The story

Tim Gibbons

Hamilton musician, writer, actor and roots lifer.

Tim Gibbons smiling in front of a painted mural

Tim Gibbons is as real as it gets. Writer, actor and musician, he's spent a lifetime playing the music of deep roots and feeling.

Hamilton, Ontario is home, and his shows there are the stuff of legend. No auto-tune, no fakery, just a genuine reflection of the man and his craft. Solo or with The Swampbusters, Tim moves easily between country blues, swampy rock and roll, soul and the kind of barroom roots music that feels lived-in rather than manufactured.

Along the way he's worked alongside producer Daniel Lanois, filmmaker and actor Billy Bob Thornton, and musicians including Dwight Yoakam, Robert Gordon, Johnny Winter, Teenage Head, Emmylou Harris and Sonny Rhodes.

The start

Garage bands and a burlesque stage

Tim started out as a high school drummer in garage bands, then switched to banjo and guitar at about seventeen. His first paying job was playing guitar in a blues combo backing the dancers at a Hamilton burlesque theatre called Starvin' Marvin's.

From there it was country bands on the road, and even a stint playing guitar for a travelling hair tonic show.

The '80s

The Shakers and The Trouble Boys

Through the 1980s Tim played with two of Hamilton's rowdier outfits, The Shakers and The Trouble Boys, cutting the Shakers' In Time and the Trouble Boys' Pass the Bottle Baby. He also made a solo record, Dead Guy Won A Muffin, now long out of print and a prized find for collectors.

The '90s

Los Angeles and Sling Blade

Daniel Lanois brought Tim to Los Angeles to play bass, drums and organ on his soundtrack for Billy Bob Thornton's Oscar-winning Sling Blade. Tim's own song “Lonely One” made it into the film and onto the soundtrack album.

He toured Texas with the late guitarist and bluesman Chris Whitley, and in 1999 released Shylingo with producer Mark Howard, touring it across the United States.

Back home

Roadhouses, awards and Cootes Leland

Back in Ontario, Tim led a run of bands through the roadhouses of the south, building the mix of rock, blues and country that defines him, and picking up three Hamilton Music Awards in 2006.

In 2011 he released Trail of Smoke under the name Cootes Leland on Latent Recordings, made with Michael Timmins of Cowboy Junkies after an introduction from Tom Wilson. Timmins praised how natural Tim's singing and playing are, hearing echoes of Townes Van Zandt, the Rolling Stones and Bill Withers in his songs.

The swamp

Tim Gibbons & The Swampbusters

Fans kept asking for the electric guitar, so Tim plugged back in. The Swampbusters' debut, Swamp Tooth Comb (2014), put the band on the blues press radar, with Blues Blast Magazine hearing a sound that had the country bayou blues down cold. Bassist “Swampy Joe” Klienfeltr had been playing blues with Tim since they met outside the Sherwood Lanes pool hall in the late '60s, and drummer Patch took over the drum kit Tim sold him years earlier.

Swamp Rock Country Blues followed in 2017, with all twelve songs written by Tim. That fall he won the Grand River Blues Society's solo and duo challenge, earning a spot at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis in January 2018. In 2023 came Boogalator, the band's toughest, grittiest record yet.

Tim Gibbons leaning on a railing in a Toronto alleyTim Gibbons with a red guitar against a purple wall

The Swampbusters

Roots music with dirt under its fingernails.

On record

Discography

Selected releases. CDs of the latest record are sold at Tim's shows and at Dr. Disc in Hamilton.

  • 1980sIn TimeThe Shakers
  • 1980sPass the Bottle BabyThe Trouble Boys
  • 1996Sling BladeDaniel Lanois soundtrack, featuring Tim's “Lonely One”
  • 1999ShylingoSolo, produced by Mark Howard
  • 2011Trail of SmokeAs Cootes Leland, with Michael Timmins. Latent Recordings
  • 2014Swamp Tooth CombTG & The Swampbusters. Booze Records
  • 2017Swamp Rock Country BluesTG & The Swampbusters. Booze Records
  • 2023BoogalatorTim Gibbons & The Swampbusters

Keep exploring

Hear the latest chapter.

Boogalator brings Tim's guitar, songwriting and roots sensibility into a fresh twelve-song set.

Go to Boogalator
Boogalator by Tim Gibbons