By: Rick Landers
Jeff Smith – Photo credit: Ron Rice
Hitting on all cylinders, multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter, Jeff Smith, has been skillfully crafting his own songs, as well as performing solo and in The Human Wilderness String Band, based in Northern Virginia, for decades.
Jeff and crew have roamed the Mid-Atlantic states meeting and greeting fans and new found friends, while gifting them with both original and cover songs, keeping audiences not only entertained, but as often informed about their songs.
A native of Huntington, West Virginia, Jeff found himself in Northern Virginia with friends punching out rock music, working for a living, while developing his songwriting skills and moving into a different musical direction.
Working with a publisher, Smith’s been able to place some of his original compositions in well-known television programs, including Army Wives and The Young and the Restless, as well as in an independent murder mystery, Teach Me Tonight, and in an ad campaign for Opel automobiles.
Roaming Smith’s albums, listening to his broad spectrum of songs with their various styles, his work isn’t readily pigeon-holed into a single genre. He colors outside the lines with an eclectic mix of tracks that sometimes shuffle along Cajun style, pump it up with ’80s new wave pop, enrich us with storied accounts that are bound in the new world of Americana-folk, as well as gift us with some instrumental musings that are hypnotically captivating, and hip.
The Human Wilderness group, comprised of Jeff on guitar and vocals, Niels Jonker (Bass), Marcy Cochran (Violin, mandolin and vocals), and Ron Goad (Percussion and vocals), are regulars at clubs, festivals and other events, up until the novel Coronavirus hit town. Jeff gets on FaceTime bi-weekly to perform his Tunes@Noon performances, to help keep his fans up to speed with his music, and upcoming projects, and offers up videos at his YouTube page.
Guitar International is pleased to feature this exceptional artist to our readers!
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Rick Landers: What kinds of music influenced you early on and did you have opportunities to hear traditional Appalachian musicians to gain an appreciation for the roots music of West Virginia?
Jeff Smith: Most of my influences came from top 40 or hit parade radio. Back in the late ’50s and ’60s radio was not as segmented as it became. You could hear rock, country and pop music in the same hour. It wasn’t until I got into college that I started to hear and recognize people like Lightning Hopkins, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker, as folk music. It wasn’t all Peter, Paul and Mary kinds of songs.
Rick: What kinds of musical education did you gather up early on, was it formal or did you hang with other musicians to pick up songs, techniques and styles?
Jeff Smith: I guess during the fifth and sixth grades I begin to have an interest in music, and it wasn’t until I got into junior high school that I had a music appreciation teacher who really set my hair on fire about music. She had worked her way through college singing in night clubs and bars and was trained, I believe, in more heavily classical sort of traditions.
We used to have music appreciation class first thing in the morning and our teacher gave us permission to use the stereo before class started and me and a couple guys would bring in records from home, like The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane, The Beatles, whatever and she did not discourage it and sometimes we would talk about what was going on in the music.
As far as formal training, I did take clarinet lessons for about three or four weeks maybe a little longer, but I didn’t really get anywhere, and I also took a few piano lessons. But, I was more into making sounds on the piano and making up stuff as I went along, than I was in learning theory and playing do re mi, so that didn’t work out real well for me.
I did take drum lessons from the band director through a couple of books and I was learning to read drum music. I also took several weeks of instruction from my friend’s uncle who was the bass player in Lawrence Welk‘s orchestra.
I also took lessons from a guy in in our community who had been a drummer with big bands back in his youth. He had a set of drums in his basement next to the furnace and he used to let me come over and watch him practice. Even now, when I walk around my drums it puts a buzz in my head that some music could happen.
Rick: Do you generally steer close to traditional folk music or do you roam around and explore a variety of styles, lyrical excursions, to bring your own unique twists and turns to your own songs?
Jeff Smith: I say that I roam. I don’t know that I identify as being a folk artist. I play acoustic guitar, but my music doesn’t really fall into that category, at least not lyrically.
As far as subject matter or lyrical themes, like most beginning song writers I would write songs just about me, things that were happening to me, and I think that’s how you do learn to write things.
But, as you develop more, you start to develop themes that aren’t solely about yourself and you start to get outside of yourself, but your experience brings to bear a commonality that, hopefully, makes what you’re talking about, if not universal, it’s at least common to other people.
I do like to explore ways to create a feeling or develop images that tell the story. And then again sometimes you get an idea for a song and it comes in a flash and it’s very simple, and it’s got all the elements in there.
Rick: What brought you to Virginia and how did you become part of the folk community?
Jeff Smith: I ended up in Virginia because I had moved from West Virginia to the D.C. area playing in a rock band playing a mix of original and cover songs. Some friends of mine had moved up here and were having some success with playing country rock in bars and saloons. The band I was in split up after about six months, and me and another bandmate ended up staying and working jobs and playing music. I wasn’t ready to go back to my hometown and created a life up here.
The Human Wilderness String Band (Left to Right): Marcy Cochran, Jeff Smith, Niels Jonker and Ron Goad – Photo credit: Marc Mordue
Rick: Tell us about how your Human Wilderness group came about and whether the group has a structured way of working together, or is it more familial in nature?
Jeff Smith: I named the band after a record I made called, “The Human Wilderness”. I added “String Band” to reflect the acoustic nature of the presentation.
We all had been playing with one another in different solo and duo combinations about five or six years ago. The hub of a lot of that activity was the Epicure Cafe in Fairfax, Virginia.
That scene reminded me of what the ’60s Greenwich Village folk scene might have been like. We also had performed together in Steve Coffee’s dust opera, Rain Follows the Plow.
I was looking for a different sound for myself, because I was focusing more on acoustic music, but not necessarily folk music. I wanted to do the same kind of music I was doing with a blast rock pop band, but I wanted to do it in a more acoustic format on a quieter kind of scale.
