By Brian Wise.
While the name John Smith might be common – there are more than 30,000 in the UK alone – the English folk guitarist and singer of the same name is extraordinary. One of the most compelling performers at the Port Fairy Folk Festival over the weekend, Smith has been on a short tour of Australia, his first since prior to Covid.
Smith has released 10 albums since 2006 with his latest, The Living Kind (2024), continuing a long association that he has had with Joe Henry, both working for him and enlisting him as producer. (He first met Henry while playing with Lisa Hannigan). When you hear Smith’s voice and his guitar playing it is no surprise to find out that he toured with the late John Martyn and is certainly influenced by him. In fact, he appeared on a tribute album to Martyn alongside many others including Paolo Nutini, Snow Patrol, Phil Collins and Beth Orton.
But Smith has had some other high profile supports over the years, touring the world extensively, both solo and with artists such as Iron and Wine, Jools Holland, Gil Scott-Heron and Hannigan. (Smith’s recent releases have been distributed by Thirty Tigers).
When I caught up with Smith on Zoom, he was at home in Somerset, sitting in his recently completed home studio with an array of more than a dozen impressive guitars scattered around, including a Mule Resophonic guitar (one of three that he has) proudly displayed hanging on the wall. Smith calls the room his ‘guitar lab.’
Rhythms: I had a long chat to Joe late last year and he spoke very highly of you. Of course, you’ve worked with him a lot over the years. You worked for him and with him and, of course, he produced your latest album.
He did. My big brother, Joe Henry. He has been an amazing presence in my life since I met him in 2011, working on Lisa Hannigan’s second record, Passenger. And we sort of formed an instant friendship that has seen me play guitar on all of his records since we met and several of his productions. Then, finally, we got to make a record of my own, which it happened very naturally. We were just sitting by his fireside one night; we wrote a song. He said, ‘Why don’t we go upstairs and just record that while it’s fresh?’ And we did. Then he looked at me and he said, ‘There’s no reason why we can’t make a whole album like this’. So, one year later, on the first of February, 2023, I found myself in Joe’s House again, and we cut that record in four days.
That was the house in Maine. You would’ve worked with him also in California. Was it Pasadena?
Yes, the Garfield House in Pasadena. I played on a few records in that basement. That was a magical spot, really special.
That must’ve been an amazing experience
Was I sat with Joe and Greg Leisz, Jay Bellerose, Jenny Condos – some of the best musicians in the world – and we cut Joe’s record Invisible Hour. That was just magical. It is like the best learning I could imagine, sitting around all those great musicians and just being encouraged to play out and explore those songs. It was really special. Basically, every time I open up my emails in the morning, I’m hoping there’s something from Joe, saying ‘Let’s do something’.
You obviously must have hit it off with him pretty well to work so often with him.
Yes, well, Joe’s a very open, and as you know, a very open-hearted and beautiful guy. We’ve just got along since day one. Joe’s talked me out of a couple of rough patches. Some of my family have been ill over the last few years, and he’s been a real source of wisdom. He’s a bit of a North Star as a songwriter, and as a careerist has navigated all kinds of corners of the industry and written some of my favourite songs. So, there’s a lot of us who, if we’re in trouble or if we need guidance or we need anything, you’re going to call Joe Henry and he’s going to tell you what to do.
Well, having said that, you wrote this record and you recorded it with Joe. Have you done any recording since that? I imagine you might’ve done a few maybe in your what looks like a home studio, although you said that you’ve only built that this weekend. But have you done any other recording?
Yes, I’m just in the process of finishing. In fact, today after this call, I’m going into a studio in my town and I’m finishing the record I’m working on right now.
So, is that going to be different in style? I assume you won’t have the same musicians.
I can’t really say anything about it yet because my record label will be upset with me. I have to keep my powder dry until the people who understand marketing tell me that it’s safe to let it go. But I have made a record that’s very different to The Living Kind with all different musicians, and it’s a very different collection of songs. So yes, I’m looking forward to putting that out.
The thing with The Living Kind was I wanted it to be as idiosyncratic as something like Hejira by Joni Mitchell, where that record only sounds like that record. Amongst all my other records, I think The Living Kind stands alone. It sounds a certain way, and I’ll never capture that sound again. We were isolated in freezing Maine in February, and with four days to make a record, we’ve committed to recording down four channels. I committed to putting certain effects on all the guitars and we made stylistic decisions that I might not make now and might not make again, but they really served those songs. So, I think whatever happens after The Living Kind is going to sound different, not in a freezing wilderness.
Might we get to hear some of those songs on the forthcoming tour?
Certainly, yes.
You mentioned Joni Mitchell. I want to talk about the opening song ‘Candle’. There’s a pulsing sound on the track, which is a bit mesmerizing. Is that Patrick Warren’s keyboard? What is it that’s doing that? I know that track has been likened to ‘Coyote’ [by Johni Mitchell]. Is that the keyboard or whose idea was that?
I wrote the song with that effect. It’s a tape delay pedal on the acoustic guitar. So, when I wrote that song it always came with that effect in mind. So, what I did was I played it through that pedal with Ross [Gallagher] on the bass, and then underneath we’ve got a little bit of BOD [overdrive pedal] bass, and then Joshua Van Tessel in Toronto put down some drums, like some treated drums, through some effects pedals. But they come in later. For the most part it’s this guitar riff but through a tape delay. So, it sounds like it’s got this kind of steamroll thing happening.
