Metro Pulse/Gamut/Mindy Smith

Comment
on this story

Who:
Mindy Smith

When:
Saturday, Feb. 21, 10 p.m.

Where:
Barley’s

Cost:
$7

Mindy Smith called Knoxville home for four years. Look where it—and her exceptional talent—got her

by Paige M. Travis

More than a few people around Knoxville already knew of Mindy Smith before she captured the nation’s attention through a media onslaught worthy of the Democratic presidential primary. In the days before and after the Jan. 27 release of her debut CD One Moment More, Smith appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and NPR’s Morning Edition. She’s also been featured in articles or reviews in No Depression, Blender, Rolling Stone, Tracks, USA Today, People, and Entertainment Weekly, among others.

Even so, several local musicians recognized Smith as the skinny girl who used to play open mics around town, sometimes holding her guitar in her lap as she sang a capella because she was too nervous to find the chords.

Smith’s songwriting has developed and matured in the five years since she left Knoxville for the bright lights of Nashville. And it’s not just community vanity that drives us to want to claim a hand in her newfound fame and well-deserved attention. Smith says there’s something special about Tennessee and the support and encouragement she found, not just in Music City, but in the state’s original capital, a town that has too frequently developed creative people only to have them leave to become famous. Maybe Smith’s native New Jersey feels the same way for having lost her to the South, or maybe location has nothing to do with it, timing and talent winning out over real estate.

The 31-year-old moved to Knoxville with her father in the mid-’90s after attending college in Cincinnati and after her mother’s death from breast cancer. Her parents had encouraged her musical interests, and she had sung with a band and co-written songs in Cincy, but it was in Knoxville that she started to grapple with writing and playing her own songs. She shared open mic stages with several singer-songwriters who have been a steady presence in the local scene: Jimmy Logston, Karen Reynolds, Greg Horne, Casey Jones and Jodie Manross. Considering that none of those talented folks have contracts with Vanguard Records or gigs on Conan, it’s easy to wonder if Smith’s move to Nashville made her success possible, and if these performers would increase their chances of landing nationwide fame if they, too, packed up and headed to Music City.

Certainly Smith isn’t the first—Knoxvillian or otherwise—to tote her guitar to Nashville in hopes of making it big. Smith attributes her westward movement to something within her, a drive to conquer the unknown. “I realized Nashville had an abundance of resources that I needed to flow through,” she says. She told her musical colleagues that she was going, and received their encouragement.

Wanting to move is only half the battle, however. When her father and his new wife decided to move to North Carolina, Smith asked them to move her to Nashville first. They obliged, leaving her with the proverbial one friend in town, $300 to her name, no job or place to live.

Smith’s story, now repeated in every one of the aforementioned articles, is perfect sitcom fodder, almost cliché if it weren’t true. Such stories sound like fairytales when wrapped up nicely in a few sentences; you get the idea that magic or a guardian angel was somehow involved. “There are little miracles every day,” she says. “That’s one of the bigger ones. God put me where I need to be.”

If Smith has an earthly guardian angel it’s Dolly Parton. The Sevierville native and instantly recognizable international star of both the music and film industries took to Smith when the young singer recorded “Jolene” for the star-studded Just Because I’m a Woman CD compilation of Dolly covers. Parton tagged the track as her favorite (standing among the likes of Shania Twain, Norah Jones and Alison Krauss) and gave her blessing in Vanguard’s press kit: “Even though Mindy is still young and new to the music business, I believe she will leave her mark as one of our greatest writers and singers ever. ‘Jolene’ has been done many times by many artists, including me, but Mindy’s version is my favorite. I wish her all the best.”

Such praise from Dolly is just one element of her career track that amazes Smith. She has found the support comforting. “She’s [Dolly] said, ‘Girl, you’re going to be fine.’ I’ll hear from her every now and then through somebody else. She’s put a lot into helping me out. I don’t even know how to convey my gratitude.”

For a woman on her first CD, the critical response has been overwhelmingly positive. Writers haven’t quite known where to categorize her: Vanguard is a folk label; Nashville is a country town. She lands somewhere in there, evoking Patty Griffin, Alison Krauss and Kathleen Edwards in a vocal range that spreads from whisper to growl. Her songs are inventive, interesting; they’re pop in production, but not overly glossy. Her voice is laid bare in the mix, allowing the nuances of her intonation and accent to mold the words into new but familiar shapes.

Smith’s haunting rendition of “Jolene,” which is included on One Moment More as a bonus track, earned praise like Dolly’s from music critic Anthony DeCurtis as the disc’s best track. “Addressed by a woman to her rival, ‘Jolene’ is a strange amalgam of masochism, jealousy and erotic desperation, and Smith gets it all,” DeCurtis wrote in the premiere issue of Tracks.

Smith’s five years in Nashville haven’t been spent in complete anonymity. After she lucked into rooming with a friend of a friend with that $300 as first month’s rent, she got some pay-the-bills jobs and leapt into Nashville’s open mic scene. The stages where Smith first played are mostly closed now, but the impression she gives is that she was welcomed into the fold. “Probably to some people I was just another girl with a guitar,” she says. “But Nashville was a really supportive community.”

Open mic gigs led to a publishing deal with Yellow Dog records. She recorded the demo tracks that attracted several labels other than Vanguard. But Sugar Hill’s sister label, which also represents Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, and John Hiatt, ultimately won her trust. The label’s leaders allowed her to make a record she’s extremely proud of, make her songs sound like they should. She credits co-producer Steve Buckingham (who also produced the Dolly project) with helping that happen.

“His resources and his confidences as a producer have been so helpful to me,” she says. “We didn’t do too much in the Pro Tools department. Otherwise you suck all the emotion out.” She regrets that more artists aren’t encouraged to reveal their voices’ natural elements, like Julie Miller and Patty Griffin who, she says, “emotionally can just grab your heart and tear it to shreds.”

Now that listeners are hearing the CD and seeing Smith on tour, they’re responding better to Smith’s voice. It’s strong and unique, a hint of Jersey softened by almost a decade in the South. Even the notoriously fickle Music City scene came out to support her. The CD release show at 12th and Porter sold out.

“I’ve never had that kind of response,” she says, crediting the press and industry support she’s received. That’s not to dilute the true quality of her music; there’s more than hype at work here. Like the very artists she has looked to for inspiration, Smith is working original ground and creating something special that people are responding to. The first single from One Moment More, “Come to Jesus,” is a dynamic track that garners phone calls when it comes up on local West 105.3’s rotation. The recording doesn’t fit within the Contemporary Christian category, but it does strike a spiritual chord. Smith calls the collection of tracks a “diary of me” and if listeners connect with her lyrics as well as the music, “that’s the icing on the cake.”

Smith is still adjusting to all the attention. She uses the words “blessing” and “overwhelming” in her reaction to the sheer numbers of reviews and articles printed in less than a month. “You can’t anticipate that kind of press,” she says.

She’s also still perfecting her guitar playing. At a recent performance for E-Town, the public radio program broadcast from Boulder, Col., she started her song several times, but she didn’t resort to singing a cappella. Sometimes, she closes her eyes.

“I like to connect with people, but I’m still learning how to play the guitar. Sometimes with vocalists or writers, whatever holds you back you have to confront that fear. You have to do it for yourself, get it done and get it out of the way.”