Chris Smither’s Extensive Tour

Outstanding folk/blues guitarist, singer and songwriter Chris Smither is visiting Australia for a solo tour taking in intimate clubs in capital cities and a number of folk music events including the Brunswick Music Festival, Apollo Bay, Blue Mountains and Port Fairy music festivals.

The man described by Associated Press as “an American original, a product of the musical melting pot, and one of the absolute best singer-songwriters in the world,” is coming to Australia following the release of his acclaimed new album, Time Stands Still which is the eleventh studio album of a career that now spans over four decades.

Like John Hammond and a handful of other musicians whose careers began in the 1960s blues revival, Chris Smither can take pride in the fact that he’s been there since the beginning. Smither has been a mainstay of the festival, coffee house and club circuits around the U.S., Canada and Europe since his performing career began in earnest in the coffeehouses in Boston in the spring of 1966.

Best known for his great songs like Love You Like A Man and I Feel the Same,– both of which have been recorded by guitarist Bonnie Raitt, who herself calls him “my Eric Clapton!” – Smither’s career just keeps on progressing upwards.

He recently won 2007 Folk Alliance Awards for both Song of the Year (“Seems So Real”) and Contemporary Artist of the Year. In 2006, Rolling Stone Magazine named “Diplomacy” from his Leave the Light On album as #42 on their list of the 100 Best Songs of the Year. And if that wasn’t enough, Smither was also named as 2007’s Outstanding Folk Act by the Boston Music Awards.

As the Sydney Morning Herald recently said, “his ability to take the emotion at the heart of a song, make it transparent and pass it on to the listener is unmatched.” Chris Smither’s songs are somehow both vivid and mysterious, evoking contemporary culture and circumstance while remaining touchingly timeless. His concerns – personal and political – are wed to music that, while stripped down in terms of arrangement and presentation, is intricate, melodic, and challenging. This kind of stark setting only serves to throw his themes into higher relief. As Smither says, “I’m still talking about what I think of as nitty-gritty questions…essential questions, existential questions.”

Influential roots music magazine No Depression recently said, “If you’ve ever caught one of Chris Smither’s live performances, you know it’s hard not to come away knocked out by the amount of music that comes out of one man. His guitar playing is remarkably fluid.  His songs are gleaming bits of gold performed in a variety of styles.”

Dates

Friday 5 March : Notes: Newtown, NSW

Saturday- Monday 6-8 March : Port Fairy Folk Festival, Victoria

Wednesday 10 March, Thursday 11 March : Trinity Sessions, Adelaide

Friday 12 March : Lizottes Newcastle (formerly Kings Theatre)

Saturday- Sunday 13/14 March : Blue Mountains Music Festival

Wednesday 17 March : The Zoo, Fortitude Valley, QLD

Thursday 18 March : The SoundLounge, Currumbin RSL, Gold Coast

Friday 19 March : Joe’s Waterhole, Eumundi, QLD

Saturday 20 March : Burke & Wills Winery, Lancefield, VIC

Sunday 21 March : Brunswick Music Festival, Vic

Wednesday 24 March, Thursday 25 March : Kulcha, Fremantle, WA

Friday 26 March : Northcote Social Club, Vic,

Saturday, Sunday 27/28 March : Apollo Bay Music Festival

Wednesday 31 March : Mechanics Institute PAC, Brunswick Vic.

Thursday 1 April : Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt, NSW

Friday 2 April : Clarendon Hotel, Katoomba, NSW

Saturday- Monday 3-5 April : National Folk Festival, Canberra, ACT