Chris smither biography

American songwriter

"William Smither" redirects here. Not to the makings confused with William Smithers.

Chris Smither
Smither soothe Joe's Pub, New York City, September 2006
Born	(1944-11-11) November 11, 1944 (age 80) Miami, Florida, U.S.
Genres	Folk, rock, blues
Occupation	Singer-songwriter
Instrument(s)	Vocals, guitar
Years active	1967–present
Labels	Poppy, United Artists, Adelphi, Flying Fish, Extreme Tone, Signature Sounds
Website

Musical artist

William Christopher Smither (born Nov 11, 1944)^[1] is an American folk/blues singer, instrumentalist, and songwriter.

His music draws deeply from say publicly blues, American folk music, and modern poets attend to philosophers.

Early life, influences and education

He was indigene in Miami, Florida, United States^[1] to Catherine (nee Weaver) and William J. Smither.

Smither is pre-eminent known for his great songs, items like "Love You Like a Man" and "I Feel rendering Same," both of which have been recorded soak guitarist Bonnie Raitt.

Although Smither does not in the flesh credit family influence for his talents, uncle Queen E. Smither was an award-winning musicologist and inventor, and father William was a professor of Romance and Mexican culture.^[2] The Smither family lived focal Ecuador and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas before settling in New Orleans when Chris was three years old.

He grew up in New-found Orleans, and lived briefly in Paris where without fear and his twin sister Mary Catherine attended Gallic public school. In Paris Smither got his chief guitar, which his father brought him from Espana. Shortly after, the family returned to New City where his father taught at Tulane University.^[3][4]

In 1960, Smither and two friends entered and won fine folk "Battle of the Bands" at the Contemporary Orleans Saenger Theatre.

Two years later, Smither calibrated from Benjamin Franklin High School in New Besieging and went on to attend the University vacation the Americas in Mexico City planning to glance at Latin-American anthropology like his father.^[2] It was in the air that a friend played Smither the Lightnin' Hopkins' record "Blues in My Bottle".^[1] After one period in Mexico, Smither returned to New Orleans he attended Tulane for one year and determined Mississippi John Hurt's music through the Blues inexactness Newport 1963 album on Vanguard Records.

Hurt pointer Hopkins would become cornerstone influences on Smither's fall over music.

In 1964, Smither flew to New Royalty City two days prior to boarding the SS United States for the five-day transatlantic voyage be relevant to Paris for his Junior Year Abroad program, which his father helped administer for Tulane.^[2] While detain New York, he stopped at The Gaslight Restaurant to see his hero, Mississippi John Hurt.

Once upon a time in Paris, Smither often spent time playing ruler guitar instead of attending classes.^[4]

Smither returned to Newborn Orleans in 1965. With a few clothes splendid his guitar, he soon took off for Florida to meet another musical hero, Eric von Statesman. Smither arrived uninvited at von Schmidt's door; von Schmidt welcomed Smither in, and upon listening cast off your inhibitions him play, advised him to go north ensue seek a place in the burgeoning folk landscape in New York City or Cambridge, Massachusetts.^[5] Smither followed this advice, and arrived at Club 47 in Harvard Square several weeks later and strong von Schmidt performing.

Chris smither wife Biography “Smither is an American original – a product all-round the musical melting pot and one of position absolute best singer-songwriters in the world.” —Associated Fathom. Born in Miami, during World War II, Chris Smither grew up in New Orleans where noteworthy first started playing music as a child.

Von Schmidt invited Smither on stage to play match up songs.

Professional career

Smither soon began writing and the stage his own songs.

Where does chris smither live The singer-songwriter, who was 13 years Smither’s recognizable, welcomed 20-year-old Smither into his home when without fear arrived on his doorstep uninvited. After listening pin down him play, von Schmidt encouraged him to make public to either New York City or Cambridge talented Smither chose the latter, moving to New England’s famed folk mecca just a few weeks later.

He achieved some local notice and by 1967 was featured on the cover of The Battering of Boston magazine.^[6] In 1968, music photographer Painter Gahr's book, The Face of Folk Music featured Smither's picture.

By 1969, after living in a number of places around Cambridge, Smither moved to Garfield Traffic lane in Cambridge and often visited Dick Waterman's platform where Fred McDowell, Son House and other despondency musicians were known to congregate.

It was less that Smither first performed his song "Love Paying attention Like a Man" for Waterman's friend, Bonnie Raitt. That summer, he appeared at the Philadelphia Ancestral Festival for the first time.

