Surprise!: Surprise, Surprise

Chris Smither: Surprise Surprise
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Chris Smither is one of those musicians I learned about on account of my love for Bonnie Raitt's music. On her Give It Up album, she covers Love Me Like a Man from Smither's 1970 album I'm a Stranger Too. On Takin My Time, she does I Feel The Same. I know that bowhowdy has posted about him more than once and there is plenty you can learn from there.

Smither has been doing his thing since some time in the 60s and it shows. It's apparent in the sparse guitar that does all it needs and a little more. It's there in the way his vocals are right on: gritty, sort of like Dylan from the 70s with a touch of John Prine mixed in.

Here we've got Smither in a 2009 trio with Zak Trojano doing the percussion and David Goodrich on 2nd guitar. It's a song for our times that deals with the theme of our current financial woes:

just when things were looking up, they arent looking so good
they told you they would fill your cup ...
the trickle down will float you up
surprise, surprise, it ain't so

The album, Time Stands Still is perhaps his best. There is a cover of It Takes s Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry that is the best I have ever heard. The rest of the album is just as good.

Holiday Classics: Coventry Carol

Chris Smither: Coventry Carol

[unpurchaseable]

As I wrote about earlier this month over at Cover Lay Down, the conceit of the Holiday Classic is confounded a bit by the existence of several historical waves and source-period songtypes which, together, comprise the current spate of familiar tunes for the season, as heard on the radio, in the mall, and at the hearth itself.

But though my own tastes generally run to the modern folkworld during the rest of the year, and though others tend towards the mid-20th century pop canon when citing their holiday favorites, my own true preferences for this sort of music trend much earlier - all the way back to the early wassails and church songs, and to the hymnal which collects them.

As such, even as I blog the new and the novelty, my secret household Christmas mix is mostly full of centuries-old songs done up in a modern and mellow folkstyle, from Cindy Kallet's Cherry Tree Carol, Brooks Williams' I Wonder As I Wander, Shawn Colvin's In The Bleak Midwinter, and Mary Chapin Carpenter's Sill, Still, Still to Sufjan Stevens' indiefolk takes on O Come O Come Emmanuel, Lo How A Rose E'er Blooming, The Friendly Beasts, and more.

And then there's this: a mellow, rich take on an old, unsourced traditional carol from the oft-blogged catalog of Chris Smither, originally released on a 1996 holiday sampler which - like so many other such Christmas treats from a pre-webbed world - was only made available for that one year, and has since become a rarity. As with so much of my late 20th century folk treasures, it comes direct to us from my father's CD collection, making it especially dear to me. And so I offer it in the spirit of the season, from my generations to yours. May it serve you well.

Mothers: Every Mother's Son

Chris Smither: Every Mother's Son

[out of print; purchase used here]

Today's post marks the fifth Chris Smither post since this blog's inception, though only my second since the man himself moved from his long-time home of Woodstock to our own local area, and I think it's fair to warn all our readers that just as I plan to see him another three dozen times or more before I die, I plan to keep posting and promoting the undersung folkblues poet until I've converted everyone within earshot.

Smither's performance and songwriting prowess have matured and mellowed with age, but this early track from 1972 sophomore release Don't It Drag On is a personal favorite: deep and blue, pensive and peaceful, yet elegantly simple in its structure and lyric. There's also a great live version on his 1991 comeback album Another Way To Find You.

Thanks and Appreciation: Thanks To You

Jesse Winchester: Thanks To You

[purchase]

Emmylou Harris: Thanks To You

[purchase]

Chris Smither: Thanks To You

[purchase]


I encountered this song as a 1997 cover in the hands of ragged folk-blues guitarist Chris Smither, who plays the song out as a rapid-fire wail of almost proud self-pity and heaven-sent salvation, a ray of light sparking down from heaven to save the narrative sinner.

But curiosity brought me in search of the source, and as fans of the prolific and well-covered songwriter Jesse Winchester might have predicted, the 1988 original is nothing like the cover.

Oh, sure, it's still blues. But this tune comes from the other end of the genre, where the blues - and its image of heaven as an eventual comfort for even the worst of sinners - are something smooth and sultry, framed in dustbowl Americana production, and veritably dripping in gospel harmonies and slow, southern slide guitar. From the subtle bounce of the intro synth to the final fade-out, this is an image of heaven as seen through a boozehound's haze, a slow credit-roll from a frozen eternity in a terminal flophouse before a life spent in the dismal dark fades eternally into the light.

Meanwhile, of course, Emmylou Harris splits the difference, bringing in a sultry yet ever-so-slightly-uptempo country gospel barroom americana blues ballad that still retains the keys, and those glorious gospel harmonies. The 1993 date on Emmylou's cover, and the slightly more upbeat pace, suggests that Smither must have heard both before going his own inimitable way.

---

Afterthought: we've given thanks to family and friends a lot this week, and deservedly so. We're a lucky bunch here on Star Maker, in no small part because we have this community to carry our voices and conversations; we owe a debt of thanks to each other, and to you, the reader, as much as we do our immediate loved ones.

But though my sense of heaven is a bit personal and vague these days, I was a sinner like so many of us, for much of my life. And like so many of us, I suspect, I owe thanks to the universe, the goddess, God, the everything - whatever you call it - for always offering that sense of comfort, and always being there for me, waiting patiently until I, too, saw the light. Even if it took music, love, friends, family, and so many other vehicles for me to find it when I needed it so much.

