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Darden Smith’s Love Calling Now Available
New “Behind-the-Song” Video and Album Release Tour Announced
(Nashville, TN) August 2, 2013 – Singer-songwriter Darden Smith earned his stripes in the in the early days of Americana,
building devoted audiences on the Austin circuit in the 80s. Since then, Smith’s songwriting has taken him on a circuitous journey as a performer, philanthropist, collaborator, teacher, and now inevitably back to songwriter as he releases his Compass Records debut Love Calling. Earning accolades from USA Today and CMT to American Songwriter and Roughstock, Love Calling was recorded in Nashville and produced by Gary Paczosa and John Randall Stewart and features 11 news songs, including co-writes with Radney Foster, Gary Nicholson and the late Harley Allen. Stream the full album here (link not for publication). In a new “behind-the-song” video, Darden discusses his co-write with Allen and gives a very special performance of “Seven Wonders.” Watch here.
Smith kicked off a busy fall tour schedule with a CD release party at Waterloo Records in Austin on July 30th,
and will follow with dates in Texas, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia as well as a UK tour this October. View his full tour schedule here. |
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For Darden Smith, the creatively expansive Texas troubadour, Love Calling represents
both a full circle and fresh start. The album opens a new chapter in the artist’s prolific career, and it circles back to his musical roots. The release is Smith’s first in three years and the first for his new label, Compass Records. Surprisingly, Love Calling also represents the first time Smith has recorded in Nashville, co-writing much of the material with some of the city’s stellar songwriters and working with top studio musicians, under the co-production of Jon Randall Stewart and Gary Paczosa.
Yet for
Smith, whose career has taken him all over the map, musically as well as geographically, the release also represents an artistic homecoming. The organic arrangements invoke the sound that established him as a breakout artist from the Texas club circuit in the mid-1980s, when he forged his style and found an audience that extended from country-folk traditionalists to those more attuned to contemporary trends.
As a young Lone Star storyteller, Smith’s songs paid proper homage to the likes of Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt.
Yet his ear for melodic invention and his embrace of modern recording technology subsequently suggested a pop sensibility with greater commercial potential. His roots nourished his music without inhibiting his artistry. During those formative years, Smith befriended many kindred spirits also getting their start. Some of those same musicians are now among the established veterans whose talents contribute so much to Love Calling.
“I first met
(bassist) Michael Rhodes in 1988 on the road with Rosanne Cash,” he recalls. “And Jon Randall Stewart and I met in ‘89, at a festival in Switzerland. Radney Foster and I met in 1989 at Austin City Limits. So, it’s coming full circle with a lot of different relationships and friends. And, in a way, the sound on this record is closer to my first record, Native Soil, than anything I’ve done since. ‘Medicine Wheel’ on Love Calling is not really that different, structurally, from something I could have written when I was 25.”
Born in Brenham, Texas, in the wide-open spaces between Houston and Austin, Smith released the indie Native Soil in 1986. Strong critical response led to a deal with Epic Records in Nashville. His 1988 Darden Smith debut
for the label landed two singles on the country charts. But country music was changing, and so was Darden. He switched to the New York division of Columbia Records, began a fruitful songwriting partnership with Britain’s Boo Hewerdine (with whom he released Evidence, 1989), and earned critical raves and a wider audience beyond country with Trouble No More (1990) and Little Victories (1993). The former included “Frankie & Sue” and “Midnight Train,” both of which received significant airplay on the emerging adult album alternative (or Triple A) radio format. Little Victories featured “Loving Arms,” a Top Ten hit. Next, Smith moved to an independent label, Dualtone Music Group, with whom he produced a more personal trio of acclaimed albums: Sunflower (2002), Circo (2004), and Field of Crows (2005).
Smith is
known for pursuing new creative paths and pushing himself past his comfort zone, keeping his music fresh long after others have fallen into the recycling routine. One such path was forged in the mid-1990’s when Smith began collaborating on dance/theater productions in Austin. This led to an even bigger challenge when he accepted a commission by the Austin Symphony to compose “Grand Motion,” performed in 1999. Both of these projects, which could be called sidelines, informed Smith’s self-released Marathon (2010), a haunting song cycle named for a remote town in West Texas.
As Smith
puts it, “Exploring this other work forced me to look at how I was pigeonholing and limiting myself. Am I just a songwriter? A singer-songwriter? A folksinger? A musician? This opened up how I defined myself, no longer as just one thing. I was about 40 then and the last decade or so has been the most creative time of my work life.”
Smith’s expansive vision for his music extends well beyond being a singer-songwriter. Love Calling
developed organically as Smith immersed himself in projects that kept him out of the spotlight but profoundly influenced his music—and the life his music reflects. In 2003, he launched The Be An Artist Program, which uses songwriting to help students discover their own creativity. From there, Smith created SongwritingWith, a program that taps into the power of collaborative songwriting to awaken creativity and give people faith in their own voice. Participants have ranged from homeless youths at Covenant House in Newark, New Jersey, corporate clients seeking conflict resolution, and service members returning from combat. Fall 2013 marks Smith’s second year as Artist-In-Residence at Oklahoma State University’s Institute For Creativity and Innovation, where he explores creativity with students in the classroom and in mentoring sessions.
Recognizing
the plight of veterans suffering from PTSD and other injuries, Smith started SongwritingWith:Soldiers in 2012. But the first seed for this program was planted in 2009 with “Angel Flight,” which Smith wrote with his friend Radney Foster. The song honors pilots who fly the planes that bring fallen soldiers home. After Foster’s version and accompanying video achieved wide acclaim, Smith saw the healing possibilities of pairing professional songwriters with wounded soldiers. Smith’s take on “Angel Flight” appears on Love Calling. “Between heaven and earth, you’re never alone,” sings Smith in the voice of a pilot flying casualties from the battlefield. “On the angel flight, come on brother, I’m taking you home.” In its intimacy and purity, it’s another love song of sorts, a love that springs from empathy and respect rather than romance.
“With a lot
of the work I’m doing now, these big projects, I kind of had to start operating beneath the radar. This allowed me the freedom and flexibility to look outside myself, says Smith. “I just opened up to these new possibilities, new ways of working. And the more I kept opening up and saying yes to new ideas, the more fun I had, the more creative things got. And the more songs I wrote.”
So, for Smith, Love Calling represents
something of a culmination, a milestone, a circle completed. The album finds him pushing forward while looking back, bringing together projects that ultimately share the same creative energy.
As Darden maintains, “To me, it’s all the same, all music. Just music.”
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