Kevin Bronson on March 3rd, 2010

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There are people who know Jack Gibson as an aspiring filmmaker, as an untiring supporter, and even as a perspiring drunk. This week, with the release of “Shelters,” his third album as Tenlons Fort, Gibson has solidified his identity as an inspiring songwriter.

Whether “Shelters” – a startlingly beautiful, strikingly intimate collection of 10 songs – propels Gibson from one of L.A.’s best-kept secrets to folk hero is anyone’s guess. He’s done a yeoman’s job of dodging success so far, as he’d be the first to admit. But in a city teeming with singer-songwriters plumbing the depths of their experiences and emotions, Gibson’s cautionary tales and pleas for empowerment command special attention.

Gibson is 37. He’s lived in Texas, Portland and Los Angeles (three times), attended film school and done a lot of odds and ends along the way. And, as he sings in the album’s title track, “I used to be bad / at holding my own.”

He tried his hand at songwriting in the late ’90s but “ended up pitching movies,” he says. “Like ‘Car Wash 2.'” He also spent time “drinking beer, smoking dope and playing in Sonic Youth noise bands,” but began taking a harder look inward in the fall of 2003.

“I was at a screenwriters retreat when Elliott Smith died,” Gibson remembers. “I was in an A-frame cabin in Oregon, and I ended up staying up all night strumming the guitar.”

The first Tenlons Fort material, “The Golden Handshake,” emerged in 2005, followed by “Followed by Bad Luck” the next year and an EP, “Forever Is a Long Time.” But he wasn’t free of his demons.

“I blacked out in Shreveport playing poker with my dad in January of 2008 and ended up in a bush,” he says. “Then in August of 2008 I stopped drinking. I had to. It was keeping me in a cycle of depression.”

If “Shelters'” melancholy rings with the authenticity of a man who’s done more than just imagine the abyss, Gibson doesn’t exactly figure to cash in on his own redemption. He’s started the Tenlons Fort Shelters Fund and will donate 50% of the sales from the album (which gets a small pressing as well as distribution on iTunes) to benefit the homeless.

“This has mainly been a journey for myself – all the songs are very personal, and it’s a chronicle of my life over the last couple of years,” he says of the album, which was recorded in Austin with Will Courtney of Brothers & Sisters and features contributions from Joseph Cordi, Paul Schlichting and Castledoor’s Nate Cole, as well as a cameo on “Baby It’s Cool” by Avi Buffalo, Aaron Embry and Joel Plotnick.

“But I want to get deep into something. I decided I was going to try to do this for nonprofits, even if it just makes a small amount of money. When it was all about myself, I really wasn’t in the mindset to do anything with it.”

Gibson also spent last month making a 42-minute movie featuring a cast of dozens from the L.A. indie scene. “The Shortest Month of the Year” had it debut screening Tuesday night. It feels like the creative burst of someone whose grip grows firmer by the moment.

“Your future is written in invisible ink,” Gibson sings in the title track. “And it’s telling the story that you choose to read.”

||| Stream: “Shelters”

||| Live: Tenlons Fort celebrates its album release with a show tonight at Synchronicity Space on Melrose. Also performing: Will Courtney, Downtown/Union and Manhattan Murder Mystery.