Buddha Blues: Chris Smither on All About the Bones
The veteran troubadour talks Zen, the devil, New Orleans and Tom Petty
Chris Smither has been around the block.
The New Orleans-born singer/songwriter started out on the ‘60s Boston/Cambridge folk scene and released his first album in 1970. Bonnie Raitt’s early ‘70s recordings of his tunes helped spread the word, but nobody does them like Smither.
His virtuosic, country blues-derived finger-picking and earthy moan are the ideal vehicles for songs equally inhabited by poetic language and hard-earned wisdom. Smither turns 80 this year but he’s showing no signs of slowing down. His new album, All About the Bones, signals that his flame burns bright as ever.
We chatted about how he keeps the whole thing going.
Over the years you’ve written a number of songs that seem to come from a kind of Zen or Buddhist perspective. “In the Bardo” seems like one of those; the bardo is obviously a Buddhist concept of a kind of limbo state.
You’re right, they do come from there. I’ve had a lot of people ask me, “Are you a Buddhist?” And I always answer that by saying, “I do a lot of things that Buddhists do.” And I try to think that way. Sometimes it just keeps me from going crazy, you know, being able to keep things in the moment and not worry too much. There was an experimental novel a few years ago called Lincoln in the Bardo. I got about two thirds of the way through it—it’s hard work, and at the same time it’s kind of spooky. And I never finished it, but more to the point, the song itself, “In the Bardo”—quite often when I’m writing a song, I have no idea what the song is about till it’s finished…. This song just kept eluding me, I kept feeling lost. Suddenly it occurred to me that I was in the bardo, that was why. I couldn’t find anything because there wasn’t anything. Everything was disconnected. So, I said “Okay, that’s what I’m calling the song.” And then it had focus, and I could finish the song. It’s very definitely got that whole Tibetan Buddhism concept.
The devil has popped up in previous songs of yours. This time he appears in “If Not for the Devil.” What appeals to you about having him as a character?
I started thinking about things like that probably when I was about 10 or 12. At a pretty early age it occurred to me that within at least Western tradition, the concept of the devil is as important as the concept of God, whether you believe in either one of them. You can’t escape it; it just governs a whole lot of thinking and a whole lot of people’s actions. It’s a pretty old idea that good and evil or the devil and God are just two sides of the same thing. I got off on a tangent on that song and kept thinking of somebody consulting the devil about what he thought about things. And this is what he had to say, “I’m just trying to keep it going.” (laughs)
That song is also a good example of the way you sometimes expand blues structures.
It’s not even much of an expansion, it’s like a pure blues riff. When I first started actually learning how to play guitar instead of strumming guitar, that’s the first place I went, was to the old country blues guys. I loved them because to me it sounded like they were playing rock ‘n’ roll, they were just doing it all by themselves. I got into those shapes and forms and that whole I-IV-V progression and pentatonic scales. When I get stuck for writing it’s a convenient little can opener to open whatever’s bottling me up. I just pick some old blues riff, work on a progression, and just find some kind of lyrical idea. In fact, “If Not for the Devil” was the very first song of this batch that got written.
“Down in Thibodeaux” touches on your hometown roots in New Orleans. At this point in your life, you’ve been in New England longer than you lived in New Orleans, right?
I left New Orleans when I was 21, and I’ve been basically based in New England for the rest of my life. I feel very affectionate about New Orleans. I love going home; I still think of it as home. I don’t get down there very often. They bring me down for Jazz Fest every four or five years, or I go down to play at Chickie Wah Wah, but there’s just a thing about it that’s familiar. There’s something about the smell of the place. The whole town smells like it’s been wet for a long time (laughs), it’s got this moist feel to it. Then there’s this overwhelming feeling of spilt beer that’s been sitting around on the floor for a long time.
Does New England inspire you as well?
It does. I love it up here. For one thing it’s full of smart people from all over the world. It’s a big cultural center. I didn’t grow up with a lot of seasons, and I love the seasons. The seasons actually make me think. They get me cosmically oriented and don’t let me forget that this may be right here right now but we’re still on a ball speeding through the void and it’s still turning around. It’s also halfway between San Francisco and Paris, two of my favorite cities.
In terms of seasons, it seems like autumn is the dominant mood in your songs.
That’s a good observation. I think so, yeah. In the midst of life we are in death (laughs). We’re always moving towards that eventual failure, but that’s also where the promise of the rebirth comes from. There is no autumn in New Orleans (laughs); it gets a little cooler and sometimes it rains a lot.
VIDEO: Tom Petty “Time to Move On”
How did you decide to cover the Tom Petty tune “Time to Move On” for this album?
