Chris Smither

Saturday, May 4, 2013
Chris Smither Concert
$23 Members, $25 Non-Members (General)
From his early days as the hot New Orleans transplant in the Boston folk scene, through his wilderness years, to his reemergence in the 1990s as one of America's most distinctive acoustic performers, Chris Smither has always been his own man. It's easy to see that Smither's primary touchstone is acoustic blues, once describing his guitar style as "one third Lightnin' Hopkins, one third Mississippi John Hurt and one-third… Show more me." While "blues" can evoke images of beer-sodden bar bands cranking out three sets a night wondering why one's baby left them, Smither reaches back to the primordial longing and infinite loneliness held within the form. Smither's cosmic blues are on full display in Hundred Dollar Valentine (2012), a brilliant amalgam made of equal parts past, present and future. While this is Smither's twelfth studio album, this is his first-ever outing comprised entirely of self-penned songs. Hundred Dollar Valentine sports the unmistakable sound he's made his trademark: fingerpicked acoustic guitar and evocative sonic textures meshed with spare, brilliant songs, delivered in a bone-wise, hard-won voice. It is music that traces its roots back deep into tradition, anchors its rhythms and textures in today, and reaches forward into the future, asking the Big Questions why am I here? Is there purpose to all of this or is it just a spinning cascade of random moments? And he does it all with six strings, an insistent, understated groove and a sly wink letting you know that we may all enter and leave this world alone, but that don't mean we can't have a good time while we're here. SSFMC welcomes the return of Chris Smither!

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