Thanks, universe. Thanks, everyone. To you, and to yours.

Smile: Winsome Smile

Chris Smither: Winsome Smile

[purchase]

Acoustic bluesman Chris Smither does the blues exceptionally well, but his wry vocal mannerisms and fast fingerstyle are also surprisingly well-suited for upbeat songs such as this one. Listen carefully, though -- while the song is celebratory on the surface, there's a mature dissonance between the tune and tempo on one hand, and the lyrics on the other. Cue the last verse:

Time will wound all heels, and it ain't pretty
With any luck at all, she'll find some dope that you can pity
Your loss is measured in illusions
And your gain is all in bittersweet intelligence
And your winsome smile will lose some of its innocence...

Dylan Covers: The Dylan Sound

Angel Snow: Meet Me In The Morning

[purchase]

Chris Smither: Visions of Johanna

[purchase]

Vic Chesnutt: Buckets of Rain

[purchase]

Ramblin' Jack Elliott: Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

[purchase]

I'm a relative newcomer to Bob Dylan fandom, having grown up immersed in a very different, more melodic branch of the folkworld. And I came to that fandom through covers, and thus have spent much more time considering the songbook than I have considering the particular vocal and guitar folkstyle which, love it or hate it, is inimitably unique and Dylanesque. So it's only very recently that I've started to appreciate that carefully constructed nasality, the broken-voiced rawness which Dylan chose to evolve in himself, the better to make meaning in song.

I'm not the best candidate to explain Dylan's particular sound, and I don't think I need to. A library of books and reviews and films have been written on the subject, and it's also true that the Dylan sound is so iconographic, both as sound and as influence, it kind of speaks for itself. But as this wonderful week's journey through the Dylan songbook has progressed, I've found myself thinking about how difficult it is to cover Dylan's tone successfully. I would even posit that the ragged musical trappings are one of the biggest reasons why Dylan songs are so universal and coverable, so much and so immediately a part of the folkways of the larger culture. Which is to say, just as the older folk of Robert Johnson and Blind Willie Johnson are so mutable in the hands of others due to their own stripped down, prototypical recorded form, one of the functions of Dylan's almost tuneless approach to song is to make those songs seem more available for others to finish in their own way.

As I came to understand the power of this deliberately fundamental, elemental nature of Dylan's performance, I have grown to appreciate Dylan for more than just his songwriting and composition. And so, though I used to lean towards fuller production in my own musical taste, I increasingly respect the rawer, more elemental folk musicians, like Nick Drake and Elliott Smith and, more recently, Denison Witmer and newcomer Angel Snow, who, with just guitar and slightly wobbly voice, seem to be working in that same space where Dylan worked.

So I thought it would be worth looking for Dylan covers which try to bring that same sense of rawness to the performance -- songs which, in their own way, seem to be covering both Dylan's song and Dylan's connection with the baseline of emotion and sound that make song so direct a connection between performer and culture. Here's a few of my favorites from that camp, as a kind of end-of-week celebration of Dylan's influence beyond song itself.

Hell Week: The Devil's Real

Chris Smither: The Devil's Real

[purchase]

You may not recognize the swallowed tenor wail and growl of swamp-folk singer-songwriter Chris Smither, but you know his songs: I Feel The Same and Love Me Like A Man, two of Bonnie Raitt's earliest, biggest hits, were penned by him, back when he a young muse in the sixties folk scene. After losing a chunk of the seventies and eighties to drink, Smither managed to get his act together, but this song, written for his 1993 studio-recorded comeback album Happier Blue, makes it clear: this is a guy who knows his subject -- and knows how to mine it for lyrical gold.

I don't usually post full lyrics, but you gotta see this written out, and not just 'cause Smither mumbles a bit when he sings. Folks, THIS is confessional folksong at its best:

The Devil ain’t a legend, the Devil’s real,
In the empty way he touched me where I hardly feel,
The empty hole inside me,
The nothin’ that could ride me
Down into my grave. It does not heal.
The nothin’ is a something that can suck you dry
As the whisper you can hardly hear that tells you why.

He told me, “You ain’t got no problem, you’re self-deceived.
These seeming contradictions are all make-believe.”
It was then that I decided that my life was being guided
By a second-rate dependence on first-class thieves
They told me I was breaking through when I was breaking down,
By the time I learned the difference they had long left town.

But they ain’t so malicious, they ain’t mean.
They just vaguely well-intentioned with no love I’ve seen
It’s the emptiness that kills you,
Cold comfort that can fill you
With a sense of dread that maybe things are worse than they seem.
They don’t tell you nothin’ that you don’t already know.
They keep holdin’ out the promise, but they don’t let go.

It was hard luck and trouble, bad times too.
I know I had it comin’, but I got through.
It was advice that you gave me
In a dream that saved me.
You said, “Get a new life-contract that spells out your dues.”
Took good will to find it, a clear conscience to sign it,
Now I dream about the good times and they all come true.

Today Chris Smither is the best acoustic blues guitarist on the folk circuit, and he just keeps getting better and better with each successive album. I saw him this winter from the very first row of a tiny New England venue, and his version of Dylan's Visions of Johanna blew me away; he'll headline at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival this month, and I can't wait to see him again.

Want to hear more? This blog entry on Chris Smither has TEN more tracks available for download: five covers by Smither, including another "Devil" song that we're sure to hear more of this week, and five bonus covertracks.