Michael Peter Smith
Encyclopedia
Michael Peter Smith is a Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

-based singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

. Rolling Stone Magazine once called him "The greatest songwriter in the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

". He has been singing and composing since the 1960s, and his rich and challenging songs have been recorded by more than 30 performers.

He is best known for writing "The Dutchman
The Dutchman
"The Dutchman" is a song written by Michael Peter Smith in 1968 and popularized by Steve Goodman. At the time Smith wrote the song, he had never visited the Netherlands....

," which was popularized by Steve Goodman
Steve Goodman
Steve Goodman was an American folk music singer-songwriter from Chicago, Illinois. The writer of "City of New Orleans", made popular by Arlo Guthrie, Goodman won two Grammy Awards.-Personal life:...

 and also recorded by Tom Russell
Tom Russell
Thomas George "Tom" Russell is an American singer-songwriter. Although most strongly identified with the Texas Country music tradition, his music also incorporates elements of folk, Tex-Mex, and the cowboy music of the American West. Many of his songs have been recorded by other artists, including...

, John McDermott
John McDermott (singer)
John Charles McDermott is a Scottish-Canadian tenor best known for his rendering of the song "Danny Boy". Born in Glasgow, Scotland, John moved with his family to Willowdale, Ontario, Canada in 1965. Growing up in a musical family, his only formal musical training was at St...

, Gamble Rogers, Jerry Jeff Walker
Jerry Jeff Walker
Jerry Jeff Walker is an American country music singer and songwriter. He is probably most famous for writing the song "Mr. Bojangles.-Biography:...

, the New Kingston Trio
The Kingston Trio
The Kingston Trio is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds...

, Liam Clancy
Liam Clancy
William "Liam" Clancy was an Irish folk singer and actor from Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary. He was the youngest and last surviving member of performing group The Clancy Brothers. The group were regarded as Ireland's first pop stars...

, Anne Hills
Anne Hills
Anne Hills is an American folk singer-songwriter.Hills was born in October, 1953, to a family of missionaries in India and grew up in Michigan. She studied at Interlochen, where she played in a band with Chris Brubeck and Peter Erskine. In 1976, she moved to Chicago and was a co-founder of the...

, Suzy Bogguss
Suzy Bogguss
Susan Kay "Suzy" Bogguss is an American country music singer. In the 1980s and 90s she released one platinum and three gold albums and charted six top ten singles, winning the Academy of Country Music's award for Top New Female Vocalist and the Country Music Association's Horizon Award.After...

, Norm Hacking
Norm Hacking
Norm Hacking was a Canadian folk music singer-songwriter.- Early life :Hacking spent his first six years living in a house that used to be his grandparents, in the Gerrard Street and Victoria Park Avenue area of Scarborough, Ontario. When he was six his family "moved out to 'Scarberia'," he would...

, and Robert James Waller
Robert James Waller
Robert James Waller is an American author, also known for his work as a photographer and musician.-Life:Waller received his B.A. and M.A. from University of Northern Iowa . He received his Ph.D...

.

Smith was born in South Orange, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

, a rough-edged factory town and shades of it linger throughout his writing. He attended Catholic school (Our Lady of the Valley and Our Lady of Sorrows in the Oranges), which would go on to shape much of his writing. A notable example is his song "Sister Clarissa."

Smith had three younger sisters and they were the basis for his autobiographical play Michael, Margaret, Pat and Kate, originally presented at the Victory Gardens in Chicago. The play is Smith's story of his upbringing and family relationships surrounding his father's early death.

While attending Passaic Valley High School, in Little Falls, New Jersey, Smith discovered the guitar and rock-and-roll. His earliest musical influence was Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

, although Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers, born Leonard Franklin Slye , was an American singer and cowboy actor, one of the most heavily marketed and merchandised stars of his era, as well as being the namesake of the Roy Rogers Restaurants franchised chain...

 was a close second. According to Smith, the music "ruined my grades," however, his other love of English never suffered. An avid reader, Smith's command of the language has always shown in the literacy of his songs, and contributed to much of his acclaim. A Song Talk Magazine review commented "Hearing the songs of Michael Smith in this day and age is like reading an anthology of short stories by Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

 after decades of only comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

s."

After high school, Smith's family moved to Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

. Two years later, he started college and his interest in folk music blossomed. He cites The Kingston Trio and Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte
Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s...

 as his earliest folk influences. He spent three years of the 1960s working at a Miami venue called The Flick, playing six nights a week. He was in a Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary were an American folk-singing trio whose nearly 50-year career began with their rise to become a paradigm for 1960s folk music. The trio was composed of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers...

-style trio for a couple of years which included his wife Barbara Barrow. They expanded into a rock band called Juarez and recorded one album for Decca
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....

 before disbanding. Smith and his wife then played as an acoustic duo for most of the early 70s.

