“I feel like a lucky person,” said Chris Smither in reference to the title of his new album “Call Me Lucky.”
The phrase came from a line in the album’s opening track, “The Blame’s On Me,” but Smither realized it summed up his own life. “I am lucky. How many people get to spend their whole adult life doing something that they would cheerfully pay someone to be allowed to do?” asked Smither, who was calling from his home in Amherst.
But it’s his fans who are the lucky ones.
Smither, 74, was raised in New Orleans but later moved to the Boston area where he launched his career as a singer-songwriter. In 2009, he moved to Amherst and since 2006, has recorded for Signature Sounds in Northampton. A brilliant guitarist and master of blues-influenced American folk music, Smither has been making music for more than 50 years. His songs are full of deft observations on the human experience and often include traces of his sly humor. Other performers such as Bonnie Raitt, Diana Krall and the Dixie Chicks have covered his songs.
“Call Me Lucky” is Smither’s 18th album and his first of original material in six years. On this collection of 16 songs, his weathered voice and nimble finger-picking have never sounded better, while both his wit and wisdom are firmly intact. He also includes a few covers, including an excellent-yet-almost-unrecognizable take on Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene” that showcases his skills as an interpreter.
Smither will celebrate the release of “Call Me Lucky” at the Shea Theater, 71 Avenue A in Turners Falls, on Saturday, April 7, at 7 p.m. Joan Shelley will open.
“Call Me Lucky” was recorded at Blue Rock Studios in Texas and was produced by Smither’s longtime producer David “Goody” Goodrich. Goodrich, who resided in Sunderland before moving to Austin, also played on the album, as did local musician Matt Lorenz (of The Suitcase Junket) and drummer Billy Conway. The group went into the studio with the goal of recording 10 songs, but ended up with a 16-song double disc set that has a unique twist.
“I had gone to bed early one night and the rest of the guys were up, and they started taking an entirely different approach to one of the songs that we had just recorded,” recalled Smither. “They presented it to me the next morning and said ‘See if you can sing this,’ and I did and it was a lot of fun.”
From there, the band reworked more of the songs and Smither kept singing them.
“It had started as a goof, but once we sat and listened to them, we thought ‘We should put these out; we’ll just make it an A side and a B Side.’ The B side is the songs totally re-imagined and in fact, re-imagined to the point that I don’t even play guitar, I just sing.”
The radical differences in the versions reveal a very different musical side of Smither, one we haven’t heard before. For instance, the A side of “Everything On Top” is a sweet ballad, while the B side version transforms the song into a full-out rocker.
“I came in one morning and they asked me ‘Chris, can you scream?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I can,’ and it was a riot,” he said of the song.
“I’m pleased by how many radio stations are playing both versions of everything, and some even prefer the B side,” said Smither, who added that he hasn’t yet played any of the B side versions on stage.
One song from “Call Me Lucky” that is getting recognition is “Nobody Home,” a rollicking blues tune on which Smither sets his aim on religion, relationships, modern day communication and the White House. He debuted the song at last year’s Back Porch Festival in Northampton and the crowd loved it, especially the line “I a saw a clown with a comb-over/Trying to float a loan through the CIA /While tweeting on his phone/ But there ain’t nobody home.”
“Like all my songs, it just starts with guitar licks and a progression, and then the first line that fell out of my mouth was ‘There’s nobody home,’ so I started to think of some examples of nobody being home — and what came to mind but the Orange Julius,” he said with a laugh.
Having written close to 100 songs, one might think that the art of songwriting gets easier with experience.
“It’s never easy, but compared to how terrified, baffled and generally incompetent feeling I was as a younger person, then, yeah, it’s easier,” he said. “When I was younger, after I finished a song, I wondered if I would ever be able to write another one. But what I’ve learned since then is that despite the feeling that it will never happen again, I know it will.”
Smither is in the midst of a U.S. tour in support of “Call Me Lucky,” and when this tour stops at the Shea Theater, he will be joined by David Goodrich and Billy Conway. But since 2018 is turning into the year of retirement tours with artists like Joan Baez, Paul Simon and Elton John announcing that their current tours will be their last, I had to ask Smither if he plans on joining their ranks.
“Not really. There is something in me that doesn’t approve of that,” he said. “If I was going to do a farewell tour, I would never call it that, I would just do it. When you announce it as a retirement tour, it feels like a ploy just to get people to come out. Plus, what if you change your mind?”
“But I love to play,” Smither continued. “I think Jorma Kaukonen had the best answer to the retirement question. He said ‘So I can do what, play more guitar?’”
Tickets to Smither’s show at the Shea Theater are $25 in advance, $30 at the door, and are available at www.signaturesoundspresents.com.
Sheryl Hunter is a music writer who lives in Easthampton. Her work has appeared in various regional and national magazines. Contact her by email at soundslocal@yahoo.com.