Album Notes

CJ Smith is an Australian singer/songwriter who started playing at about age eleven. In the early 70’s he was heavily influenced by storytellers like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, and started writing original material. His passion for music, and his own eclectic tastes took him in search of new sounds and new genres. He devoured the new music of people like David Byrne, David Bromberg, Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix, while keeping a steady eye on the line up of talent cutting its teeth in Britain with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

Unhappy with working covers bands, he turned to his own material and performed as a solo act, picking up gigs wherever he could find them while traveling around the country. If there was no venue available, he played on a platform on the roof of his touring wagon. In the early eighties, he walked away from his music and packed away his guitars.

CJ Smith is now back and loving it. He was surprised to discover that the demand for ‘real songs with real lyrics’ is back and finding great popularity with audiences of all ages. He has amassed a large catalogue of songs across all genres and sees himself first and foremost as a storyteller.

“At the end of the day it just comes down to a man, a guitar and a story. It’s my job, or my privilege to tell the story”.

It’s hard to put a tag on Smith. His live solo performance is an eclectic mix of all original material, ranging from blues through blues/rock to ballad and even acoustic folk. He is a storyteller who says that most of his songs derive from true life experiences. There’s a lot of the Bob Dylan about Smith, but just as you’re settling in to the ballads, he grabs you with a deep growly solo acoustic blues number or a giant 70’s Led Zeppelin style rock song. But his passion for performance lies with the blues and he is heavily influenced by the likes of Elmore James, Lightning Hopkins, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson to name just a few.

Not normally a country song writer, in 2006 CJ Smith was awarded a certificate of merit by the Australian Songwriters Association for the Australian Ballad ‘Clancy’. In 2007 he was a finalist in both the Open & Blues divisions of the ASA songwriting contest and made the Grand Finals with a place in the Open division with the title track ‘Cold Outside’.

CJ Smith has followed up the success of Cold Outside with a new, all original blues album. Cold Outside, which made radio playlists in Australia, Europe and America (including the blues heartlands in the southern states), featured a number of blues tracks including ‘DEAD MAN WALKING’ and the haunting slide dobro song ‘BODY IN THE RIVER’, and these tracks sparked a lot of interest in Smith as a serious bluesman. As a result, he has spent the past 6 months writing and refining the new album, and then in his own words. “stripping it back to raw performance, warts & all blues”.

He has brought together some of Queensland’s best musicians to work on the album, including James North (James North Productions) on piano & bass, Steve Pope (Kate Miller-Heidke & Transport) on drums, Emma Dean violin & backing vocals, Caroline Hammond (Lina) on backing vocals and many more. The album also features two solos by one of the world’s hottest harmonica players, Jimmy ‘Z’.

‘Missing Chapters from the Book of Blues’ is a fabulous set of songs that fall into blues & blues rock genres and aim for total authenticity and lo-fi finish. With Smith, less is more. Careful atmos and room mic placement put you in the same room as the performers with little or no digital enhancement or effects.

“I want drums to sound like drums” says Smith. “I want to hear the squeal of my fingers on the guitar strings. I want the recordings to sound the same as they would live on stage, but the final finish still has to deliver the kind of sound quality that is hard to capture on a live stage”.