We made a live recording called “Up At The Late Night Moon”. I enjoyed that because it was a very relaxed situation and we were exploring a way to do the songs, as we learned them as a unit. It’s a very “of the moment” kind of record. The live performances of the songs evolve with each gig. It’s fun.
Rick: Are you a multi-instrumentalist or do you stick to guitar, and what guitars do you have and do you consider them interchangeable, or do you have favorites for certain songs?
Jeff Smith: I am a multi-instrumentalist, because when I’m demoing songs I usually play all the parts. I have since I was 17 years old. I’m probably more accomplished on the guitar, but I do love playing the bass and other instruments. I rely on intuition and understanding about an instruments role in a song and, of course, how it should feel.
I have several guitars and they’re like paintbrushes to me. I have a ’63 Epiphone Texan and it’s 12-string brother, a couple of resonators and a Tele, a Stratocaster, an electric 12-string, an Arts & Lutherie Ami, and a monster 1963 Harmony Silhouette. I recently became an endorser of JPrice Guitars. Jim’s a luthier in Warm Springs, Arkansas. Wonderful instrument.
Rick: Historically, there have been a number of revenue streams singer-songwriters have used to earn a living or augment a full-time job; record sales, performing, commercial licensing and others come to mind. Opportunities have been re-racked during the past 20 years or so. What kinds of advice would you give young performers or older novices on how to strategize their career plans to gain income?
Jeff Smith: Right now, I have absolutely no idea. Recorded music sales are minimal at best, and the idea has become to let your Ethernet music help fill your venues. Right now there are no venues.
There are a plethora of online music gurus who will tell you how to game the system by learning their system and letting them become your music career coach. There are as many of them, as there are musicians doing online gigs. It’s very expensive and difficult to know who to trust. You have to create your own path to what your definition of success is, like you have to create your own music and your own niche. Everything is upside down and sideways.
Jeff Smith: I’ve been doing Tunes@Noon on Wednesdays on Facebook live for about three years now, and I also do a Saturday night concert kind of show at 7:30 in the evening. I do have a YouTube channel that I put up live videos and song videos, but there’s so much to the promotion of it that I don’t understand, though I have watched hours of training on self promotion.
I understand you really have to do that now, unless you have the money to hire PR people, agents, managers and media specialists. It’s overwhelming. The music business is probably one of the most corrupt business endeavors one could be involved with, and at the bottom of the money stream is the person who actually makes the music.
Rick: At a certain point, many songwriters want to find commercial opportunities and seek out professional marketers to find licensing opportunities. Does it make sense to pay someone upfront to place a song or songs, or is it more the norm for someone to take on a song, get it placed and then – and only then – take a cut or percentage of royalties?
Jeff Smith: I’m not sure about having to pay someone to place a song, I’ve never done that. I have had some success getting music placed on TV shows, in commercials and in independent film, but these were accomplished with the help a music publisher under standard 50/50 publishing agreements. So, yes, the publisher takes a cut of the publishing royalties when their efforts in placing the song are successful. If you pay up front and nothing happens you’re out the money, and the song is still in limbo.
Jeff Smith – Photo credit: Ron Rice
Rick: Do you think it’s better for an artist to find a niche market or to be more eclectic to broaden their appeal? Guitarist Danny Gatton comes to mind, as someone who could play anything, but maybe was tough to define as having a style, beyond being a great guitarist.
Jeff Smith: I think it’s better for an artist to be their own niche. I think being aware of all the different styles that may or may not be inspiration or influences is good, because it gives you a base from which to spring.
I think if you can develop your own kind of song or style of playing you are able to create something different. It’s true that your influences may show that, but I don’t think that’s detrimental, and I believe if you continue to explore and develop you will grow out of that, like a flower growing up out of the seed.
Rick: What new projects or songs are you working on now, and do you have ideas that have been sitting around that you haven’t been able to get to, that you’re keen to get at?
Jeff Smith: I have a collection of songs that I have whittled down from twenty-five or so songs to about 10 or 12, called Humphrey Piedmont’s Revelation Well. I want to record some more with the string band, and I have an idea in mind of a voice and guitar collection, as well as a vinyl project.
It’s interesting to see how Spotify has begun to influence the way songs are written and produced. Songs have gotten shorter with hardly any intros to facilitate better algorithms, and number of times they gets played.
The album is considered obsolete and we are back in a singles world, as it was in the ’60s and ’70s, before FM radio came around. I grew up with the idea that albums were collections of songs that reflected the songwriters or bands experiences, up to the making of the album. Albums had a continuity to them, a theme and a mood, and the arrangement and production reflected that.
Jeff Smith: It’s all of that. You write a song which sometimes is completed in fifteen or twenty minutes, and it’s delivered to you full blown while others take longer. I do enjoy the process of writing songs. I recently rewrote a song that I began in the late ’80s. At one point the song seemed complete and the arrangement was for a band I was in, and it felt right. The song was covered by an artist in Georgia, and was also on hold with my publisher at the time by Brooks and Dunn.
By the time that occurred the song, for me, was not what it should’ve been. I liked the first two lines of the first verse and I liked the chorus. The song is three verses, chorus and a bridge. I think I must have written over 100 verses, until recently, when I developed a more solid lyric idea and I am much more happy with it than I ever have been.
Audience reaction is the validation that the song has connected in some way to other people, which is very gratifying and will give you confidence to perform the song. Other songs you have to find your way inside them to present them convincingly, so that it does connect. Once I have control of the song I tend to vary the delivery and the feel, to keep it interesting. It’s the same way I approach doing covers.
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BONUS VIDEO OF JEFF SMITH
