Chris Smither at the Circle of Friends Coffeehouse

Chris Smither
The Circle of Friends Coffeehouse
Franklin MA
Opener: Joe Crookston

Chris Smither is usually billed as a "Blues musician". In reality he's one of those musicians who has his own style - if you hear a Chris Smither track on the radio you can usually recognize that it's him within a few notes. His music and his guitar playing show a heritage of the blues but his rhythm, his phrasing, and his constantly moving feet add up to something unique.

Chris played two sets, mostly his own tunes interspersed with his usual wryly humorous introductions. He wore a thumb brace for most of the show, taking it off only for the last couple songs, but if he was in any discomfort you couldn't tell it from his playing.

Set 1

• Link of Chain
• Origin of Species
• Lola, He introduced this one as "a song about the sort of girl my mother warned me about", and advised the audience "that name has a deleterious effect on women. Don't name your daughters Lola, not if you want to keep them off the pole". He also noted that he'd named the voice on his GPS unit "Lola" - "It's a shallow relationship".
• Crocodile Man. This is a Dave Carter song, which Chris has reworked into a "Chris Smither" song - only the lyrics are the same.
• Never Needed You More
• A bittersweet version of Father's Day. Chris used to introduce this song by noting that he had decided to write a song about his father while he was still alive, because he'd looked in the mirror and realized that if he waited any longer he'd be "writing another song about myself". Chris's father, he said, died a few months ago and, while this has never been particularly uptempo song, this was the most melancholy rendition I've heard him do.
• Train Home
• Gotta Better One
• Diplomacy
• Confirmation

Set 2

• Help Me Now
• Drive You Home Again
• Open Up
• No Love Today
• Visions of Johanna (Dylan)
• Love You Like a Man
• Just Can't Shake These Blues
• Caveman
• Hold On
• Killin' the Blues (Rolly Sally)
• Seems So Real
• Leave the Light On

Encore

• Statesboro Blues (Blind Willie McTell)

The opening act was Joe Crookston, a young singer-songwriter who spent some time in Seattle, but is now living in Ithaca NY, We'd heard Joe before at the "Emerging Artist Showcase" at the 2007 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. We'd liked him then, as did others - he was chosen by the audience as one of the "Most Wanted" showcase performers to return to the 2008 festival, but you can't really get a feel for an artist from only two songs.
Based on this longer set Joe is someone to keep an eye on, he'd be well worth seeing as a headliner. Joe has a new CD coming out in a few weeks, we pre-ordered a copy.
Set List:

• Fall Down as the Rain
• The Logical Song (SuperTramp), He introduced this as his three-year-old daughter's favorite song. You might not expect that a song by a 70's prog-rock group would go over at a folk concert, but Joe's version works very well - this is also one of the songs that won him the "Most Wanted" gig at Falcon Ridge.
• Freddie the Falcon (from his new CD), a song inspired by some time working with troubled youths in prison in Seattle.
• Hands, Metal and Wood (from his new CD), a song inspired by working in the building trades with his father - according to Joe, his grandfather invented the roofing hammer.