Austin’s Matt Smith (he of 6 String Ranch Recording Studio fame) is a well-kept secret as a guitar slinging, songwriting, and man of rock ‘n’ roll colors who, for 30-odd years, has churned out music with street cred to burn.
And, finally! One of my suspected and hidden mysteries has been proven to be real! Sure, the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot are still just conjecture and a few phony photos. And crop circles? Well, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley fessed up to that. But truly, I have always secretly hoped that somewhere (and yeah, probably in Texas!) there could be found a bar in which the pizza oozed with the hottest cheese that cradled the greatest spiced sausage, the beer was brewed with the sweetest nectar, and the house band carved a blues-soul-rock ‘n’ roll groove that makes gravestones dance –and then order that oozing and super-spiced sausage pizza.
Now, it should be noted that Matt Smith’s eight albums arrived in the mail. Yeah, I am a self-confessed wallflower, but these are the perks of being a reviewer. All these CDs sort of make 1971’s lavish four-album Chicago Live at Carnegie look like a single disc with a limited-time-only bonus EP record added to hype the Christmas sales. This is a lot of music.
But in fairness, wow! Smith’s muse is all over the spectrum—rock, soul, (sort of) jazz, acoustic tunes, acoustic guitar instrumental stuff, gospel, and (one) bit of weird dance-floor beats. And in fairness (again!) it’s important to say the one common denominator through all of this musical flux is Smith’s incredible guitar playing, which can float like Mohammad Ali’s “butterfly” and then spit out a fractured-razor beam toward the monolith on Jupiter that gave jet fuel to the gist of the rather convoluted plot in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
This is certainly true for the Chop Shop Live! at Strange Brew. Smith sizzles all over the barroom dance floor. This is urgent rock ‘n’ roll that oozes pizza and sweet nectar beer. A close second (almost) favorite is Live at the Saxon Pub, credited to Matt Smith’s World, which conjures a jazzy vibe with sax, keyboards and ethnic percussion — with superb guitar riding like a drunken pony express through New York Saturday night jook joints.
For more of an overview, there’s Matt Smith 1988-2020 Vol. 1-4, which serves as a greatest-hits collection from various albums. Volume 3 gets soulful with a cover of “Rainy Night in Georgia,” and “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying,” but there’s the wonderfully weird (sort of) metaphysical tune, “Jesus in Mexico.” And, there are moments when Smith echoes the blues-folk sound of Canada’s national treasure, Colin Linden. That’s a big complement.
“Shine Your Light on Me” gets a dramatic Bruce Springsteen-arena treatment. “Dance on the Blue Ball” is tough like an Aerosmith tune, and then morphs into the country picking of “Lickety Pick.” As said, these songs run the road map of America. Just off the ramp from the truck-stop is an amped-up (really decent) big power ballad, “Reason to Believe.” And then “House on Fire” gets a big electric blues-psych treatment, ala Robin Trower and his big-riff Bridge of Sighs / “Day of the Eagle” period. That’s another big complement.
Now, the flagship release is Matt’s new studio album, Being Human, which has a really cool gatefold cover, in contrast to the simplistic photo of Matt with guitar that houses Matt Smith 1988-2020 Vol. 1-4. (The Live at the Saxon Pub and Chop Shop Live! sport pretty nice pop-art images.) Being Human jumps with juke-box joy over genres a plenty. So, a bit of caution. There is no sustained flavor over the grooves.
Now, there are few compadres who can match the lyrical and melodic skills of Elvis Costello, but imagine an album filled with cuts from Get Happy, Trust, North, Almost Blue, and some of those collaborative albums like The River in Reverse (with Allen Toussaint!). That’s the vibe with Being Human. The tunes run the gamut of the folky protest of “Sanctuary,” the pop-rock of the title track, the tough (and obvious) punk of “I Got the Girl,” the confessional hard rock of “Down in the Hole,” and the acoustic pathos of “How Did We Get Here.” This is all pretty great stuff.
But then, to quote the great Canterbury prog band Caravan, “Surprise, Surprise!” As “Everybody Wanna Do the Don’t” suddenly injects electric dance-floor beats with a Sly and the Family Stone funk that bumps into the B-52’s “Dance This Mess Around,” while Matt Smith’s guitar snarls and strangles its way through the tune with a Robert Fripp twist. This one certainly resets the pulse rate of the album. My friend Kilda Defnut remarked, after hearing the song: “Well, we’re not in a Kansas folk club anymore.”
Two other tunes are genre specific: “God Is Watching Over You” is mega-Bible church sing-a-long. Now, this isn’t my usual cup of Sunday morning coffee but it is well done, and does, with the organ and stinging guitar, have a self-important (but always lovable) Gary Brooker and Procol Harum vibe. And “I’d Do Anything for You” delves into bluesy late-night vocal jazz with a sleepy cigarette and vodka-tonic piano breathed breath. This is eclectic stuff.
And by the way, Matt Smith is the musical director of Phoenix Academy Austin — the residential drug and rehab faculty for youths aged 13—22. As my friend Kilda also says, “rock music always cares about the kids.” This music does just that: it cares about kids.
And then, the final album Parlor is an all-acoustic album of quiet beauty. Smith plays a guitar gifted from his great-grandfather who bought the instrument “in the 1890s.” Matt writes in his notes: “One man, one guitar, one take — it’s as real as it can be.” Well, yeah, ‘nuff said.
Matt Smith is a bit of an off-the-beaten path, Tom Robbins “roadside attraction.” But he’s a true American soul, because he’s all over the place. Remember what (the great) Walt Whitman said, “I too am not tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”
Yeah, ultimately, this lump of albums is one very big and very weird rock ‘n’ roll “yawp” that bumps and grinds but also whispers with acoustic sounds. These grooves get soulful, but they still pray with commercial biblical salvation. Then the oddball curve is thrown, and ultimately, Matt Smith plays music that oozes with the hottest cheese and those spiced sausages that simply desire to mix on the dance floor, in a salty place which will always require a Texas bar-room beer rock ‘n’ roll chaser.
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