Biography

STEVEN L. SMITH BIO

Like a tailor, architect or sculptor, a songwriter is a craftsman. Instead of sewing a suit, drafting a building or creating a sculpture, Steven L. Smith carries out his craft by marrying word to melody to create intricate pieces of art that are as awe inspiring as any other hand-crafted item. It’s a skill that he has been perfecting and practicing since he wrote his first song as a young teenager growing up in the Adirondack Mountains of New York state. Smith was initially inspired to write and sing by listening to music from artists as diverse as The Band, Merle Haggard, The Allman Brothers and Kris Kristofferson.

When looking for the perfect guitar, Steven didn’t seem to find what he was looking for so he decided to, as a craftsman with experience building houses and furniture, build a guitar for himself. After figuring out how to make the guitar sound right, a new business was born, a business which mixes the music inside his heart with the old time craftsman pride of hand-crafted guitar making. Among Steven L. Smith’s past clients is one of his biggest idols, Levon Helm of the Band.

Taking the great influential artists of his youth as inspiration, Smith learned to craft music that is as distinctly American in that it touches the rock and folk music which inspired him as a teenager to the country music of Roy Clark and contemporary artists like Jamey Johnson. This style of too-hard-to-pigeon-hole music is called Americana and it allows for all types of American roots music to coexist, something that is immediately evident on Steven L. Smith’s latest album Outside of Tupelo.

As he has aged, Smith has learned from these greats how to succinctly say what he wants to say and to do it using plain, common language. This is evident in the sounds of the song “Woman on a Pole,” a whimsical tale of love being found at the unlikeliest of places. Simple stories of love come through on acoustic country charmers like “Big Sky” and “Firm Believer,” each song better than the last as his plain-spoken wisdom comes across in heartland language relatable to even the hardest of hearts.

“I Stole The Bible” feels like a cornerstone track on Ouside of Tupelo in that it finds a desperate ‘little bit dirty’ man ‘fighting temptation’ by taking a Gideon Bible home with him instead of the soap and shampoo bottles on the counter. The sparkling instrumental performances in the song serve to accentuate Smith’s sandpaper vocal and sharp, to the point lyrics something that also happens on the driving fiddle-laced title tune “Outside Tupelo.”

Perhaps no song describes his song craft better than “Cowboy Song.” A truly poetic tune that mixes gorgeous piano, steel guitar and fiddle fills, and the song describes how a man made it through hard times in his life. In the grand tradition of Haggard and even Garth Brooks, this is the kind of song that takes lonesome situations and turns it into a hopeful, romantic view on how every person and relationship we come into shapes us as we move on in our lives.

And it is with that pinpoint accuracy and craftsmanship that Steven L. Smith arrives with Outside Of Tupelo, a collection of songs that is as good as many of the classic albums that inspired Steven and it’s a record that is sure to inspire anyone open to listening to great American music.