Chris Smither

William Christopher Smither (born November 11, 1944) is an American folk/blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter.

His music draws deeply from the blues, American folk music, and modern poets and philosophers.

He was born in Miami, Florida, United States to Catherine (nee Weaver) and William J. Smither.

Although Smither does not himself credit family influence to his talents, uncle Howard E. Smither was an award-winning musicologist and author, and father William was a professor of Spanish and Mexican culture.

The Smither family lived in Ecuador and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas before settling in New Orleans when Chris was three years old.

He grew up in New Orleans, and lived briefly in Paris where he and his twin sister Mary Catherine attended French public school.

It was in Paris that Smither got his first guitar, one his father brought him from Spain.

Shortly after, the family returned to New Orleans where his father taught at Tulane University.

In 1960, Smither and two friends entered and won a folk "Battle of the Bands" at the New Orleans Saenger Theatre.

Two years later, Smither graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans and went on to attend the University of the Americas in Mexico City planning to study Latin-American anthropology like his father.

It was there that a friend played Smither the Lightnin' Hopkins' record "Blues in My Bottle".

After one year in Mexico, Smither returned to New Orleans where he attended Tulane for one year and discovered Mississippi John Hurt's music through the Blues at Newport 1963 album on Vanguard Records.

Hurt and Hopkins would become cornerstone influences on Smither's own music.

In 1964, Smither flew to New York City two days prior to boarding the SS United States for the five-day transatlantic voyage to Paris for his Junior Year Abroad program, which his father helped administer for Tulane.

While in New York, he stopped at The Gaslight Cafe to see his hero, Mississippi John Hurt.

Once in Paris, Smither often spent time playing his guitar instead of attending classes.

Smither returned to New Orleans in 1965.

With a few clothes and his guitar, he soon took off for Florida to meet another musical hero, Eric Von Schmidt.

Smither arrived uninvited at von Schmidt's door; von Schmidt welcomed Smither in, and upon listening to him play, advised him to go north to seek a place in the burgeoning folk scene in New York City or Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Smither followed this advice, and arrived at Club 47 in Harvard Square several weeks later only to find von Schmidt performing.

Von Schmidt invited Smither on stage to play three songs.

Smither soon began writing and performing his own songs.

He achieved some local notice and by 1967 was featured on the cover of The Broadside of Boston magazine.

In 1968, music photographer David Gahr's book, The Face of Folk Music featured Smither's picture.

By 1969, after living in several places around Cambridge, Smither moved to Garfield Street in Cambridge and often visited Dick Waterman's house where Fred McDowell, Son House and other blues musicians were known to congregate.

It was there that Smither first performed his song "Love You Like a Man" for Waterman's friend, Bonnie Raitt.

That summer, he appeared at the Philadelphia Folk Festival for the first time.

In 1970, he released his first album I'm a Stranger Too! on Poppy Records, followed by Don't It Drag On the next year.

Smither began to re-emerge as a performer in the late 1970s, and gained a few press notices.

In 1972, a longstanding working relationship with Bonnie Raitt took shape as Raitt's cover of "Love Me Like a Man" appeared on her second album Give It Up.

Raitt has since made it a signature song of her live performances, and the song has been included on several of her live albums and collections.

She has openly expressed admiration for Smither's songwriting and guitar playing, once calling Smither "my Eric Clapton."

He recorded a follow-up, Honeysuckle Dog, in 1973 for United Artists Records but Smither was dropped from the label and the album went unreleased until 2004, when it was issued by Tomato Records.

Despite no longer having a recording contract, Smither continued to tour and became a fixture in New England's folk clubs.

In 1973, Raitt covered Smither's song "I Feel the Same" on her Takin' My Time album.

Following this mixed early success, Smither's recording and songwriting career had a long fallow period while he struggled personally.

In his official biography, Smither is quoted: "I was basically drunk for 12 years, and somehow I managed to climb out of it; I don't know why."

In 1979, he was featured in Eric Von Schmidt and Jim Rooney's book, Baby Let Me Follow You Down, and the next year in the UK's Melody Maker magazine.

In 1984, Smither's belated third album, It Ain't Easy was released on Adelphi Records, which the Boston Phoenix acoustic music critic Jon Herman called "the naked and sophisticated blues album that Eric Von Schmidt, Rolf Cahn, Spider John Koerner, and other white revivalists groped for more than 20 years ago, at the dawn of the folk revival."

He recorded his next album, Another Way to Find You, in front of a live audience at Soundtrack Studio in Boston and in 1991 released it on Flying Fish Records.