tried to go for a live feel, using the first or second take of most songs. “I love the Bob Dylan model of recording, where you get the best players you can, put them in a room and put them on the spot. After they’ve played it a few times, then they start thinking about their parts and all that stuff, and I don’t think they’re playing the song anymore. I like to say, ‘Here’s how it goes, and let’s go.’ I think people are really good and they can excel in that situation. That’s when magic happens, when everybody’s on the edge and they’re not going through the motions of their particular part.”

He took some pills and hopped a train
Left Kokomo in the midnight rain
Put a dream in his pocket and never looked back
—”Thirty-Three”

At this point in his career, Gibbs is proud of where he’s been and confident about the present. He considers this album just one piece of a very big mosaic. “If you’ve only recorded one album, it’s everything you are to the world musically. It’s all on that one album. But after you’ve made a few, it’s just a piece of what you are musically. The pressure is off and they’re time capsules of where you were in you life at that particular moment. That’s what this record is, a time capsule of where I am right now.”

He’s happy about getting back on the road and would like to play twice as many gigs as the 100 a year he currently plays. But he doesn’t necessarily see that same ambition in the newer bands of today.

“It seems like when you’re a kid, the idea of just getting in a van and traveling to whatever crummy shows you can get is everything. And it doesn’t seem like that exists as a dream anymore,” he says. “Some people still do it, but I don’t think it’s as widespread. It’s not an easy thing to do. It used to be the center piece of the whole rock and roll puzzle but not so much anymore.”

However, he sees some positive signs in that traditional notions of rock and roll stardom — big money, groupies, loads of drugs and major label contracts — have gone out of fashion.

“Musicians have finally smartened up that was a big pile of crap in the first place. If you sign that major label deal, you’re likely to be dropped after a few years and be in the hole for $300,000. Folks seem to be more aware of how better off they are to stay on an independent label. Find someone who loves their music and will work for it. That’s what it’s all about.”

And, in a local music scene known for its competitive nature and occasional in-fighting, he doesn’t really have many — if any — enemies. “I think we all probably have enemies, but I don’t think they come out of the woodwork much for me. I’ve been around a long time, and I still try to be fair to everybody. I think everybody deserves that and it’s the right way to be. I try to be honest and upright with everybody. You end up with a lot of friends that way. There are a lot of people I don’t feel really wonderful about, but I try not to have them in my life. I have no bad feelings, but I try to move. I forgive and forget, but that doesn’t mean they can be in your life.”

And no matter what happens, Indiana will always be his home. “I have no intentions of ever leaving Indianapolis for good. This is home. But it has way less to do with Indianapolis than it does with that this is where my family is, this is where my friends are, this is where my neighborhood is. That’s a really important thing, to have a sense of neighborhood. It’s where you hang out with people and you care about your neighbor.”

One Day Our Whispers will be released July 13, and Gibbs will perform next July 10 at the Patio. For more information, go to www.otisgibbs.com.