He grew up in a household surrounded by music (his father, John Gibson, wrote the theme song for the classic surfing film Endless Summer, and later signed a deal with RCA Records), and was playing guitar by the time he was nine years old, by which time he had relocated with his family to Las Vegas. He formed a band, Missing in Action, at the age of 12, and was the group's lead guitarist. Gibson had also started writing his own songs and began tracking them on a multi-track recorder his father had given him. Graduating early from high school, Gibson headed to Nashville, where he worked as a demo singer and, since he knew and could sing in Spanish, as a singer in Spanish restaurants, which is where John Rich heard Gibson and signed him to write songs for Rich's song publishing company. Gibson wrote some 150 songs in a year for Rich's firm, and one of them, "Don't You Want to Stay," co-written with Paul Jenkins and Jason Sellers, hit the top of the country charts in 2011 in a duet version by Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson, which in turn brought Gibson a recording deal. He began working on a debut album. A single from the project, the James Stroud-produced "Wanna Make You Love Me," a song that ironically Gibson did not write, appeared in 2011. ~ Steve Leggett