Graham Reid | | <1 min read
Chris Smither: Cold Trail Blues
Smith is a grizzled-sounding roots-country singer whose spare songs glisten with his guitar playing, and whose baritone sounds whiskey-cured and filled with gravitas.
He's no chicken (he's 62 and recorded his first album 33 years ago), but that only adds to his authentic, throaty country-blues which owes debts to Mississippi John Hurt, but also respects more recent songwriters. (He covers Dylan's Visions of Johanna --as a waltz -- and Peter Case's Cold Trail Blues here).
He's a fine writer himself and pens lyrics which can be hard and bone dry, or often quite witty.
He's the only singer-songwriter I know of who has worked "paramecium" into a foot tapping lyric. Respected by like of Bonnie Raitt, Smither is a diamond.
Rough, but a diamond nonetheless.
post a comment