CHRIS SMITHER Call Me Lucky SIGNATURE SOUNDS 8/10

Roots veteran started back doing the songs he used to do

THIRTY-FOUR years ago Chris Smither recorded a fleetfingered acoustic cover of Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline” for his album It Ain’t Easy. While he jettisoned the rollicking electric guitar of his hero’s original, he retained the revved-up tempo and the lusty vocals. Smither tackles the song again on his latest album, Call Me Lucky, but this time around he resituates it in a minor key and slows it down, transforming it into a melancholy folk blues. it becomes an old man’s lament, Smither’s voice deeper and wearier as he considers youthful conquests receding in the rearview mirror.

Not everything on Call Me Lucky is quite so dark, but even the most upbeat songs are delivered from a septuagenarian’s perspective. Smither has been writing and performing for more than 50 years now, first as a newcomer in New Orleans coffeehouses and later as a mainstay on the Boston folk scene, where he met long-time friend and tourmate Bonnie Raitt. While she enjoyed hits over the next few decades, Smither endured false starts and label changes, hindered by stage fright and alcoholism.

But here he is, in 2018, making some of the best music of his career. Call Me Lucky careens confidently from lowdown acoustic blues to spry folk rock, riffing and jangling with a sense of urgency and purpose. You expect to hear heartbreakers like “Lower The Humble” and the devastating “By The Numbers”; more surprising are the sly jokes he cracks on “Too Bad So Sad” and “Nobody Home”. The latter may not be the most potent protest song, but he delivers the line about the “clown with a comb-over” with a damning chuckle.

Age has granted Smither a certain wisdom, and relative obscurity has nurtured his self-deprecating sense of humour. Nothing, fortunately, has dulled his wit or slowed his guitar picking. He knows he’s “trying to catch the future before it’s in the past”, as he sings on “The Blame’s On Me”, and that chase only adds more urgency to this bittersweet album.