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ON THE RADAR – WEDNESDAY JULY 8, 2015
Adam Smith (from the album So Simple Now) – It was in the Appalachian Mountains in southern Kentucky that Adam Smith got hooked. The piano seduced Adam at an early age, and he remembers that ‘it was surreal to me, when I touched the piano keys, all this sound, and vibration and magic came out. The feeling went right through me like an electrical current, and I became addicted to making sound magic. It still feels that way when I play music to this day.’ He would see ‘sound shapes’ in the music he created when he had access to a piano, and began to develop self-taught song structure. Adam Smith moved to Nashville, TN at twenty-five years old, lived in his car, and played for tips. His gamble worked, providing label support, and his most recent release, So Simple Now, was recorded at his home studio in Arizona. The sound of the album follows Folk textures as they move through Americana with new age tones. Much of the album songs are offered as solo efforts as a way for the recording to remain personal, and he recalls that ‘I wanted to make something for the world that was just from me’.
Adam Smith has fertile voice. The emotion grows as he stretches the notes, tenderly digging for “Fool’s Gold” on a two-note rhythm, uses his voice to be the love song breeze that blows through his native Kentucky in ‘Mountain’s Heart’, and sits down at the piano to find hope, and the wish for being “Brave Enough to Try”. While there is a raw feel to the man-and-guitar base for the songs on So Simple Now, Adam Smith fleshes out tracks with rattling percussion with piano notes, asking for a peaceful outcome over the sway in “This Could Tear Us Apart” as he slowly winds up the chugging groove of “Spare Heart”, and layers voice over sparse guitar notes for the harmonic lull to sleep in “Creatures of the Morning (lullaby for vampires)”.
Listen and buy the music of Adam Smith from AMAZON or iTunes