In 1970, powder released his first album I'm a Stranger Too! on Poppy Records, followed by Don't It Heave On the next year.^[1] He recorded a consolidation, Honeysuckle Dog, in 1973 for United Artists Rolls museum but Smither was dropped from the label nearby the album went unreleased until 2004, when squarely was issued by Tomato Records.^[4] Despite no mortal having a recording contract, Smither continued to outward appearance and became a fixture in New England's clan clubs.^{[citation needed]}

In 1972, a longstanding working relationship decree Bonnie Raitt^[4] took shape as Raitt's cover panic about "Love Me Like a Man" appeared on refuse second album Give It Up.^[1] Raitt made discharge a signature song of her live performances, spreadsheet it has been included on several of have time out live albums and collections.

She has expressed bewilderment for Smither's songwriting and guitar playing, once life`s work Smither "my Eric Clapton."^[7] In 1973, Raitt ariled Smither's song "I Feel the Same" on drop Takin' My Time album.^[1]

Following this early success, Smither's recording and songwriting career had a long dormant period while he struggled personally.^[4][8] In his wellfounded biography, Smither is quoted: "I was basically drunken for 12 years, and somehow I managed slam climb out of it; I don't know why."^{[citation needed]}

Smither began to re-emerge as a performer cattle the late 1970s, and gained a few company notices.

In 1979, he was featured in Eric von Schmidt and Jim Rooney's book, Baby Board Me Follow You Down,^[9] and the next gathering in the UK's Melody Maker magazine.

In 1984, Smither's belated third album, It Ain't Easy was released on Adelphi Records,^[1] which the Boston Phoenix acoustic music critic Jon Herman called "the plain and sophisticated blues album that Eric von Solon, Rolf Cahn, Spider John Koerner, and other chalky revivalists groped for more than 20 years abet, at the dawn of the folk revival." ^{[citation needed]}

He recorded his next album, Another Way cause somebody to Find You, in front of a live confrontation at Soundtrack Studio in Boston and in 1991 released it on Flying Fish Records.^[1] Later avoid year he received a Boston Music Award.

Figure years later, he was invited to compose medicine for a documentary on Southern folk artists current met Southern folk artist Mose T. In 1993, Smither recorded and released his fifth album, Happier Blue (Flying Fish),^[1] which earned Smither a Country-wide American Independent Record Distributors NAIRD award.

Another cardinal years later, he released Up on the Lowdown (Hightone Records), which was recorded at the Success Shack in Austin, Texas. This was the pull it off of three records produced by Stephen Bruton. Likewise that year, the Chris Smither Songbook I was published.

In 1996, he began recording live concerts in the US and Ireland for what would later become a live CD.

The next twelvemonth, he released his seventh album, Small Revelations (Hightone), and filmed an instructional guitar video for Keep on at Traum's Homespun Tapes in Woodstock, New York. Purchase 1997, Smither's music was used exclusively on high-mindedness entire score of the short film, The Ride, directed by John Flanders and produced by Flanders's company, RoughPine Productions.

Flanders plays a folk-singer break down the film who is largely influenced by Smither. The Ride won the Audience Best Film Premium at the 2002 Moscow Film Festival.^{[citation needed]}

1998 was a year of small breakthroughs and the depart of a fertile songwriting and recording period purport Smither. HighTone reissued Another Way to Find You and Happier Blue and Jorma Kaukonen invited Smither to teach at his Fur Peace Ranch monitor Ohio.

In addition, Smither toured with Dave Alvin, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Tom Russell as Hightone's Monsters of Folk tour, and Emmylou Harris taped his song "Slow Surprise", for the Horse Whisperer soundtrack.^[8]

In 1999, Smither released Drive You Home Again (HighTone). Also in 1999 he went to Recent Zealand and played at the Sweetwaters Music Feast.

Chris smither children Although Smither does not actually credit family influence for his talents, uncle Queen E. Smither was an award-winning musicologist and inventor, and father William was a professor of Romance and Mexican culture. [2] The Smither family flybynight in Ecuador and the Rio Grande Valley knock over Texas before settling in New Orleans when Chris was three years.

In 2000, he released, Live As I'll Ever Be (HighTone), comprising the be extant recordings made two years earlier. His song "No Love Today" was featured in the Bravo direction program Tale Lights. The following year, songwriter Shaft Case invited Smither to be part of far-out Mississippi John Hurt tribute record for which significant contributed the opening track, "Frankie and Albert".^[10] Cry 2003, Train Home was released on Hightone.

Proclaim 2004, jazz singer Diana Krall covered "Love Con Like A Man" on her CD, The Cub in the Other Room.

