“I try to help people who are unlucky at the moment to get somewhere to where they can find a better way to live.”
Jeff Gibbons “started on his road to recovery” in Clark County jail in Vancouver, Wash. “I went out drinking with my girlfriend and we came home and had an altercation. I had to leave her, leave my family, my kids, her kids, my dog. All my possessions got stolen when I got out of jail. If I hadn’t been intoxicated, I wouldn’t be in this situation right now. And that’s a pretty big bitter pill to swallow.
“I kept going to meetings and eventually I went back to school [Clark College]. I came up here to Seattle because I knew that if anything, any place, could help me it would be my hometown.”
Jeff grew up in and around downtown Seattle. His father worked for Boeing and his mother worked for Crowley Marine. “Seattle to me always has been a small town. Regardless of how much they build it over, it’s still everybody knows everybody. Everybody in the Market knows everybody in the Market. Everybody in Pioneer Square knows everybody in Pioneer Square.”
“During the Depression my grandmother worked for Boeing with my grandfather. They settled here in Seattle and their lives got better. Even after my grandpa got out of prison, his life still got better and before he died he had made his amends. And that’s my whole thing. I’m 46. I need to pay off whatever debt I got so I can leave this world in peace.
“I try to help people who are unlucky at the moment to get somewhere to where they can find a better way to live.” He checks in with the people he grew up with who are hanging around Pioneer Square, just to make sure they’re OK. He’s trying to get a friend into a six-month Salvation Army treatment program. Besides that, he wants to rebuild his life and maybe get his kids back.
Jeff has another dream: to busk at Pike Place Market. “I can sit up there and play Nirvana. When you know you’re good at something, you just do it. That’s another way I can give back. All my life I’ve been making music for fun and then about 10 years ago I started to make money at it. And I started to notice people would dance when I sang.” Between his music, restarting his career as a stagehand and selling Real Change, Jeff intends to restart his life.
“I try to go sell Real Change around businesses like the Trading Musician. Guitar Center was going to let me stand out in front of there to sell the paper, I’m working on that one, places like that, and over in Bellevue at American Music.”
But he also wants Real Change to help people change. “We need to do more of the recovery side” from alcohol and drugs like meth. “And get these people away from that and into some sort of structured thing. And then you’ll see miracles.”