Smith was a gentle force in folk music
Chicago musician died Monday at 78
Long ago at a Miami coffeehouse, Chicago’s Steve Goodman sat in the back, jotting down in the darkness the words to a song being sung by the man onstage.
The man was Michael Smith, the song was “The Dutchman” and it would be a recording hit for Goodman and for many others. It was just one of the hundreds of songs and millions of words Smith gave to the worlds of music and theater in a long and lauded career.
Smith was, in one word, enchanting.
Rolling Stone magazine once called him “the greatest songwriter in the English language” and earlier this month, the American Songwriter online magazine fairly compared him to the recently deceased John Prine, writing that both men “imbued their songs with heartfelt, sentimental tenderness. Each of them wrote lyrics of unforced grace and elegance, using language wistful and concise to create genuinely poignant songs.”
Erudite, engaging and wildly prolific, Michael Peter Smith, a creative force on the music and theatrical scenes, died Monday of colon cancer at age 78. He had been staying at the home of his longtime collaborator, manager and devoted friend Jamie O’Reilly and died in his own apartment cared for by his three sisters.
On Tuesday morning O’Reilly said, “It came peacefully.”
Michael Peter Smith was born Sept. 7, 1941 in South Orange, New Jersey, then a rowdy factory town that would have a profound influence on his music. He spent $15 to buy his first guitar and was soon performing in a series of local bands.
After his family moved to Florida, he attended college and performed, notably in a steady, sixnights-a-week-for-threeyears engagement at The Flick Coffeehouse. That is where Goodman saw him and where he met musician Barbara Barrow, who would become his wife and musical partner.
They made a record for Decca Records and lived in Los Angeles for short time. The record bombed and after Goodman’s recording of “The Dutchman” became a hit, Smith and Barrow were drawn to Chicago, where they settled and quickly became part of a thriving folk music scene. They performed with the other grand talents in that realm, which included Goodman, Prine, Bonnie Koloc, Jim Post, Ed Holstein (and his brother, Fred, who died in 2004), Corky Siegel and others. They played all the memorable venues, such as the Earl of
Old Town, Somebody Else’s Troubles, Holstein’s, No Exit and Orphans.
It will stun some of those who met Smith later in life and knew him as a sunny personality to learn that he was then, as he once told Tribune reporter Lynn Van Matre, “an uptight, unpleasant young man. I prided myself on telling people exactly what I thought. I had this idea that being grossly frank went hand in hand with being an artist, even if my abrasiveness alienated a lot of people, including club owners. And the more people were in a position to help me, the quicker I was to let them know I didn’t need them. Boy, I said some unbelievable things.”
He was ever admired by fellow performers.
“I know I was so fortunate to be around such gifted people as Steve, John and Michael,” said Koloc, who lives with her husband, writer Bob Wolf, in Iowa. “People talk about those days so long ago when we were young and so involved in our music. It was not a passing fad. It was who all of us were. What a gift to interpret Michael’s songs. Words and music so full and interesting. When I sing his ‘Crazy Mary,’ it’s like a visual little short film. It has remained fresh and beautiful to me for over a long span of time. I loved the literary sense that underpinned all his songs, making them work on more than one level. What beautiful gems he has left us, waiting for new interpretations.”
As the folk boom went bust by the late 1970s, Smith worked as a clerk for Time magazine, infrequently playing in public and teaching at the Old Town School.
He never stopped writing his happy, sad, poignant, occasionally satirical songs and by the mid-1980s began to regularly perform again, often accompanied by Anne Hills.
In 1988, he collaborated with director Frank Galati on a Steppenwolf Theatre adaptation of John Steinbeck’s magisterial novel, “The Grapes of Wrath.” The highly anticipated show was given a lukewarm review upon opening by the Tribune’s Richard Christiansen. But he found a bright spot, writing that “using Michael Smith’s original score and Steinbeck’s words as lyrics, creates much of whatever vitality the production enjoys. The brief musical segment adapted from the novel’s chapter on conniving used-car salesmen is one of the show’s few unalloyed joys.”
The show would go on to play Broadway (winning 1990 Tony Awards for best play and best director) and, after staying with that show for nearly three touring years, Smith would go one to write and perform a biographical play titled “Michael, Margaret, Pat & Kate” at Victory Gardens Theater. Essentially a oneman musical show based on his memories of growing up with three younger sisters in New Jersey and his discovering folk music via the Kingston Trio, it was often warm and affecting, though shadowed by the suicide of their harddrinking father.
In 2000 with Barrow, Mark Dvorak, and Chris Walz, he created Weavermania, celebrating the works of the Weavers. They performed together for more than a decade.
With O’Reilly, he would create, perform and record “Pasiones: Songs of the Spanish Civil War,” followed by their delightful “Hello Dali” (songs for a show about art), “Scarlet Confessions” (with Hills), and a holiday CD/show collaboration with O’Reilly of “The Gift of the Magi.” All enjoyed runs at various theaters here and elsewhere. He also composed the score for a production of Hans Christian Andersen’s
“The Snow Queen,” which he and Barrow performed beginning in 2006.
There would be more concerts, more songs and more albums, including “Such Things Are Finely Done” and the soundtrack to a children’s production he wrote and performed called “The Selfish Giant,” featuring the puppet wizardry of Blair Thomas.
Early in 2019, a GoFundMe page was launched to help raise funds for Barrow, who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. It quickly raised more than three times its $15,000 goal. Barrow would die in February of this year, ending the pair’s 52 years of marriage.
Smith spent his last weeks in home hospice care, first at O’Reilly’s home and then in his own apartment, cared for by his sisters.
Assessing Smith’s career, Tribune Critic Chris Jones said, “Michael was a crucial and highly influential link between Chicago’s folk scene and its renowned and growing theater community, especially on the streets of Old Town and Lincoln Park. His brand of musical storytelling at Steppenwolf or Victory Gardens brought together two of the city’s most important homegrown cultural strands, forging a connection that defined a populist aesthetic with which others could and did run.”
If you ever saw Smith, it is unlikely you will ever forget him. If you did not, so much of his material, his more than 500 songs, can be found at various internet sites, including jamieoreilly.com.
Shortly before his death, he spoke to O’Reilly, assessing his life.
She wrote down what he said. What he said was, “I realize my life was totally complete and everything I asked for in my life was there. Was there for me. And I felt so grateful. I felt so grateful. I had a wonderful true-life adventure.”
Smith is survived by a daughter, Colleen, from a previous marriage as well as a granddaughter and greatgranddaughter, brother Leo and sisters Pat, Margaret, and Kate. Adhering to Smith’s wishes, there is no public memorial planned.