COVER STORY .

Hanging in the Balance

Red Heart The Ticker


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Published: Mar 7, 2007

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

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Tyler Gibbons can pinpoint the moment he realized he and his wife, Robin McArthur, should make music together.

They were on a long car ride, on some highway in the middle of nowhere. Lucinda Williams was on the radio.

Though the two had been playing songs together informally, Gibbons was an aspiring professional musician, and he wanted to keep his career goal separate from the couple's relationship. Also, their musical tastes weren't quite in synch. Case in point: the soundtrack they chose for the road.

Gibbons was in a Nick Drake phase, and McArthur wasn't feeling it. "I thought it was too wimpy," she chuckles. "Soulless." She's more of a folk and country girl. Once it was her turn to regain control of the stereo, she popped in Williams' Sweet Old World. He was coming around but hardly enthusiastic until the last song.

"'Which Will' came on and I said, 'Oh, this is a Nick Drake song!'" Gibbons excitedly recalls. "[Williams'] version is amazing, too. And then it seemed like suddenly we'd discovered this middle ground."

Ever since, the two have walked the line as Red Heart the Ticker. Gibbons talks at length about his songwriting style versus McArthur's style — technical versus emotional. There's also their rural-versus-urban sensibilities. Originally from pastoral Brattleboro, Vt., the duo resettled in fall of 2005 in West Philadelphia, a completed album in tow, to begin working as a band. They still return home in the summertime. "I really need that balance in my life," McArthur says.

The couple's musical equilibrium is deftly captured on For the Wicked, the album that came with them, which was recorded over the course of a winter in a neighbor's barn. Gibbons' indie-pop tastes show through on the effervescent "Go-Cart Thrills," while McArthur goes Nashville on "Pilot Eyes." Some moments are a true fusion; the spiritually themed "Depression" carries her torch and twang, as well as his layered arrangements, glockenspiel and all.

It's a lush sound that, in performance, gets reinterpreted with just guitar and upright bass. McArthur sometimes worries people might "have a hard time warming to the album after seeing us live, because they're expecting this spare, folky thing." Gibbons likes that duality, though, and both agree touring isn't just more practical as a minimal duo, it's more interesting. If friends are in the crowd, or they meet other musicians before the show, there's space for collaboration. "It brings this spontaneous, raw energy," McArthur says.

Similarly, moving to Philadelphia offered Red Heart opportunities for reinvention. Because of the isolation, Gibbons likens For the Wicked to recording in a vacuum — "albeit a beautiful, Vermont woods kind of vacuum" — with no context or influence outside their own tastes. Now, he says, they've drawn inspiration from artists such as Joshua Marcus and Buried Beds, who are friends and neighbors.

They plan to record their next album upon returning to Vermont this year — a summer album balancing a winter one. The couple is excited for what they might discover next.