f30 B


etween hearty bouts of laugh- ter, engaging stories and lively bursts of homespun philosophy, Smither is in reflective mood. And why not? The 50th anniver-


sary of his first song, Devil Got Your Man, is being commemorated in grand style with an outstanding double CD Still On The Levee, on which he returns to his home town, New Orleans, to re-record 25 of the most prominent songs he’s assem- bled during his epic journey. He’s got some pals along for the ride too. New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint on piano, for one. Loudon Wainwright III for another, joining a bunch of guest singers, who also include his twin sister Catherine Norr. Also on the record playing violin is Robin Smither, the ten-year old daughter adopted in China when he was 60, almost exploding with pride every time he mentions her name (“Don’t get me started on the proud poppa thing – adopting her as a baby was the best thing I ever did”.)


Life is good. After everything, he’s delighted with the way it all turned out.


“I always wanted to play music, always loved singing,” he says laconically. It was his uncle Howard Smither – head of the music department at the University of North Car- olina until switching careers at the age of 90 to become an artist – who taught him his first three chords on the ukulele at the age of nine. He soon got the hang of it and graduated to guitar, but never imagined he’d get a career out of it.


His father was an academic, a language teacher who developed language lab cours- es. It was only in later years Chris learned that, in his younger days, his father had played banjo and saxophone. He also had a vast record collection – everything from classical to the folk music of The Weavers and Burl Ives – which he listened to avidly.


“I loved playing but it was something I desperately wanted to do rather than some- thing I felt I was supposed to be doing. I had no formal music education, I think I sensed it was something not regarded seriously.”


What he thought he was supposed to be doing was anthropology. And to this end he wound up studying in Paris. Not that he did much studying. “All I wanted to do was play my guitar and go down to the cafés and meet up with other itinerant musicians, ex-pat Americans and Brits. I did try busking once but a policeman told me to get lost.”


It was 1964 and it marked the end of his academic aspirations.


“I came back to the States to complete my last year at university and failed miser- ably. And gradually music started to open up.” He left New Orleans and headed for New England and New York. “I thought at the time I’d give it the summer, and by the time I reached a decision to become a full- time musician I’d already been doing it sev- eral years.”


His natural point of reference was – and still is – the blues. Growing up in New Orleans it was impossible to escape it and, with great affection, he remembers regular visits to places like the Quorum coffee house in Esplanade St, where he saw Jerry Jeff Walker, and the Dream Castle bar on Frenchmen Street watching the great Delta blues guitarist Babe Stovall.


“I used to go to the Dream Castle with some mates – it was great. We were the only white people there. That was the clos- est I got to the nitty gritty of New Orleans music, but it’s impossible to grow up in New Orleans without knowing it touts itself as the birthplace of this and that. Music is com- ing out of every doorway on every corner on every street. Asking me the impact of music growing up in New Orleans is like ask- ing a fish what it’s like growing up in water. You don’t know anything else.”


Another seminal moment occurred in


Mexico City, where he was living for a time, while still harbouring thoughts of anthro- pology. “I had a room mate from Texas who really enjoyed the way I played guitar and he said I should listen to this guy, and he gave me a Lightnin’ Hopkins record. It blew me away. At first I didn’t realise it was just one person – it sounded like two or three people. But what appealed to me was that I recognised it as rock’n’roll. I could hear it. I was a child of the 1950s and ’60s so rock- ’n’roll was it for me, and here was this guy essentially playing what I recognised as rock’n’roll all by himself.


“I was really into guitar then and the folk thing was beginning to build and grow and within that genre at the time the only people who were really good guitarists were country pickers and blues players. As far as I was concerned, blues was one-man- rock’n’roll so blues was where I went. For the guitar playing, and a certain conciseness in the lyrics. I’ve always been a lyric person. A lot of blues lyrics are repetitive and obvi- ous but there are also these little gems of lines that express things perfectly, which appealed to me.