Steve Goodman's recording of "The Dutchman" in 1973 on his album Somebody Else's Troubles, formally introduced Smith's songs to a large audience, and propelled "The Dutchman" into Smith's most popular song. Because Goodman was Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

-based and had been playing several of Smith's songs in his act, it opened a lot of opportunities for Smith in Chicago. So, in 1976 Smith and Barrow moved from Detroit to Chicago, where he became a regular in the city's folk clubs for a couple of years, which allowed him to stop touring. Eventually though, the work began to dwindle and he took a day job as a clerk for Time magazine
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

 to pay the bills. He played a few festivals and a show at the Old Town School of Folk Music
Old Town School of Folk Music
The Old Town School of Folk Music is a Chicago teaching and performing institution that launched the careers of many notable folk music artists...

 now and then, but aside from that, became inactive for about six years. Fortunately, he continued writing and his songs continued to get played and recorded by others all through that time.

Besides "The Dutchman," which Suzy Bogguss
Suzy Bogguss
Susan Kay "Suzy" Bogguss is an American country music singer. In the 1980s and 90s she released one platinum and three gold albums and charted six top ten singles, winning the Academy of Country Music's award for Top New Female Vocalist and the Country Music Association's Horizon Award.After...

 covered on her debut effort Suzy in 1981, Smith classics and their interpreters include "Spoon River," a song inspired by the poems of Edgar Lee Masters
Edgar Lee Masters
Edgar Lee Masters was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist...

, which was also recorded by Goodman. Jimmy Buffett
Jimmy Buffett
James William "Jimmy" Buffett is a singer-songwriter, author, entrepreneur, and film producer. He is best known for his music, which often portrays an "island escapism" lifestyle. Together with his Coral Reefer Band, Buffett's musical hits include "Margaritaville" , and "Come Monday"...

 recorded "Elvis Imitators", Michael's tongue in cheek ode to the King's legions. "Dead Egyptian Blues," a song about ex-pharaoh
Pharaoh
Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. The title originates in the term "pr-aa" which means "great house" and describes the royal palace...

s and their riches was recorded by Trout Fishing in America
Trout Fishing in America (band)
Trout Fishing in America is a musical duo which performs folk rock and children's music. The duo is composed of Keith Grimwood and Ezra Idlet...

. A couple of other Smith classics include "Crazy Mary," a song about the 'crazy lady next door' in everyone's life that Bonnie Koloc
Bonnie Koloc
Bonnie Koloc is an American folk music singer-songwriter, actress, and artist who was considered one of the three main Illinois-based folk singers in the 1970s, along with Steve Goodman and John Prine forming the "trinity of the Chicago folk scene."...

 and also David Allan Coe
David Allan Coe
David Allan Coe is an American outlaw country music singer who achieved popularity in the 1970s and 1980s. He has written and performed over 280 original songs throughout his career...

 recorded, and "Last Day of Pompeii" - a smooth jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 number about the city's impending disaster, which appears on recordings by Trout Fishing in America
Trout Fishing in America
Trout Fishing in America is a novella written by Richard Brautigan and published in 1967. It is technically Brautigan's first novel; he wrote it in 1961 before A Confederate General From Big Sur which was published first....

, Anne Hills, Cathy Miller, and the swing recordings of Harmonious Wail.

In 1986, Smith found himself regularly taking the stage again. He had started to work with Anne Hills, and Hills got Smith to record two albums for Flying Fish Records
Flying Fish Records
Flying Fish Records was a Chicago-based eclectic blues and country record label. It was founded in 1974 by Bruce Kaplan, former president of the University of Chicago's Folklore Society....

, while becoming his producer and touring partner. Smith recorded Michael Smith (1986) and Love Stories (1987.) Both albums have been reissued as a single CD, which is among Acoustic Guitar's
Acoustic Guitar (magazine)
Acoustic Guitar is a monthly magazine published in the United States since July/August 1990 by String Letter Publishing. The magazine offers information related to acoustic guitars for players of all levels from beginners to teachers. Each issue includes a half dozen or so songs with notation and...

list of essential singer-songwriter albums. Hills recorded her own album of Smith songs called October Child (1993).

In the winter of 1987, Claudia Schmidt
Claudia Schmidt
Claudia Schmidt is a musician, originally from New Baltimore, Michigan, who has recorded folk, jazz, blues, and spoken word albums. She plays guitar and Appalachian dulcimer and sings. She has appeared numerous times on the radio program, A Prairie Home Companion. She has recorded with Paul...

 introduced Smith to theatrical director Frank Galati
Frank Galati
Frank Galati is an American director, writer and actor. He is a member of Steppenwolf Theatre Company, an associate director at Goodman Theatre, and a professor of performance at Northwestern University. In 2004, Galati was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame...

