Chris Smither
It's never too late to make an impact as Rob Adams found out when he talked
to a talented
guitarist-songwriter who found new
belief in himself after almost two decades
of seeking the
blues in a bottle
Bonnie Raitt calls him her Eric Clapton. Rolling Stone magazine described his songs as ''gleaming bits of gold''. And last time Chris Smither was in these parts, on hearing his one-person distillation of Little Feat's Rock 'n' Roll Doctor, some guitarists I know called him something deeply unflattering in that faux-insulting way that musicians have of expressing envy of others' unattainable talents.
Smither can be unflattering himself, if unintentionally so. When Raitt covered his Love Me Like a Man back in the 1970s, he was surprised to find ''Dick Waterman's girlfriend'' singing one of his songs.
''I'd known her for some time but I had no idea that she even played guitar,'' Smither recalls somewhat sheepishly. ''Back then, Waterman managed all these still-living, original bluesmen like Skip James, Son House, and Mississippi John Hurt. All these guys could be found lounging around his house and I used to go over and hang out. One day Bonnie asked me why I hadn't done that song on slide guitar. She picked up a guitar and started to wail, and my jaw hit the floor.''
Raitt went on to record Smither's I Feel the Same, too, and when she put both his songs on her 1990 Greatest Hits collection it was just the kind of fillip Smither needed. His 1990s albums, Up On the Lowdown, Small Revelations, and the recently issued Drive You Home Again, while making little impression on the mainstream charts, have confirmed a mighty talent that had been languishing unappreciated in the music business's back streets. Like Clapton and Joni Mitchell, New Orleans-born Smither began playing music on a ukulele. He switched to guitar at the age of 11 and developed his playing throughout his teens. But although surrounded by music in the Crescent City, it wasn't until he moved to New Mexico to study anthropology that he discovered country blues and the album that was to light up his musical path.
''I'd learned to play House of the Rising Sun off a Joan Baez record,'' he says, aware of the irony of a New Orleans boy learning a song about his hometown from a New Yorker. ''My room-mate at university really liked the way I played that and said: 'Have you ever heard this guy?' '' ''This guy'' was Lightnin' Hopkins, whose Blues in the Bottle album set off another jaw-dropping incident. ''I couldn't believe,'' he says, ''how one person could do all that on guitar.''
Anthropology took a back seat to country blues and marrying the techniques of Hopkins and Mississippi John Hurt with the influence of New Orleans pianists such as Professor Longhair and Dr John - ''all my rhythms are backwards. I think on the upbeat, which is totally New Orleans'' - Smither moved to Boston just in time to catch the tailend of the 1960s
folk-blues boom.
Despite being caught up in the rise of bands and acid rock, he managed to make a living, of sorts, on the small-scale venue circuit as a determinedly solo artist. In the early 1970s he cut two albums for independent label Poppy (home also to the late, great Townes Van Zandt) before a third, which featured session work from Dr John and Little Feat's Lowell George, got lost in a record company buy-out and has never been released.
Ignoring Hopkins' warning about the blues to be found in a bottle, Smither sought liquid consolation. He continued to work but looks back at the mid-1970s through to the late 1980s as lost years. Asked what made him stop drinking, he says: ''It was affecting my performances. It was affecting everything. But I find it difficult to point at any one thing and say: 'That's why I did it.' Basically, I think you get tired of being at the bottom of a hole, so you quit digging and climb out.''
Being the only writer, apart from Raitt herself, with two songs on Raitt's Greatest Hits gave him confidence in his songwriting and he started writing at breakneck speed. ''Well, my version of breakneck speed,'' he says. ''Six songs a year. That was incredibly productive for me.''
His songwriting influences include Paul Simon, for his mastery of the sounds of words, Randy Newman for his grasp of dark reality, and Bob Dylan. ''For me, Dylan was the person who demonstrated that songs didn't just happen, they were written by somebody,'' he says. ''Before Dylan, Bobby Darin did songs, Elvis did songs, but they just came on the radio - nobody paid the slightest attention to where these songs
came from.''
By Rolling Stone's reckoning, Smither's songs come from panning for gold. Though flattered by the analogy, however, Smither prefers the comparison of another aquatic pursuit: fishing. ''I used to wait until inspiration hit me. But I've learned that you've got to put yourself in position to take advantage of what comes along whether you want to or not. That means sitting down with the guitar and actually trying to do it. That way, if there's any fish, at least you've got your line in the water.''
l Chris Smither plays Chambers Bar, Glasgow, on Saturday and The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, on Sunday.
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