Performing June 5 at Society Hall

ALAMOSA — If you Google “Susan Gibson, singer songwriter,” it’s a good bet that, within the first or second sentence of all the websites appearing on screen after screen, the song title “Wide Open Spaces” will show up.

There’s a reason for that.

Written by Gibson when she was 22, “Wide Open Spaces” was recorded by The Dixie Chicks (now called The Chicks) four years later, promptly blowing the doors off all sorts of charts, winning all sorts of awards, ultimately being hailed by the Record Industry Association of America as one of the “songs of the century” (you read that right, the century) and garnering Gibson the American Songwriter Professional Country Songwriter of the year award.

It also put The Chicks on the map as the title cut on their 1999 Grammy Award winning album. As of 2011, the “official video,” on YouTube of The Chicks singing “Wide Open Spaces” had been viewed 30 million times. That was 13 years ago. There’s no telling what that number is now.

Impressive as all that is, “Wide Open Spaces,” is one extraordinary thunderbolt in a life permeated by music. Assuming that one flash of creative genius sums up the totalities of Gibson’s insights, talents and gifts, dismisses the powerful forces that led up to its creation and all the moments that followed. It’s like trying to view Mount Blanca through a keyhole.

Standing in the early evening outside her home on a stretch of land outside of a small town in Texas Hill Country and talking on the phone about her life with a steady symphony of cicadas in the background, it becomes slap-you-in-the-face obvious that Gibson is doing precisely what she was born to do.

The youngest of two daughters separated by just two years, Gibson’s mother was a third grade science teacher and her father was a railroader. “We kind of followed his job,” she says. “He would get promoted and we’d move and then move again.”

Gibson’s family spent most of that early time in the Midwest – Minnesota, Illinois and Nebraska. Then, her father got transferred to Burleson, Texas when she was in the fifth grade and then to Amarillo, two years later.

“That’s where I graduated from high school. That’s where my parents were when they passed away. I guess that makes it my home, of sorts. Panhandle West people are also really kind of special. Growing up, I didn’t feel like there was a lot to do, but there were fun people to do nothing with.

“I loved Amarillo. I love the flat. It gives you the same sense of perspective as being on the ocean, it’s just that it’s land on that flat horizon, which is kind of a cool feeling. I love being able to watch the storms coming in and going out. The sunsets and sunrises are beautiful.”

Then laughter creeps into her voice. “And, as an adult, I have learned to…really cherish the no traffic and good parking spots.”

But those early childhood years spent with her father whose job involved routinely moving things – and her family – from one place to another also left their mark.

“I didn’t have a real confident sense of self growing up. It’s like…who do I need to be to fit in? That’s where something got kind of hard baked in as far as being a little bit of a loner, an underdog. I struggled with friends and being a teenager and body image and the bullying. I just never wanted to go to school on Monday. My whole life, dreading going to school every Sunday night was just…just a f**king tear.”

Her parents – her mom, mostly – would say, all the time, “Susan, you get to be a blank page. New school year. New kids.”

But it was a four-word phrase that her mother repeated that really stuck, so much, in fact, that Gibson has it tattooed on her arm.

“She’d tell me ‘remember who you are’.  I think she saw me getting swept away by other people and that was her attempt to instill in me some kind of true north because I was really susceptible to…how do I belong? We so settle for fitting in when what we really want is to belong.”

Gibson didn’t start playing the guitar until high school and had only been playing for about a year and a half when she wrote her first song. That’s when she discovered that all the things she didn’t have the confidence to say to people could be said through her music.

“’Wide Open Spaces’ was probably in the first 20 songs I ever wrote. I was a troublemaker. I had some hard stuff of my own making in my young adulthood. I was the girl in the song needing to go out and give myself permission to make mistakes. There’s something so wonderful and reassuring that, at 22 years of age, I had a glimpse that I was going to have to give myself permission to make a whole bunch of mistakes because that’s been my lived reality.”

In the 25 years since then, Gibson has been touring with her dog and sharing with audiences the deepest and truest part of who she is through her songs that, for those willing to just listen, tell us as much about ourselves as they do about the woman at the microphone.

Not all of those years have been easy. Both of her parents passed away. The pandemic brought home some hard truths. But, emerging through and from all of that, Gibson’s extraordinary lyrics continue to reflect a hardscrabble wisdom, couched in melodies that touch that place only music can touch and sung in a voice that is as clear and strong yet nimble as ever.  

“My goal is to connect with people and there’s no way to do that if I’m not willing to be vulnerable and show myself. I’m asking them to just open up and let the music in, even if it’s just ten people in a room of a hundred. That’s asking a lot of people, to spend two hours without their phone in their hand and to listen and be engaged with you. And so I want to come and be authentic and real and mean it. I want to buy what I’m selling.”

Gibson’s been described as the most inventive songwriter of her generation. Those aren’t empty words. But what is also true is that she’s fiercely honest. Courageously accessible. Strikingly perceptive yet humble. And, if that’s not enough, she’s also pretty damn funny.

She also continues to reside in a wide open space of her own making and, whatever that may look like or mean to others, she’s genuine in asking those of us - who are willing - to spend a few hours and come along.

Susan Gibson, with a little help from Don Richmond, will be performing at Society Hall, Wednesday, June 5, at 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 6:30. Tickets are available online at www.societyhall.org, at the Green Spot in Alamosa, or at the door. As always, wine, beer, soft drinks and snacks will be available.