1. Chris Smither was born in Miami, Florida, United States to Catherine and William J Smither.
21 Facts About Chris Smither
1. 2.
The Smither family lived in Ecuador and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas before settling in New Orleans when Chris was three years old.
3.
Chris Smither grew up in New Orleans, and lived briefly in Paris where he and his twin sister Mary Catherine attended French public school.
4.
In Paris Smither got his first guitar, which his father brought him from Spain.
5.
Two years later, Chris Smither graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans and went on to attend the University of the Americas in Mexico City planning to study Latin-American anthropology like his father.
6.
In 1964, Chris Smither flew to New York City two days prior to boarding the SS United States for the five-day transatlantic voyage to Paris for his Junior Year Abroad program, which his father helped administer for Tulane.
7.
Once in Paris, Chris Smither often spent time playing his guitar instead of attending classes.
8.
Chris Smither arrived uninvited at von Schmidt's door; von Schmidt welcomed Chris Smither in, and upon listening to him play, advised him to go north to seek a place in the burgeoning folk scene in New York City or Cambridge, Massachusetts.
9.
Chris Smither followed this advice, and arrived at Club 47 in Harvard Square several weeks later and found von Schmidt performing.
10.
Chris Smither achieved some local notice and by 1967 was featured on the cover of The Broadside of Boston magazine.
11.
Chris Smither recorded a follow-up, Honeysuckle Dog, in 1973 for United Artists Records but Smither was dropped from the label and the album went unreleased until 2004, when it was issued by Tomato Records.
12.
Chris Smither began to re-emerge as a performer in the late 1970s, and gained a few press notices.
13.
Chris Smither recorded his next album, Another Way to Find You, in front of a live audience at Soundtrack Studio in Boston and in 1991 released it on Flying Fish Records.
14.
Two years later, he was invited to compose music for a documentary on Southern folk artists and met Southern folk artist Mose T In 1993, Smither recorded and released his fifth album, Happier Blue, which earned Smither a National American Independent Record Distributors NAIRD award.
15.
In 1997, Chris Smither's music was used exclusively on the entire score of the short film, The Ride, directed by John Flanders and produced by Flanders's company, RoughPine Productions.
16.
HighTone reissued Another Way to Find You and Happier Blue and Jorma Kaukonen invited Chris Smither to teach at his Fur Peace Ranch in Ohio.
17.
In September 2006, Chris Smither released Leave the Light On produced by David 'Goody' Goodrich.
18.
Chris Smither was named as 2007's Outstanding Folk Act by the Boston Music Awards.
19.
Chris Smither released a 78-minute live concert DVD, One More Night, in February 2008.
20.
On February 8,2011, Chris Smither was profiled in The New York Times "Frequent Flier" column, entitled, "The Drawbacks of a Modest Celebrity," in which he recounts anecdotes from his four decades as a traveling musician.
21.
Chris Smither followed these fan-projects with Hundred Dollar Valentine, a studio record rated with five stars by the magazine MOJO.