Jeff Gibson

Keyboardist, music director, and vocalist Jeff Gibson has been playing professionally since the mid-1980s. Eight years of symphonic training gave him something he still uses every night — an ear sharp enough to name a note within seconds of hearing it — along with a working command of theory he taught himself to translate onto a keyboard.

When Yamaha introduced the DX7 in 1983, the direction of his career settled. Drawn to the keyboard-driven arena rock of Journey, Toto, Foreigner, and REO Speedwagon, Jeff bought his first keyboard soon after and went to work on the Shreveport, Louisiana circuit — church, gospel, country, and rock, from church lock-ins to country bills playing to a couple thousand people. He recorded on regional projects including the Christian band Open Eyes and worked with multiple acts at Port City Sound Studio.

Jeff moved to Nashville in 1992 and has since held keyboard and vocal chairs with Little Queen and Barracuda (Heart), We Can’t Dance (Genesis, Collins, Gabriel), Heartbreaker (Pat Benatar), and Reckless, which he founded — work that has carried him from Las Vegas to upstate New York. Across all of it he has built and rebuilt rig after rig in pursuit of one thing: patches that sit under a song the way the record does. For Benatar’s Fire he serves as both keyboardist and music director, chasing the sounds that defined those arena records and keeping the show tight enough to honor them.