Chris Smither – Honeysuckle Dog
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Posted On May 1, 2004
Recorded with producer Michael Cuscuna in two sessions — Woodstock, December 1972, and New York City, Spring 1973 — this was to be Smither’s third album for Poppy. Soon after it was finished, the label folded, parent company United Artists took over the masters, and the album was shelved. The Cambridge-via-New-Orleans guitarist, singer and songwriter subsequently recorded ten of its twelve songs on later albums, but this is the first time Honeysuckle Dog has been released intact. It suggests that with a few breaks labelwise and a less self-destructive personal life, Smither could even then have been a contender, at least on a John Hammond/Ry Cooder level.
Only “Sunshine Lady”, the opening track, written by fellow Cambridge folkie Paul MacNeil, sounds dated. Cuscuna’s liner notes describe it as “commercial,” but in truth it’s a vapid period-piece invoking the worst soporifics of the post-’60s-rock, singer-songwriter weenie backlash. After that, it’s clear sailing for Smither, whether he’s playing a solo acoustic track such as “Tribute To Mississippi John Hurt” or working with a band on “Rosalie”.
On the former, his complex, elegiac fingerpicking style interpolates his own deft instrumental theme with four of the pacific Delta bluesman’s calling-card songs. The latter, with a full band that includes Little Feat’s Lowell George on electric guitar, confirms that even though Smither didn’t have much of a blues voice, he did invest it with tremendous blues feeling of his own. He sounds like nobody but himself, true to his influences without aping them, as did most of his misguided white blues peers. This track and its solo acoustic successor, a knowing interpretation of Randy Newman’s “Guilty” that was recorded before either the composer’s or Bonnie Raitt’s versions, provide the album’s emotional core.
The rest of the set balances originals such as the title song (featuring Dr. John) and the deeply estranged “Homunculus” with Smither readings of Bessie Smith’s “Jailhouse Blues”, Danny O’Keefe’s “Steel Guitar” and the like. Honeysuckle Dog fills a gaping hole in the Smither discography, and most of it can stand with anything he’s done in the three-plus decades since.
