As a veteran storyteller, Otis Gibbs knows how to capture an audience and how to deliver a punchline. He hosts a podcast called Thanks for Giving a Damn that features fantastic interviews, and his 2014 album Souvenirs of a Misspent Youth is loaded with tales that touch the heart and hit right between the ears. “Cozmina” is about a Romanian family who had to resettle in the mountains after the wife’s husband died in a coal mine. A clear highlight “Ghost of Our Fathers” tells the tale of Gibbs’ childhood next-door neighbor: a friend of his dad’s, a prizefighter whose son was drafted and killed in Vietnam. “No Rust on My Spade” remembers Gibbs’ manual-labor job planting trees (7,176 by his count) before he became a full-time musician. “The Darker Side of Me” and “Nancy Barnett” revisit the feel of John Hartford’s “Gentle on My Mind.” The one cover, “Wrong Side of Gallatin,” is written by Gibbs’ partner of 15 years, Amy Lashley, keeping everything close to home and his heart.