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Music for Little Hearts
Darden Smith gives the gift of song
by Paige M. Travis
What can a songwriter’s songs tell about his character? Darden Smith’s songs portray him as a nice guy. His songs—about relationships and efforts to overcome conflict, frequently nestled in metaphors of nature or travel—evoke a thinking, feeling man who’s survived some hardship, had some trouble in love, but he’s taken the long view and remained optimistic. His smooth voice is easy on the ears; he harmonizes well with female singers like Shawn Colvin, Kim Richey and Suzzy Roche. He’s kind to animals and children. He could be a Cancer or a Libra, maybe a Virgo.
Is this Darden Smith or some alter ego he projects into and out of his songs? Only those who know Smith personally can tell for sure, but for a fan of his music, he seems like a guy to listen to—not just for the beauty of his songs, but for the value of his message.
Smith will be in our neck of the woods July 24 to perform at the Palace Theater in downtown Maryville for the inaugural concert benefit for Saving Little Hearts. The Harmonies for Hearts show is the concoction of Brad Coulter, music lover and chapter development coordinator of the non-profit support group founded by Coulter and his wife Karin. The couple’s son Ben was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect when he was born Feb. 4, 2002. They founded Saving Little Hearts to help other parents handle the confusing medical information and emotional stress they experienced during Ben’s surgery and treatment.
Adding to the occasional bowl-a-thon and putt-putt tourney, SLH’s main fundraisers are silent auction and dinner affairs. Their first, when the organization had been established for only a few months, raised $5,000 at Riverside Tavern. Last year’s to-do, hosted at Club LaConte, raised $10,000.
“Hopefully, we’ll just get bigger,” says Coulter, who grew up in Alcoa but now lives in South Knoxville. The benefit concert is his project, sprouting from his love of live music and a certain desire to have one of his favorite artists play in the intimate setting of the Palace Theater. In the early stages of trying to find a performer last fall, Coulter shot high, contacting the booking agents for Kenny Chesney, Lyle Lovett, and other high-recognition acts he anticipated might draw a crowd in the area. He laughs, recollecting his optimistic and scatter-shot approach.
“We’re real grassroots and fairly green. I just started emailing people,” he says, hitting artists’ web sites and fan sites to contact booking agents, managers and the like. “I wouldn’t want Darden to know this, but we asked about 20 people before him,” Coulter says, chagrined.
“To be honest, we didn’t think of Darden right off the bat. He’s a Texas guy. But he’s somebody I’ve been a fan of for years.” After Coulter made contact and Smith’s booking agent in Nashville set up the gig, Coulter felt the match was right. “I knew he’d do a really good job.”
When Smith takes the Palace Theater stage, he’ll have been in the United States for only four days after returning from Europe. He’s been there since late June promoting his new disc, Circo.
The Austin-based singer-songwriter is kind of like a television show you like when you see it, but the network keeps moving it to different nights; Smith and that show are both hard to keep up with. He’s gotten some radio and video coverage with the singles “Midnight Train” and “Loving Arms.” But neither the modern country nor adult contemporary genres have been comfortable fits for Smith; lately he’s been labeled with the alt-country moniker, but that one seems ill-fitting as well.
Circo is as tricky to categorize as Norah Jones or Patty Griffin; he is lyrical, listenable, sometimes sparse, sometimes orchestrated. Perhaps that’s the very definition of Triple-A radio, where Smith had a hit with “Satellite” in 1992.
Although Smith’s connection with Saving Little Hearts is merely as a guest artist, he is game to support the cause. “After reading the information, how could one turn down the opportunity to be involved?” he wrote via email.
Smith is involved in his own community as a mentor and artistic inspiration. He started the Be An Artist Program in 2003 along with the Armstrong Community Music School in Austin. He visits classrooms and impresses upon kids the importance of art—experiencing it, creating it. Then they write and record a song together.
Outside of this program, Smith says he doesn’t tend to mix his music with causes. “Music tends to find the communities that need it. So I let it take care of itself,” he says. “Occasionally I come across a cause that I really believe in, but I tend to get more involved with it personally, rather than with music.”
Understandably, his No. 1 cause is his music. The songs on Circo maintain an addictive groove, steady beats accented with strains of Wurlitzer, strings, pedal steel (care of Lloyd Maines, father of Dixie Chick Natalie Maines), harmonica, cello. Smith’s voice murmurs like a lover, a confidante, a sinner in confession. His lyrics and the very tone of his music express a faith in something greater. Whether that thing is a higher spiritual power or the love of another person, Smith isn’t specific. But how listeners interpret his songs doesn’t concern the songwriter either way.
“It matters not,” he writes. “People hear what they want to hear, just as you have done. That’s the beauty of music.”
July 22, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 30
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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