CHRIS S MITHER IS A BIG MAN WITH A BIG SOUND, an acknowledged master of finger-picking and irony for three decades. From teenage bands and woodshedding in his native New Orleans, Smither hit Boston in the mid-60s and fell in with the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Eric von Schmidt and Jim Rooney. As with those artists, the sound in his head was acoustic — the blues à la Lightnin’ Hopkins, in Chris’s case. He released his first albums in the early 1970s. Smither’s reputation as performer and composer grew over the years, then burst worldwide with albums, airplay and tours in the 90s, as well as soundtracks and compositions in a number of films.

Smither says that when he was just learning to play, “Uncle Howard showed me how that if you knew two chords, you could play a lot of the songs you heard on the radio. And if you knew three chords, you could pretty much rule the world.” When Chris played the Me&Thee three years ago, he was in command of even more than three chords, and he was positively dazzling. With his brilliant, wry lyrics and fantastic chops, the man will rule again. You don’t want to miss him.

Chris Smither

Photo by Abigail Seymour

[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

Chris Smither’s songs seem so casual — everyday language drawled over fine blues fingerpicking and the happy tip-tap of his shoes — that it’s easy to overlook how artful and deep they are. Smither is now at the peak of his creative powers.  Acoustic Guitar