One man's show

Chris Smither exorcises everybody's demons

by David Ritchie

The origins of Chris Smither's incredible guitar style can be traced to an album called Blues in the Bottle by Lightnin' Hopkins. Trying his best to figure out how one guitar could make that much sound, Smither was off and running, soon developing a style all his own. By the '70s, he had relocated from New Orleans to Boston, where the acoustic music scene was happening. Nine albums and almost 30 years later, his guitar playing is legendary, but his songwriting continues to evolve.

The last three albums (on Hightone) have been especially consistent, using the same producer, Stephen Bruton, and much of the same personnel. The new one, Drive You Home Again, is perhaps his best overall. The CD opens with Smither's always deftly executed finger-picking which -- with his lethargic baritone, Mickey Raphael's understated harmonica, and Bruton's slide guitar -- propels you down a haunting journey: "Climb into this car/I will take you for a ride/We won't go very far/But I think better here inside."

That minor blues opener (the title track) is a self-important and somewhat obsessive first-person monologue to a disinterested lover. Smither alternates between wondering why he conjures up such characters and realizing that there was, at one time, an element of them in himself. But, he concludes, it's gotten better. Now they're in his head, but they used to live in his house.

"Something I've always admired about people like Randy Newman is their ability to subsume themselves into unsympathetic characters and bring it across," Smither says.

That kind of songwriting is usually called exploring your demons, a characterization Smither sees as imprecise. "You just sort of explore. They're not just my demons, y'know, I mean, I hope that they're everybody's demons to a certain extent, otherwise nobody would be able to relate to them. And every time I can talk about something that nobody talks about, I figure, so much the better."

Though his songwriting continues to mature, Smither's guitar playing couldn't get much better. His style owes a lot to Mississippi John Hurt, but he didn't inherit Hurt's jovial vocal style. More like Newman's or David Olney's, Smither's deep husky vocals possess a laziness that provides an unsettling quality to his songs about unsavory characters. He also makes good use of it on philosophical songs like 1995's "I Am the Ride," from Up on the Lowdown, or on "Hey, Hey, Hey," from the new CD.

Unlike many of his songs, "Hey, Hey, Hey" not only presents a problem but also provides the solution (he calls it Buddhism for dummies); and it's one of the album's strongest tracks. It appears to be Smither's declaration that life is a ride you try your best to enjoy -- rather than a series of goals that then cause you to rack your brain. That kind of thinking, he concludes, essentially doesn't work. "You'll be standing broken-hearted/Like a disillusioned Christian/With your mouth open but nothin' left to say," he sings.

Though the CD is barely two weeks old, Smither is already accustomed to defending himself for the perceived attack on Christians. The image of a disillusioned Christian, he explains, is the ultimate sad figure. "It's so much work. To be a Christian requires an enormous construct -- mental construct and emotional and spiritual construct. And when you become disillusioned, the wreckage is immense. . . . There is nothing more tragic than a disillusioned Christian."

Perhaps on a more personal note, he counters that there's nothing irreversible about that condition: "What doesn't kill you is gonna make you stronger." Smither's own fight (which he's been quite willing to admit publicly) was with alcohol. Though he recorded several albums during the '70s, he wasn't able to make his living solely from the music, something he blames partly on the booze. But he did get out of it, and it did make him a stronger songwriter.

The death in 1997 of Townes Van Zandt left a great void for his friends in the music community -- even more so for Smither, who half-jokes about an early incident. "I saved him from drowning once," Smither says. "He never let me forget it. He told me I was responsible for him."

Like so many performers, Townes also had an enormous alcohol problem; but the line between his addiction and his brilliant songwriting was so invisible that you knew he couldn't keep it up for much longer. Smither saw that torment all too well. "Not only his heart, but everything else was out on his sleeve. It's fascinating watching somebody disembowel themselves, and you can't turn away. But at the same time, I used to want to shake him. `Can't you see? Can't you see? If you can see it so clearly, why can't you see your way out of it.'"

Clearly, Smither saw his way out of it. His songwriting, especially on the philosophical songs, implies that he continues to think long and hard about the journey he's on. His live performances are haunting evocations of the life of a blues man. Alone on a stage, Smither always sits, having long ago realized that the rhythm of his feet is an important part of his sound -- he actually mics his feet these days. He closes his eyes, the rhythm propels his fingers, and he seems transformed by the music, calling to mind the words of Lightnin' Hopkins: "When I play a guitar, I plays it from my heart and soul."

Certainly, there are songs on the CD that do not work as well as others. His cover of Danny O'Keefe's "Steel Guitar" makes us wish he'd waited until he had one more song of his own. But songwriting is a journey, and, luckily for us, it looks like Smither is with us for a while.

Chris Smither appears at 7 p.m. on April 9 at the Iron Horse. Peter Mulvey opens. Tickets are $14. Call (413) 584-0610.