Chris Smither - you know what he means

Every time I go to a Chris Smither gig, I spend the following five days wishing all my songs sounded like Chris Smither songs. Thursday night past at the Errigle, and he’s up on the stage singing: ‘If I were young again, I’d pay attention’. I look around me at the audience, mostly men my age and older, a little padded in the waist and grey at the temples, and you can tell they know what he means.

Smither’s charm is that he never needs to hide behind metaphors and images – he’s so direct that he goes straight through and connects quickly. He’s a poet of the big and broken heart, a sublime ragtime-flavoured country blues guitarist with a metronomic tapping foot that just nails his comic timing right into your soul. And we laugh out loud and we shake our heads in wonder at how easy he makes it sound.

I’m buying a couple of albums like a teenage fan and I shake his hand and mumble that I’m a songwriter too, and I love the way he makes it sound like he just thought of it in that second. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘When you get lines like that, you just pounce on ’em and don’t let ’em go.’

If you’re new to Chris Smither, don’t be a stranger – check him out at www.chrissmither.com. And while you’re at it, support the good folks who bring him to your neighbourhood at the Real Music Club, Errigle Inn – www.realmusicclub.com. Upcoming dates include Darrell Scott on April 19, The Paperboys on May 5 and Kimmie Rhodes on May 14.