Susan Gibson & Caitlin Cannon: A Songswap

SUSAN GIBSON 

Susan Gibson knows all about blessings. Roundabout 28 years ago, she wrote herself a wish that grew up and went off on its own to become one of the biggest country songs of all time. Smiling at its success from afar, Gibson went on to happily live her own best life, free to hit the open road with a van full of happy dogs and a heart full of songs to share with attentive audiences across the country — and all the room in the world to "make the big mistakes" that a wide-eyed dreamer kinda gal could ever ask for.

All that said, though, Gibson is not a lives-in-la-la-land kinda dreamer. Blessed as she's been, the award-winning songwriter also knows all too well that in the real world, sometimes there's just no avoiding "the hard stuff." Mind, not the kind she consciously swore off way back on Valentine's Day, 2010; after nine years of humble sobriety, it's easy enough, relatively speaking, for her to resist the temptation of a bottle of wine at a friend's table or politely decline the occasional unasked-for drink sent to the stage by a fan. But positive life choices and willpower alone offer no proof or protection against the kind of knock-you-on-your-butt shots that life itself can serve up on the regular. The best you can do, she's learned, is take each hit as it comes, get back up again, and try to find your wits and center of gravity before the next wallop lands. Because as sure as hearts break, van transmissions fail, and loved ones (both two- and four-legged) pass on, you can always count on another one coming.

CAITLIN CANNON

Caitlin Cannon's upcoming release, Beggar (a four-song EP set to debut on April 5, 2024 as a standalone precursor to her forthcoming full-length album Love Addict) is all songwriting chops and vibe.

With cinematic soundscapes, nostalgic atmospheres, and words that are a testament to the enduring power of storytelling at their center, Cannon is evolving beyond the bronze status she once proudly declared in her critically lauded debut release, The TrashCannon Album.

According to Saving Country Music, Cannon's “not a songwriter for the winners; she's a songwriter for the broken, the downtrodden, the losers, the motherfuckers. She sings about real shit that most other songwriters don't have the guts to broach. A crack pool player and a hilarious person on stage who could have a second career as a comedian, Caitlin Cannon is one of those country artists that slides so criminally under the radar; it angers the blood…"