Kevin Gilbert “Tired Old Man” first released

Tired Old Man Kevin Gilbert

Writer(s): Kevin Gilbert (see lyrics here) Recorded: 1986? Released: October 19, 2009 (on Nuts) First Charted: -- Peak: 1 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, -- streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: Singer/songwriter and musician Kevin Gilbert was born in 1966 in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. He started playing piano at four years old, studying classical piano. He said a hippy guitarist named Mike Scully heard Gilbert playing piano at church and brought him Genesis’ Fox Trot CH and that by age ten, he was into pop and progressive rock. RB-N Gilbert said he was terrible at reading music and would go buy the records, listen to them, and then play it for his piano teacher, convincing her he was reading the music. She eventually got frustrated with him and quit. SD He attended high school in San Mateo, California. He spent a lot of time at Sunnyvale’s Sensa Sound studio after hours. JS96 He ended up writing and recording the album No Reasons Given in 1984 under the name NRG before he’d graduated from high school. The album wouldn’t be widely available until he’d made a bigger name for himself and it was offered at KevinGilbert.com. From 1984 to 1987, Gilbert continued to record more music although it wasn’t getting him an audience. In 2021, his estate released the box set Call Me Kai, which gathered recordings from the era. One disc, called Sometimes Why, assembled songs recorded by Gilbert in 1986. It included a four-part version of “Tired Old Man,” a song which had circulated as a bootleg for years amongst Gilbert’s fans, and had been first officially released on the archival set Nuts in 2009. The song is a beautiful take on the tale of Pinocchio through Gepetto’s eyes. It serves as one of the best arguments there is that Gilbert was an overlooked genius. He would go on to tour as a keyboardist with Eddie Money and release two albums with Giraffe in the late ‘80s. and collaborate with Patrick Leonard (a producer who worked for Michael Jackson and Madonna) in Toy Matinee in 1990. He was part of a collective known as the Tuesday Night Music Club which lifted Sheryl Crow to fame. He released his first solo album in 1995 and was working on the next one when he died in 1996 at the age of 29. He never did become a household name, but he left an enviable body of work more than worth exploring. Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Kevin Gilbert RB-N Richard Buskin (2002). No Fool to This Game. Billboard Books: New York. Pages 58 and 64. SD Sibyl Darter (12/88: Vol. 4, No. 12). AfterTouch – The Official Publication of the Yamaha Users Group CH Christine Holz, co-editor (11/94 – 1/95). “Toying with Kevin Gilbert.” Music News Network. TheDebster.com JS96 Joel Selvin (9/15/96). San Francisco Chronicle “More Than ‘The Piano Player’ – Dumped by Sheryl Crow after propelling her to success, brilliant musician Kevin Gilbert died before finding his own” Related Links: First posted 10/8/2022.