To Laugh or Cry, Lock on to Hobbs

** Singer-storyteller brings personal touch to all his songs **

When Greg Hobbs sings his songs, he doesn't mince words. He tells you how it is. He's like that guy at the end of the bar, dispensing wisdom to whomever will listen; except Hobbs is up front, on stage at the mic.

In many ways, Hobbs, is an average singer-songwriter. He wears his Dylan influences pretty proundly on his sleeve, and there isn't anything particularly surprising about the music itself.

He sings about the usual subject matter too: girls, relationships, loneliness, heartache. Where he separates himself in his blunt, charming and occasionally cynical - but usually pretty hilarious - lyrics, and his engaging conversational vocals. He's a singer-storyteller and he writes the kind of tunes enjoyed best from a barstool.

It's that endearing charm that allows Hobbs to ask in song "Why do the beautiful girls always pick, assholes losers and dicks?" without sounding like a whiny lloser himself.

Not onlly that, a live take of the Beautiful Girls, available on Hobbs's website, proves that he can even get the whole bar to sing the crass chorus.

"Another songwriter once told me that a good song has either got to make you laugh, cry or make you want to have sex. I don't think I do the third, but you've got to go for some kind of emotion, right?," Hobbs tells me by phone from his home in Toronto.

"I also find that for a singer-songwriter with a guitar, humour is sort of the easiest way to stand out from the crowd."

Hobbs will be bringing his broken-hearted bar-room ballads to the Kingston area next Saturday as The Lodge at Amherst Island kicks off the winter leg of its monthly concert series.

Originally from Hamilton, Hobbs currently lives in Toronto where he works a day job at the CBC, as a video archival researcher for The Nationa, a job he got after graduating from jouralism school at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Like most independent musicians, forced to work another job in order to make ends meet, Hobbs could definitely do without it, if not for the money."

He released his first album, Under Your Feet, in 1994 in Ottawa before relocating to Toronto. Since then he has released Confused and Bleeding (1999), Drake Motel (2001) and most recently, Threats & Promises in (2004).

He said he's currently demo-ing songs for a new album which he plans to record in April.

While the songs on Drake Motel were a little punchier and a little more upbeat, Hobbs said his new songs are continuing on the same path as Threats and Promises - low-key country-tinged folk.

Known almost as much for his cynicism as he is for his humour, Hobbs said he thinks he's now writing songs that are a little brighter.

"I was often accused of writing dour, drinking, heartbroken songs," he said. "Though I I always found that comment a bit strange because the saddest songs are the ones that make me the happiest."

Hobbs received an Ontario Arts Council songwriting grant about a year ago, which he said has rejuvenated his songwriting.

"It kind of validated what I was doing..." he said. "And it got me all excited about it again."

He added that lately he has been more conscious of his songwriting and more concerted in the process.

"I started really studying other songwriters and what works for them," he said.

He isn't looking for any major response when he performs for an audience, but simply that people can relate to his songs.

"Or that it somehow moves them in any way."