SMITH’S SMORGASBORD OF SOUNDS
Songwriter Greg Smith shows off his musical dexterity on his debut CDBy Al Kaufman
Three things dominate Western Massachusetts: farms, pick-ups and mullets. Some believe that it is illegal for any of the radio stations to play anything but classic rock. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” is required reading in high school English.
Greg Smith grew up in Western Massachusetts, on a farm no less. But don’t hold that against him. Just a shade over a quarter century, Smith already has more than 15 years of music experience under his belt, enough time to learn the guitar, bass, piano, drums, harmonica and saxophone. Oh yeah, he also sings and writes his own songs. And no, he doesn’t sound like Skynyrd.
While he grew up listening to the likes of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, Smith soon left his small town and developed a taste for more diverse music, such as the melancholy Elliot Smith and country folk artists Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer. He also studied the blues, which helped him develop his vocal stylings. It is no wonder then that he has chosen to title his debut CD A TASTE OF IT ALL.
Greg Smith
and the Broken English
A TASTE OF IT ALL
The disc offers all sides of Smith, yet manages to remain cohesive through Smith’s sheer talent. “I like to think of myself as more of a modern day Springsteen meets Cobain, both of which to me are singer songwriter/rockers,” says Smith in an amazingly disarming way.
There is a certain character to the CD that pulls it together. Like his idols, Smith sings of striving to reach a better place, and he is correct that he is equally adept at pulling it off with the yearn of Springsteen (complete with blazing harmonicas) and the angst of Cobain. His guitar weeps as readily as it yells.
The title track demonstrates his jangly folk side and is interesting enough to recall the BoDeans in their heyday. The hard-rocking “Vacuum Fate” almost sounds a bit too much like Nirvana in both its sound and tone, but Smith still manages to make the pain and sincerity his own.
Then there’s “The Farm.” The closing cut is a terrific country-folk number that shows three different people’s takes on farm living. It is easily Smith’s most personal and moving song on the CD. Just don’t say that the song came from his heart. All his songs stem from a different body part.
“The stomach,” he says. “I swallow a riff and it stays down there a while fermenting. Then the lyrics are suggested by the melody.”
Most people’s stomachs enjoy a variety of flavors, but ears are often more discriminatory creatures. Yet Smith remains unfazed about the CD’s smorgasbord of sounds. “It’s not going to be put out on a major label that wants to assume that this particular person likes this particular sound so this person needs to sound this way all the time. I think people are going to say, ‘Here’s a guy who likes to rock out and really enjoys all kinds of music.’ I think they’ll respond to that.”
After playing in numerous bands over the years, TASTE is considered Smith’s solo project. Yet he put together a band and named them Greg Smith and the Broken English. “With a generic name like Greg Smith, I had to dress it up with something. I had a lot of different ideas and Broken English is the one people seemed to respond to. I liked how ‘broken English’ isn't really used as a plural term, but when you throw the word ‘the’ in front of it, it makes the meaning of it more ambiguous, and that’s what really turned me on to the name.”
An homage to Marianne Faithfull perhaps? Remember, the kid is only 25. “A couple of people mentioned her name to me. I went and Googled ‘Broken English’ to make sure I wasn’t stealing it from her or anything, but then I got distracted by something else and forgot about it.”
All right, so maybe he doesn’t appreciate true rock royalty as much as he should, but with boyish good looks á la John Mayer, and with a sound as sincere as Mayer’s is manufactured, it may only be a matter of time before almost everyone associates Broken English with Smith and Smith alone.