I’ve always liked Tom Petty. He has a very idiosyncratic approach to writing pop songs. I don’t think there’s anybody quite like him. He writes pop songs that don’t sound like they were intended to be pop songs. It was actually my producer [David Goodrich] that suggested it. I wasn’t that sure about it at the time, I started fooling around with it a little bit, and it just didn’t seem to gel. On that record [Wildflowers] he plays it in G. Then I said, “Maybe it’ll work for me in A.” As soon as I transposed it, it just fell into place. I realized it was a fun thing to play. I called [Goodrich] up and I said, “I got into that Petty song, I found a way into it.” He said, “Don’t tell me, you transposed it, right?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “You’re playing it in A, right?” It always helps to have a producer who understands you.
You’ve recorded a lot of covers over time. When you started out on the Cambridge/Boston folk scene in the ‘60s, how much of your set was cover tunes?
Oh, most of it, I’d probably say 90 percent. I had written very few songs when I started doing this. But I quickly realized that songwriters were the only people that were gonna get anywhere. That was a very conscious decision on my part, “I’ve got to start writing songs.” It wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever tried to do, but I find it unbelievably rewarding.
What was that ‘60s Boston area folk scene like?
There were plenty of places to play. There were lots of little coffeehouses. There was a very well-defined group [of artists], people would come and go but there was a sort of a core group that shifted very slowly. It was very collegial. We all played the same places, all within maybe 40, 50 miles of Boston, and there were lots of places in Boston. I remember when Loudon Wainright turned up and started playing those places too, I always had a lot of time for him. There were certain bigger clubs that one aspired to play—Club 47 was one, The Unicorn was one, it was a big deal when one of us would get a gig there. I remember those years pretty fondly.
Who were some of the people in that core group?
Bill Staines, John McGann, Paul Geremia, there was a woman named Leonda…there’s not a lot of them that are still doing music.
Except for you. Looking back, what do you know now about what you do that you didn’t know then?
That’s an interesting question. I didn’t know much back then. Now I have a thorough picture of the whole scene, but the scene is so different now than it was then. Back then, the be-all and end-all of your existence was getting a recording contract. That’s just not so important anymore. Anybody can make a record now…and the good stuff kind of tends to float up to the top. Philosophically, there are very few things in my life today that are critically important to my success. Back when I was in my 20s it seemed like every song that I wrote was, “This is the make-or-break moment…this has got to be perfect.” And recordings were like that too.
I didn’t have that much faith in myself; it all felt very tenuous to me at the time, like I didn’t dare make a false step. And that’s not true anymore. I have a more generalized and accepting view of not only my own work, but everybody’s work now. And records are snapshots of a time, they’re not monuments engraved in marble carved out of stone. They’re snapshots of what’s going on with you at the moment. If you’ve worked at it as long as I have and kept at it, there’s a fairly sizable group of people who are gonna be interested in what’s going on with you at the moment. So the thing that’s important to preserve is a sense of keeping faith with that group. To try to just stay true to yourself so they don’t detect any artificiality. It took me a long time to learn that your audience wants you to be good. It’s not an adversarial situation. They’re on your side. Your main job is to keep it that way.
You’ve been at it for a long time. What puts gas in your tank today and keeps you going?
Performing. I still love to get out on the stage and sit down and say, “I’m gonna be here for 90 minutes. Take my trip (laughs), let’s do this thing.” I used to love every aspect of touring, but now the travel and the discombobulation is a little harder. I’m physically less tolerant of it, but on the other hand, times are better, I can afford more comfortable accommodations. I can afford to travel a little bit more luxuriously. That takes some of the pressure off. I still write the songs and make the records so that I can go perform. I want to create that thing that happens when you’ve got a good audience and sound system and you can actually project yourself onto people, I love it.
It seems like your work has deepened over time. Do things feel easier or harder?
It’s a little freer. I’m a little more convinced that my audience is willing to follow me. They cut me slack, so that I can go into things that are sort of outrageous, or that I might have thought were outrageous when I was younger, and not be afraid to do that. They want to know what’s really going on with me. “If Not for the Devil,” at one time that might have seemed like, “I don’t want to do that, that’s gonna make people think too much (laughs). Maybe that results in things being deeper and more profound, I don’t know. I just convey what’s going on in my mind. When you get older, things that are on your mind are deeper. I don’t worry about trivialities so much, and I think about the big stuff a lot.
What’s your feeling about making albums in 2024?
It’s nothing like what it used to be. I still like to make the records. I still like looking at them. I like holding them in my hand. And I sell them at my gigs to people who like the same sort of thing. But I’m perfectly aware that it’s sort of a dying thing. It might come back.
To me, most of the current pop music is so very transient that I think people might get a little tired of that aspect of it. That happened in the transition from the ‘50s to the ‘60s, the whole idea of albums. Albums used to be a collection of singles. The idea of actually creating a whole, practically an opera, and putting it on one disc, ‘65 to ‘70 was when that came to be just the way you did things. And now it’s sort of fading back into singles. I would personally prefer people to listen to the whole record from beginning to end because there’s a coherence to it. But still, I see the value of individual songs too. So, I’ll take whatever attention I can get.
All About the Bones is out now on Signature Sounds.
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