By Emily Miller

REXBURG — Guy Richey Gibbons just wants to make music that makes you tap your toes and have a good time. The singer/songwriter with a funky, R&B vibe is bringing his band for a free show in Rexburg, Monday, August 7 at 7 p.m. at the Beehive Pavilion at Porter Park. The performance is sponsored by the City of Rexburg and Madison Health. 

Gibbons is currently releasing his second full-length solo album, “Start Again,” song-by-song on streaming platforms including Spotify and Amazon. For this album, Gibbons was invited by Nashville producer John Fields to record at his studio in Tennessee. Fields has worked with top artists such as The Jonas Brothers, Selena Gomez and Ben Rector. 

Gibbons spent his childhood around the music industry as the son of the owner of Platinum Sound & Mastering in Bountiful, Utah. But he remembers a moment in his youth when his interest in music went from casual to something much more. 

“When I was just a kid, 10 years old, that’s when I fell in love with music,” Gibbons says. He recounts the family tradition of having friends and family over weekly for “Sunday night waffles.”

“We would make waffles and sit in the front room,” he says. “We’d also just jam. Play music and laugh and play games and stuff.”

It was during one of these Sunday night waffle gatherings that someone played a Ben Folds Five song that changed the trajectory of his life.

“It just totally exploded into my soul,” he says. “Music just became a thing for me … I wasn’t that interested in playing piano until that night, and that’s when I started playing piano five hours a day, learning every Stevie Wonder song and Ben Folds Five song.”

Before long, Gibbons was helping to co-write music that would be commercially produced. His first published song, “I Believe” was recorded by vocalist Brett Raymond and included on the 2003 Especially For Youth album when Gibbons was only about 12 years old. It was the first of three EFY songs he would write over the next few years. He also released a full-length album with his brothers Grant and Michael in 2008. 

After high school, Gibbons served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the South of France, where he says he was influenced by a lot of French composers, including Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. 

“It was just incredible and just a really unique place to get influenced musically,” he says. 

But Gibbons says his all-time favorite musician and the one who has had the most influence on his own style is Stevie Wonder.

“Stevie Wonder is my absolute, number-one favorite,” Gibbons says. “He’s just always been my favorite and I got to meet him once in LA and it just completely solidified my love and respect for him.”

After his church mission in France, Gibbons returned home and worked for the family’s recording studio. Around this time, he met his future wife, Kelsey. Before long, they were married and starting a family, and Gibbons decided to put his music career on hold to pursue other interests to provide for his young family. 

“The joke we made in my family growing up was: The difference between a large pizza and a musician is that a large pizza can feed a family of five.”

So Gibbons went to school and earned a degree in marketing, eventually becoming a creative director for Ensign College in Salt Lake City. 

“It was a little bit of a detour for me away from my dream to just do music,” he says. “But as I look back on it now, it was totally the Lord’s wisdom in allowing us to raise our children. … There’s nothing that I would trade that for, but I would trade music all day to have them.”

After a one-decade professional detour, Gibbons decided it was time to give his music a real shot. He released his first solo album, “In This Moment,” in 2022 and has been working hard to make a name for himself. 

“I have been writing songs for over two decades,” he says. “I’ve produced a lot of songs for national and international brands, for film, and movies that have won dozens of film awards at film festivals around the world. I‘ve had the opportunity to record with some of the greatest talent on planet earth.”

Now it’s his time to take a turn in the spotlight. Gibbons is bringing his whole band for the show in Rexburg Monday, and promises a fun, high-energy show for all ages. For more information on Rexburg’s Arts in the Park series, visit rexburgarts.org/arts-in-the-park.