December 9, 2011

$27 / $30 at door

An Evening with Chris Smither

Scott Alarik opens

Chris SmitherThe Irish News says that Chris Smither really does have it all. “He’s an ingenious guitarist. He’s a songwriter of startling origi­nality. He’s an expressive, grainy-voiced singer and he’s also an engaging, witty performer.” ¶ Scott Alarik will be our special emcee for the evening and will open the show with a short reading from his new book, Revival, a folk music novel.

Like John Hammond and a handful of other musicians whose careers began in the 1960s, blues revival guitarist, singer, and songwriter Chris Smither can take pride in the fact that he’s been there since the beginning. Except for a few years when he was away from performing in the ’70s, Smither has been a mainstay of the festival, coffeehouse, and club circuits around the U.S., Canada, and Europe since his performing career began in earnest in the coffeehouses in Boston in the spring of 1966. Smither is best known for his great songs, like “Love You Like a Man” and “I Feel the Same,” both of which have been re­corded by guitarist Bonnie Raitt. Raitt and Smither got started at about the same time in Boston, though Smither was born and raised in New Orleans, the son of university professors.

“Back in the old days,” muses the resilient troubadour, “writing new songs and making new albums were just chores. My priority was, and still is, performing live. I guess I still write the songs and make the records so that I can go out and play — except that now I actually look forward to it. I’ve learned how to do it, and I’m very eager to get stuff recorded once I’ve written it.”

Recorded in only three days, Time Stands Still is just the eleventh studio album of a career that now spans over four decades. It is both pensive and visceral — an album whose songs alternately ponder life’s mysteries in some moments, and let them lie undisturbed in others. Featuring eight new original compositions and a song apiece from Bob Dylan, Mark Knopfler, and 1920s country-blues songster Frank Hutchison, Time Stands Still‘s immediate, intimate sound is the direct result of one gig, and the challenge it presented. The songs on Time Stands Still are somehow both vivid and mysterious, evoking contemporary culture and circumstance while remaining touchingly timeless. Smither’s concerns — personal and political — are wed to music that, while stripped down in terms of arrangement and presentation, is among his most intricate, melodic, and challenging. The stark settings only serve to throw the album’s themes into higher relief. “I’m still talking about what I think of as nitty-gritty questions, “Smither says. “Essential questions, existential questions.”

. . .

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For the past 25 years, Scott Alarik has been arguably the most prolific and influential folk music writer in the country. He covered folk music for the Boston Globe, contributed regularly to public radio, including seven years as correspondent for the national news show “Here and Now,” and wrote for many national magazines, including Sing Out!, Billboard, and Performing Songwriter. Alarik will read a couple of excerpts from his novel, Revival, as part of this special evening at the me&thee.

  • [Smither] taps his foot to keep the rhythm, much like the late blues legend John Lee Hooker. His finger-picked guitar lines are sleek, unhurried and insistent. And then there’s the voice — equal parts gravel and molasses, Smither’s singing sounds like a distillation of the folk and blues heroes he grew up listening to in New Orleans. National Public Radio
  • Bathed in the flickering glow of passing headlights and neon bar signs, Smither’s roots are as blue as they come. There is plenty of misty Louisiana and Lightnin’ Hopkins in Smither’s weathered singing and unhurried picking. So fine. Rolling Stone
  • If you’ve ever caught one of Chris Smither’s live performances, you know it’s hard not to come away knocked out by the amount of music that comes out of one man. His guitar playing is remarkably fluid. His songs are gleaming bits of gold performed in a variety of styles.
    No Depression
  • . . .
  • Scott Alarik’s novel Revival is much more than a great fictional take on the world of folk music from an insider. This love story set in and around Harvard Square belongs in the larger world of American music and letters. Alarik has crafted authentic characters and drawn a graceful line along what Paul Simon called “the arc of a love affair.” The characters are wiser in the end, and the reader is richer. Congratulations, Scott; like the best folk songs, this book should reach many people and travel far. John Gorka, Singer/songwriter