Artist: Chris Smither Title Of Album: Honeysuckle Dog Year Of Release: 1973/2004 Label: Okra-Tone Country: US Genre: Guitar bluesy rock Audio codec: FLAC | lossless
Recorded with producer Michael Cuscuna in two sessions — Woodstock, December 1972, and New York City, Spring 1973 — this was to be Smither’s third album for Poppy. Soon after it was finished, the label folded, parent company United Artists took over the masters, and the album was shelved. The Cambridge-via-New-Orleans guitarist, singer and songwriter subsequently recorded ten of its twelve songs on later albums, but this is the first time Honeysuckle Dog has been released intact. It suggests that with a few breaks labelwise and a less self-destructive personal life, Smither could even then have been a contender, at least on a John Hammond/Ry Cooder level.
On the former, his complex, elegiac fingerpicking style interpolates his own deft instrumental theme with four of the pacific Delta bluesman’s calling-card songs. The latter, with a full band that includes Little Feat’s Lowell George on electric guitar, confirms that even though Smither didn’t have much of a blues voice, he did invest it with tremendous blues feeling of his own. He sounds like nobody but himself, true to his influences without aping them, as did most of his misguided white blues peers. This track and its solo acoustic successor, a knowing interpretation of Randy Newman’s “Guilty” that was recorded before either the composer’s or Bonnie Raitt’s versions, provide the album’s emotional core.
The rest of the set balances originals such as the title song (featuring Dr. John) and the deeply estranged “Homunculus” with Smither readings of Bessie Smith’s “Jailhouse Blues”, Danny O’Keefe’s “Steel Guitar” and the like. Honeysuckle Dog fills a gaping hole in the Smither discography, and most of it can stand with anything he’s done in the three-plus decades since.
Tracklist:
- Sunshine Lady (Paul MacNeil) - 3:51
- Tribute to Mississippi John Hurt (John Hurt) - 3:40
- Honeysuckle Dog - 4:04
- Rattlesnake Preacher (Eric Von Schmidt) - 4:39
- Rosalie - 3:05
- Guilty (Randy Newman) - 2:13
- It Ain't Easy (Ron Davies) - 3:57
- Lonely Time - 3:22
- Homunculus - 3:10 10.Braden River - 3:41 11.Steel Guitar (Danny O'Keefe) - 2:41 12.Jailhouse Blues (Traditional) - 5:39