Chris Smither

Chris Smither

MY FAVORITE THINGS

Chris Smither
On his latest disc, DRIVE YOU HOME AGAIN, Chris Smither mines the depths of classic Delta blues to frame insights on thoroughly contemporary situations. "I think my songwriting is getting better," he says, "even though it's the hardest thing I've ever tried to do in my life." After early success in the folk-revival hotbed of Cambridge, Massachusetts (where he began a lasting friendship with Bonnie Raitt, who has recorded several of his songs), Smither's music was derailed by a decade long battle with the bottle. That battle abated, his career has soared since his return to the stage with critically acclaimed albums and a tour schedule that takes him around the world and fills more than 100 dates a year.

barnesandnoble.com: What album changed your life?

Chris Smither: It was a Lightnin' Hopkins's album called BLUES IN MY BOTTLE. I was 17, going to school in Mexico City studying to be an anthropologist. I had this roommate who was from Texas and he gave me this album and said, "here, you should listen to this guy." For about the first three days I had it I really thought it was more than one person playing. I'd never heard anything like that. I could tell immediately that it was blues, but it was also one-man rock 'n' roll. It was what I wanted to do. Lightnin' really introduced me to Finger-style guitar. It became the foundation of everything I do now.

bn: What music had you been listening to up until then?

CS: A lot of different stuff, really, but not mostly the kind of thing I ended up playing. I'd had a guitar since I was 11, and my parents listened to folk music from the 1940s, people like Burl Ives, Josh White. When the Everly Brothers and the Kingston Trio came on the radio I thought that was interesting, because here was music on the radio you could actually figure out the chords to and it was getting played on the radio.

bn: What album do wish you had played on?

CS: I wouldn't have minded being part of the chorus of that Beatles' recording of "All You Need Is Love" -- wasn't that the one where they had about every musician who was in London at the time? I wouldn't have minded being part of that.

bn: Was there an album that influenced your songwriting?

CS: John Hammond's first solo album on Vanguard. I learned from listening to John that it was OK for a young white guy to play the blues. And Dylan, early Dylan records -- not that I wanted to write like Dylan, I didn't, but he showed me that you could write your own songs, you could make up stuff on your own and sing it!

bn: What discs are in your CD player right now?

CS: Terry Allen's new disc SALIVATION, HOURGLASS by Kate Rusby, Emmylou Harris's SPYBOY.

bn: Who's a new artist to watch?

CS: Peter Mulvey. He's wonderful -- he's got everything! I wish I was his age again with that kind of talent -- I wouldn't make all the mistakes I've made.

bn: Who have you fallen in love with based solely on their album cover?

CS: With their music, you mean? Because there was a Carly Simon album cover once that made me decide I was madly in love with her...an album cover I've always liked is Steve Winwood's Arc of Diver. Kerry Dexter