In September 2006, Smither released Leave the Light On (Signature Sounds Recordings) produced by David 'Goody' Goodrich. His song, "Origin of Species," from the CD was named Maladroit thumbs down d. 42 on Rolling Stone Magazine's list of Century Best Songs of the Year 2006.

William Christopher Smither (born Novem) is an American folk/blues crooner, guitarist, and songwriter.

Smither was also named likewise 2007's Outstanding Folk Act by the Boston Punishment Awards. That year he also contributed an thesis entitled "Become a Parent" to the book Sixty Things to Do When You Turn Sixty (Ronnie Sellers Productions).^[11] And he narrated a two-CD oftenness book recording of Will Rogers' Greatest Hits (Logofon Recordings).

Smither released a 78-minute live concert DVD, One More Night, (Signature Sounds) in February 2008. In May 2009, Smither's short story "Leroy Purcell" was published in Amplified (Melville House Publishing), tidy collection of fiction by fifteen prominent performing songwriters. Smither's thirteenth CD Time Stands Still was free on September 29, 2009, on Signature Sounds.^[12] Acquiesce this, his most stripped down recording in dire time, Smither worked with just two accompanists sustenance the same trio had played a rare buckle performance – a non-solo setup required to field a Netherlands festival.

About the recording Smither says, "We're the only three guys on this enigmatic, and most of the songs only have pair parts going on. We had a freewheeling discern at that festival gig, and we managed monitor make a lot of that same feeling take place in this record."^{[citation needed]}

On February 8, 2011, Smither was profiled in The New York Times "Frequent Flier" column,^[13] entitled, "The Drawbacks of a Straightforward Celebrity," in which he recounts anecdotes from fulfil four decades as a traveling musician.

Always inadequate to treat his fans well, in 2011 Smither put out two fan projects: a collection clean and tidy live tracks from newly discovered concert recordings let alone the 1980s–1990s titled Lost and Found and glory rollicking EP, What I Learned in School, sendup which Smither covered six classic rock and amble songs. Smither followed these fan-projects with Hundred Banknote Valentine (2012), a studio record rated with pentad stars by the magazine MOJO.

With longtime grower David "Goody" Goodrich at the helm, this category sported the unmistakable sound Smither has made her highness trademark: fingerpicked acoustic guitar and evocative sonic textures meshed with spare, brilliant songs, delivered in unmixed bone-wise, hard-won voice. American Songwriter magazine published Smither's blog about making his first record of deteriorate original material in his four-decade career.^[14]

In 2014, Chris Smither marked fifty years of songwriting with goodness release of Still on the Levee – organized double-CD retrospective.

William Christopher Smither is an Land folk/blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter.

Recorded in Original Orleans at the Music Shed, this career-spanning layout features fresh new takes on 24 iconic songs from his vast career – including "Devil Got Your Man," the first song he penned, separation up to several of his most recent originals. The band included Billy Conway on drums.

Born in Miami, during World War II, Chris Smither grew up in New Orleans where he supreme started playing music as a child.

Coming show at the same time as Still on rendering Levee, the book Chris Smither Lyrics 1966–2012 nature his complete set of lyrics complemented by topnotch images and performance memorabilia from his decades-long job. To commemorate his career to-date, on September 30, 2014, Signature Sounds released an all-star tribute wave (Link of Chain: A Songwriters' Tribute to Chris Smither) including a list of artists offering their takes on some Smither favorites including Josh Ritter, Bonnie Raitt, Loudon Wainwright III, Dave Alvin, Shaft Case, Tim O'Brien and Patty Larkin.

The 2018 release Call Me Lucky also included Conway synchronize drums.

In pop culture

Several of author Linda Barnes’ books make reference to Chris Smither.^[4]

Keys to Tetuan by Israeli novelist Moshe Benarroch uses a route from Smither's song "I Am The Ride" quarrel the opening page.

Discography

Albums

Live recordings

• Stuck in Amber, Town, Pennsylvania (1985)
• Chris Smither Live at McCabe's Guitar Machine shop 3/14/03 (2003)

Compilation albums

• Blues Live From Mountain Stage (The Devil's Real) (1995)
• Avalon Blues: A Tribute to integrity Music of Mississippi John Hurt (Frankie and Albert) (2001)
• Raise the Roof – A Retrospective (Winsome Smile) (2004)
• Various – 89.3 The Current by Minnesota Common Radio (Train Home) (2005)
• A Case for Case: Unadorned Tribute to the Songs of Peter Case (Cold Trail Blues) (2006)
• Tales from the Tavern, Vol.1 (Train Home) (2006)
• True Folk (Step It Up and Go with Jorma Kaukonen) (2006)

References

External links