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Samantha Gibb & The Cartel Find Their Freedom on the Wrong Side

Samantha Gibb may have been given a unique musical birthright most artists would kill for, but it wasn’t until the formation of The Cartel that she truly found her direction. Webster’s tells us a cartel is a union between independent forces in the interest of a common goal, and that’s a perfect description of the dynamic that drives Samantha Gibb & The Cartel.

If Gibb’s last name rings a bell it’s because she’s the daughter of late Bee Gees singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Maurice Gibb, who mentored her entry into the music business, producing Samantha’s early recordings with her brother Adam under the name Luna Park in the late ‘90s. And when Lazaro Rodriguez entered their Miami Beach studio to lay down some guitar tracks, Samantha knew she’d found a simpatico spirit. Eventually, Adam left the group, but after Laz brought in his old friend Nick Sallons on bass, the core of what was about to become The Cartel was in place.

All three band members suffered a huge loss when Maurice passed away in 2003, and they released their first recordings together under the name M.E.G. (for Maurice Ernest Gibb) “To keep his name going and keep him with us, we had his initials” explains Laz. By 2007, the trio was ready for a change; feeling limited by the Miami Beach music scene, they decided to move to Nashville together, starting their own studio there. Though there’s not much twang in their sound, they found much more than country in Music City. “There’s obviously country every place you turn here, but there’s just so much alternative music” says Samantha. Laz concurs, “It was exactly what we wanted to be around. We felt more at home. Three years down the line, what happened was what I wanted to happen. We’re learning from amazing talent around here. We didn’t have that in Miami.”

Further evidence that Gibb, Rodriguez, and Sallons had finally found their feet with their arrival in Nashville can be seen in their identity-declaring name change from M.E.G. to Samantha Gibb & The Cartel. That doesn’t mean they abandoned their roots, though. “Even though we’ve changed the name, we still have our production company and our studio under M.E.G.” Samantha explains. Though the group had been laboring intensely for years at this point, they refined their unique blend of influences more distinctively than ever before in Nashville, and the results are all over their new EP, Wrong Side.

 “Being raised in a Hispanic family, I learned a lot of traditional Spanish music,” says Laz. “My dad played me corridos and showed me music from way back. And then I got into a lot of rock, and I studied classical in school.” Sallons, who started playing with Rodriguez in high school, paints a similarly eclectic picture of his background, “Growing up in Miami, I had friends that listened to 2 Live Crew and listened to a lot of Bass, but then a lot of other friends who listened to rock and metal.” Then there’s  frontwoman Gibb, who loves everything from Billie Holiday to Beck, but also notes that Maurice “was my father and my best friend, but musically he was probably my biggest influence.” Add this head-spinning swirl of sounds and sensibilities together, and you get the intoxicating musical cocktail that is Samantha Gibb & The Cartel’s debut release, Wrong Side.

From the sultry, tango-inflected “My Spell,” to the driving riffs and worldly-wise message of “Take It Easy,” the dramatic, Roy Orbison-esque acoustic balladry of “I’ll Stay,” and the chugging rock riffs and pop-perfection harmonies of the title track, Wrong Side is the product of three powerful, distinct musical personalities. Once again, it’s the concept of The Cartel – individual forces uniting to pursue a shared purpose. In the short term, that purpose is promoting their new EP and spreading the word about Samantha Gibb & The Cartel worldwide. Toward that end, the band is crossing the pond in 2010 for their first U.K. tour, hitting everyplace from London to Edinburgh. “We definitely have fans out there that have been following us for a while now, since the Luna Park album, so we’re excited to get out there and finally get to meet some of them” says Nick. In the long run, though, the trio’s goals have no ceiling. Responding to the notion that followers of her family’s momentous musical legacy will hold her to an unfairly high standard, Samantha says “I think in music, standards should be high. It’ll show in the work. I’m really proud of what we do. I want the standard to be high, because I want to keep getting better.”