It was driving me crazy. I couldn’t figure out what it was.
A little bit of pedalboard geekery led me towards that.
So, what inspired you to sort of search for that sound? Because I read that when you were talking about the album, you wanted to get something that sounded like a Talk Talk album and John Martyn’s Solid Air [and Joni Mitchell’s Hejira]. That’s setting the bar fairly high! What was it that you wanted to achieve? Was it just something that you just felt really creative and doing something completely different?
Yes, I wanted to give the record a sense of space, deep atmosphere, deep, dark, light and shadows. And those three records, those are three of my favorites. I think they all possess similar characteristics. When you listen to them, you’re glimpsing a different world, and I don’t know that I’ve ever really pulled that off with my records.
So yes, I went in wanting to create a different kind of atmospherics. So, there was a lot of leaning on guitar effects, lots of chorus, gentle chorus and delay kind of swaying around. Then just recording of double bass. Then we overdubbed things later. We got Patrick Warren to put down some things later and Josh and Jay Bellerose, but for the most part it’s just an affected guitar, bass and vocals, all kind of dancing around each other.
And Levon [Henry] played the wind instruments. He was there, sax also? What else was he playing?
That was kind of the ace in the hole, really. Levon is pretty much the only saxophonist that I want to hear. It was not my favourite instrument. There’s a couple of guys here in the UK, Ian Bellamy being one where I really, I dig it. But Levon, when he picks up his sax, it becomes completely transformative. I knew that I wanted to use him for some clarinet, but when he pulled out his tenor sax and he just started and played the saxophone line, it instantly felt right. Suddenly, not only was I a fan of the saxophone but I knew that these songs had turned a corner and become something else.
The beauty of recording with other musicians, especially a virtuoso like Levon, is that they bring something: a different set of colours to the palette and start painting with different strokes and the song becomes a different picture completely. You just have to surrender to it and let it happen. His playing on the record is just amazing. I think the amazing thing about Lee, he did that while he was also engineering the record. He’s sitting there at the mixing desk, keeping an eye on levels and compression and delay. Then at the same time he goes, ‘Oh, let me just try this’ and he’ll pick up a horn and put something down that kind of blows everyone’s mind. He’s a really amazing guy. Amazing player.
Well, it’s a fantastic sounding record and it’s a record that, how can I put this? You really need to listen to it because it can be a little bit deceptive. It’s an old-fashioned album. You need to sit and listen to the album because the more you listen to it the more it reveals itself. I’m not sure that everybody’s got a huge amount of patience to do that but the more I listen to it the more I love the playing and the songs.
Thanks, man. I think that’s why the press completely ignored it. You are a very different proposition to the UK press, Brian. You love music and you sit down and give it time. I think it is a slow burn and I wrote it as such. I wanted it to be a kind of song cycle and to reveal itself slowly which is what all my favourite records do. I like sitting and listening to records. I can’t really get on with this idea of just listening to one song on a playlist and then moving onto someone else. I find it too jarring. It’s too frenetic. I like listening to a record. So yes, man, I’m glad you picked up on that. It means a lot to me.
You said that you wrote it about emerging from a hard time into something brighter, that it’s optimistic and open hearted. I have to say, you’re looking great. I think you did go through a pretty hard time, if I recall correctly. So, it’s great that you’ve been able to emerge from that. I mean, a lot of people have, haven’t they? But it’s sometimes it’s hard to get out of that funk.
Oh, for sure. The only way that I dealt with it was by writing. It’s a real blessing to be able to put pen to paper and put the world to write, and not everyone has that ability. So, I’m very fortunate in that regard, I think. Yes, writing songs for me is sort of free therapy. So, I just wrote it all down and eventually songs are going to show up. It’s funny.
There’s one song, ‘Trick of the Light’, which is about everything you just described and there’s this part of you, it’s like you see hard times receding into the rear-view mirror and you’re driving along and you think, ‘Wow, I’m past it now and I’m going to be okay’. You look forward into a bright horizon, you think everything’s going to be all right. But then there’s this voice in your mind that says, ‘Well, maybe it’s a trick of the light.’
So, when I was writing that, I didn’t even realise what it was about, and I played the song ‘Trick of the Light’ to Joe. I said, ‘I’m not sure if this is a good song, man. I feel like I’ve ripped someone off or it’s just, it’s boring. Let me play it to you’. He said, ‘Alright, play it to me. See what we think.’ I sat and I played the song, and he goes, ‘It’s great. I think we should put it on the record’. I said, ‘Alright, well, let’s record it’ and he said, ‘You just did.’ I didn’t realise the microphones were turned on. So, that version on the record is the first time I played it in the room, maybe the third or fourth time I’d ever played it. And that’s exactly what that song is about, just emerging and kind of trying to get your chin up again.
I guess the mood is summed up by the title track, isn’t it, ‘The Living Kind’? It says it all. It’s upbeat.
Yes. Even though the record itself is quite downbeat, it felt like the appropriate title, kind of what the record is about. A lot of those songs are just pure love songs. And if you’re not loving, then you’re not living as far as I’m concerned. I just thought all of this adds up. I, this is what I need to call the record.
John Smith completes his current short tour of Australia at the Vanguard in Sydney on Wednesday March 12.