MUSIC

The blues poet lets people know they're OK

Guitar virtuoso Chris Smither plays gritty, sensitive blues blending the spirit of Son House with Buddhist philosophy

Chris Smither is the great blues poet of American music. He takes the stage alone, just the man and his acoustic guitar, and in a husky, tender voice that evokes moon and magnolia, fireflies and starlight, plays quiet songs about failure, redemption and the quest for wisdom.

A son of New Orleans, Smither plays masterful, finger-picked blues that blend the spirit of Mississippi John Hurt with a backbeat that's straight out of Buddhist philosophy. The music is powerful and pertinent but rarely in an urgent way. And the lyrics reflect the gratitude of the 63-year-old artist who has learned how to let go of sorrows and to embrace the beauty in each fleeting day:

Chris Smither live

Chris Smither plays at the Cactus Cafe on Friday night.

Liz Linder

If I were young again I'd pay attention to that little-known dimension, the taste of endless time. It's like water, it runs right through our fingers. But the flavor of it lingers, like a rich, red wine.

Smither's most sensitive songs feel like meditations, inner conversations. His use of the pronoun "you" is delightfully abstract. Sometimes, it feels as if the singer is talking to the stars, talking to his lover, talking to himself. He loves to write about impermanence, coming to awareness and the larger universal mystery beyond our comprehension:

I awoke, someone spoke and asked me in a whisper if all my dreams and visions had been answered. I don't know what to say. I never even pray. I just feel the pulse of universal dancers.

Sounds almost Sufi, doesn't it? They're certainly not the kind of lines you run into very often in American popular music.

"I'm not really trying to write pop songs. I'm in the redemption business," Smither says with a chuckle, talking over the telephone from his home in Boston before he plays the Cactus Cafe in Austin on Friday. "I'm trying to express both to myself and to anybody who cares to listen that the purpose of life is whatever you make it. Life doesn't come with a purpose. There is no reason that we're here.

"I believe all existence is a cosmic accident; there is no intelligence behind it. The only intelligence is ongoing. We have a share of that intelligence, so whatever meaning there is to life and existence is what we furnish. And that's what the content of my songs is all about. It's right here. It's right now. It's very Buddhist, in the long run."

You talk about your needs as though you know just what they are, when in fact to really know them is like traveling to a star. It takes so long you die along the way. So I say hey ... hey ... hey.

Smither's musical journey began more than 40 years ago, when he left New Orleans for Cambridge, Mass., and let himself absorb the influences of the American folk movement and the blues revival of the 1960s. He met Mississippi blues giants Son House, Bukka White, Fred McDowell and John Hurt on the club circuit and clearly learned from them how to hold an audience by releasing one's most genuine emotions through the music.

In the early 1970s, Bonnie Raitt became one of Smither's champions, calling him "my Eric Clapton" and recording his tunes "Love Me Like a Man" and "I Feel the Same." But shortly after completing his third album in 1973, Smither fell off the map — "my soul was stuck in amber," he would say later, in song — and recorded only one studio album over the next 20 years.

"I was drunk for a long time ... and it was basically killing me," says Smither. "I have no idea what saved me. Some people wake up from that kind of addiction, and others don't, you know? I just woke up one morning and said, 'Holy smokes. I'm really close to the edge. And I don't think I want to die just yet.' "

It was hard luck and trouble, bad times too. I know I had it coming, but I got through. It was advice that you gave me in a dream that saved me. You said, "Get a new life-contract that spells out your dues." Took good will to find it, a clear conscience to sign it. Now I dream about the good times, and they all come true.

On the other side of alcoholism, Smither began reading a lot of anthropology and popular fiction — from E.O. Wilson to Elmore Leonard to Cormac McCarthy; he's read McCarthy's harrowing "Blood Meridian" three times — and let his music gravitate toward philosophical and psychological themes, fascinated by the "easy things that are hard to learn." At age 49, he received a burst of critical acclaim with his 1993 "comeback" studio album, "Happier Blue," the first of several recordings in which he implicitly addressed the concept of suffering in a Buddhist framework.

Smither recorded three of his most spiritually ambitious albums in Austin (produced by his friend Stephen Bruton and featuring local musicians such as John Mills, Brannen Temple and Chris Maresh) between 1995 and 1999. His tune "Origin of Species" — a wry take on intelligent design from his record "Leave the Light On" — was listed as one of the Top 100 songs of 2006 by Rolling Stone. His finest songs continue to examine the nature of life, love and relationship with an eye that's both ethereal and wise. "It all revolves around the central thought that an unexamined life isn't worth living," says Smither, quoting Socrates.

It takes a sense of balance on this tiny little ball, with a tiny mind still big enough to think about it all, to realize the size of things is just a state of mind, and you can change your mind. There's a riddle in the middle of this universal spin, but we're out there on the edges where it gets a little thin. So just for once permit yourself a carefree little grin from the outside lookin' in. 'Cuz we're out here on the outside looking in. And it's better on the outside looking in.

"A lot of people say my stuff is so dark, so serious. And I always respond by saying I think most of my stuff is very hopeful," he says. "I mean, I'm basically trying to tell people that they're all right. That there's a way out, you know?

bbuchholz@statesman.com 912-2967

Chris Smither plays the Cactus Cafe, 24th and Guadalupe streets in the UT Student Union, 9 p.m. Friday. $18. 475-6515