“It’s very similar to the path Dylan took. He was listening to blues guys and if you lis- ten to him today he’s still doing it. He’s writ- ing urban, educated stuff, but the form is still there. The sensibility is still from the blues, both lyrically and instrumentally.”


H


eading to Cambridge, Boston and New York took him into the very heart of the new folk boom, where his songwriting took off in earnest and he


became a leading figure widely tipped for global stardom.


It didn’t happen, partly because the drinking took over, although he did gain a reputation as the man to open for in con- cert if you wanted to be a superstar. Among those who supported him at various times were Bonnie Raitt, Tom Waits and Jackson Browne. “The surest way to success was to open a show for me – I take a perverse pride in that,” he laughs.


He made a couple of albums along the


way, too, although his early producers were somewhat disconcerted by the pounding foot taps with which he accompanied every- thing he played.


“That’s a very New Orleans thing, the way I tap my foot. I don’t tap my heel on the downbeat, I do it backwards, which is very New Orleans. Heel-toe, heel-toe. Normally people tap on the downbeat but when I do it, it’s reversed. It’s not something I do con- sciously. If I think about it I can’t do it. And if I can’t tap my feet I can’t play.


“My first producers used to say ‘don’t tap your feet’ and I’d say ‘but I can’t play if I don’t do it and it would all fall apart.’ So the whole idea of making records was fraught


with tension. I understood what I did but when I worked with other musicians it got very confusing. It wasn’t until Stephen Bru- ton came in to produce one of my albums (Up On The Lowdown, 1995) that anyone said ‘go ahead’ and the drummer said ‘It’s OK, he’s got good time, I can play off his feet’. That was a revelation.”


For years, too, he felt equally awkward about his singing which is, shall we say, unconventional. Unconventional… but it knows how to sell a lyric.


“I don’t know where my voice came from. I was singing for a long time and mak- ing records for a long time before I record- ed something I could listen to. First record I ever made where I thought the vocals were believable was Train Home (2003). That’s the first time I can’t hear a trace of affecta- tion and I hear someone genuinely trying to communicate, which is what I’ve tried to do my whole life. I never consciously tried to learn how to sing. I’ve consciously sought out guitar players to learn how to play but singing to me was something you could either do or you couldn’t do. It never occurred to me it was something you could learn. I don’t consider myself a great singer but I do feel I can put a meaning across.”


The turning point on the long road back following his battle with booze occurred around 1989 when his friend Bonnie Raitt – by this time a major star –was invited to appear at a high profile benefit concert in Boston for a mutual friend who was serious- ly ill. Raitt agreed to do it with the proviso that Smither also got to play a full set. The gig turned out to be his ticket back.


“I did it and I played well and I felt it helped pull me out of the big hole that I’d dug for myself. I played a 50-minute set in front of an enormous audience totally unfa- miliar with what I did and I got an encore. If you were to graph it, the slope has been steadily upwards since then.”


It’s not the only time Bonnie Raitt has been his guardian angel. They go back a long way…


“When I first met Bonnie, she was a Cliffy.” A Cliffy, Chris? You mean, a fan of Cliff Richard?


“Someone who went to Radcliffe, the womens college of Harvard. She was Dick Waterman’s girlfriend. He was managing Son House and Skip James and all the surviv- ing blues legends so all us blues enthusiasts and guitar players would visit because you never knew who might be hanging out in his living room. And one day there was this red-haired girl there. We became good friends although I didn’t even know she played guitar at the time.


“They moved to Philadelphia and I stopped by their house one time and Bon- nie said ‘What have you been doing?’ and I said ‘Oh, I’ve been writing a few songs’ and she said ‘Great, let’s hear one’ and I played her Love You Like A Man. She said ‘That’s fabulous – you should play slide guitar on it’. I said ‘I don’t play slide guitar’ and she says ‘Oh, it’s easy’ and she starts playing it on slide guitar. I had no idea up until that point she played.”


Shortly after that, Bonnie Raitt started performing herself, supported Smither on various gigs and went on to international acclaim and massive record sales. And one


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84