The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Acoustic bluesman Chris Smith to keep flame burning Saturday
OLD SAYBROOK — Acoustic blues troubadour Chris Smither is back at The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center on Dec. 15 with a new album, “Call Me Lucky” — his first release of all-new material in six years.
Showtime is 8 p.m. Tickets are $30 and $35, available in advance at thekate.org or at 860-510-0453. The Kate is located at 300 Main St.
For more than 50 years now, Smither has kept the spirit and practice of acoustic and country blues alive, beginning with the folk and blues revival of the 1960s when he could meet, learn directly from and get to know blues icons such as Mississippi Fred McDowell and Son House.
His most famous song, “Love You Like a Man,” became a rock and blues staple after Bonnie Raitt got ahold of it, changed one key word and released it as “Love Me Like A Man.”
Born in Miami during World War II, Smither, the son of a Tulane University professor, grew up in New Orleans where he began playing music as a child.
“I’d loved acoustic music — specifically the blues — ever since I first heard Lightnin’ Hopkins’ ‘Blues In My Bottle’ album,” Smither said in a bio on his website. “I couldn’t believe the sound Hopkins got. At first I thought it was two guys playing guitar. My style, to a degree, came out of trying to imitate that sound I heard.”
In 1960, Smither and two friends entered and won a folk “Battle of the Bands” at New Orleans’ Saenger Theatre. Two years later, he graduated from high school and went on to attend the University of the Americas in Mexico City, planning to study anthropology. It was there that a friend first played Smither the Hopkins’ “Blues in My Bottle” record.
After a year in Mexico, Smither returned to New Orleans and attended Tulane for one year. It was there that he discovered Mississippi John Hurt’s music through the “Blues at Newport 1963” album on Vanguard Records. Hurt and Hopkins would become two of Smither’s biggest influences.
A few years later, Smither moved to the Boston area, where he got involved in the Cambridge folk scene. It was in 1969, while visiting Dick Waterman’s house, that Smither first performed “Love You Like a Man for Raitt, who was a friend of Waterman.
She covered it on her second album, “Give It Up” in 1972. Raitt also covered Smither’s song, “I Feel the Same,” on her “Takin’ My Time” album.
Smither released the first of his 17 albums to date, “I’m a Stranger Too!” in 1970. He celebrated 50 years of songwriting in 2014.
Also at The Kate next weekend, on Dec. 14, will be The Weight Band, playing lots of those beautiful songs from The Band’s catalogue. Kerri Powers opens. Showtime is 8 p.m. Tickets are $45, also available in advance at thekate.org or at 860-5100453.