. It was Galati who asked Smith to write the music for Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Steppenwolf Theatre Company is a Tony Award-winning Chicago theatre company founded in 1974 by Gary Sinise, Terry Kinney and Jeff Perry in the basement of a church in Highland Park, Illinois. It has since relocated to Chicago's Halsted Street, in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. Its name comes from...

's production of John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...

's The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962....

. The Steppenwolf Theatre, founded by Gary Sinise
Gary Sinise
Gary Alan Sinise is an American actor, film director and musician. During his career, Sinise has won various awards including an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1992, Sinise directed, and played the role of George Milton in the successful film adaptation of...

 and John Malkovich
John Malkovich
John Gavin Malkovich is an American actor, producer, director and fashion designer with his label Technobohemian. Over the last 25 years of his career, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award...

, has a glowing reputation in Chicago and nationally, and The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962....

became a huge success, playing in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, San Diego, and on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 where it received Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...

s for Best Play and Best Director. The success of The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962....

allowed Smith to quit his job as a clerk at Time, and his work in theater brought both new dimensions to his writing and his performances.

Since then, Smith has been performing regularly, both as a solo act and in a duet with Hills. He recorded his third album for Flying Fish, Time (1994), and recorded a duet album with Hills called Paradise Lost and Found (1999). He has also continued to write music for theatre, including for a Colorado Children's Theatre production of The Snow Queen
The Snow Queen
The Snow Queen is a fairy tale by author Hans Christian Andersen . The tale was first published in 1845, and centers on the struggle between good and evil as experienced by a little boy and girl, Kai and Gerda....

. Most notably though, in 1993 Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre premiered his autobiographical play Michael, Margaret, Pat and Kate. The play won four Jeff Awards
Joseph Jefferson Awards
The Joseph Jefferson Awards are given annually by a volunteer non-profit committee to acknowledge excellence in theatre in the Chicago area. Founded in 1968, the awards are given in tribute to actor Joseph Jefferson...

 (the Chicago Theater Union's equivalent of the Tony), for Best Original Music, Best Production, Best Actor In A Revue, and Best New Work. February 2000 saw the official release of the music from Michael, Margaret, Pat and Kate by Wind River Records.

Smith has performed at dozens of major folk festivals including the Kerrville Folk Festival
Kerrville Folk Festival
The Kerrville Folk Festival is a music festival held for 18 consecutive days in the late spring/early summer at Quiet Valley Ranch near Kerrville, Texas. The event has run on a yearly basis since 1972. In November 2008, the Kerrville Folk Festival and Kerrville Wine & Music Festival were acquired...

, Black Mountain Festival, the Philadelphia Folk Festival
Philadelphia Folk Festival
The Philadelphia Folk Festival is an annual folk music festival near Schwenksville, Pennsylvania in the vicinity of Philadelphia. Begun in 1962, the four-day festival is sponsored by the non-profit Philadelphia Folksong Society. The event hosts contemporary and traditional artists in genres...

, Owen Sound, Gamble Rogers Folk Festival, and Winnipeg Folk Festival
Winnipeg Folk Festival
The Winnipeg Folk Festival is a summer folk music festival held in Birds Hill Provincial Park, near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It features a variety of folk artists from all around the world, as well as a number of local folk performers....

s. He has also appeared on a number of radio programs including WUMB's Circle in the Stream, interviews with Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel
Louis "Studs" Terkel was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War, and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.-Early...

 on WFMT, a series of interviews on All Things Considered
All Things Considered
All Things Considered is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio. It was the first news program on NPR, and is broadcast live worldwide through several outlets...

and Good Evening on NPR as well as interviews for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 in London for All Things Considered. Michael continues to write songs, tour regularly, do songwriting workshops as well as perform frequently with Hills. Though sometimes elusive to the spotlight, Smith has had a long, eclectic career as a musician. His songs are played and known throughout the world. Considered by his peers to be one of today's most intelligent, literate songwriters it is a wonder he managed to stay hidden to so many others for so long.

Smith is also known for his whimsical songs like "Zippy," "Famous In France," and "Move Over Mister Gauguin."

Discography

  • Juárez 1970 (With Barbara Barrow & Ron Kickasola)
  • Mickey & Babs Get Hot (With Barbara Barrow) 1972
  • Zen (With Barbara Barrow) 1974
  • Michael Smith 1986
  • Love Stories 1988
  • Time 1993
  • Michael, Margaret, Pat & Kate 1994
  • Pasiones: "Songs of the Spanish Civil War
    Spanish Civil War
    The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

    "
    (With Katrina & Jamie O'Reilly) 1997
  • Paradise Lost & Found (With Anne Hills
    Anne Hills
    Anne Hills is an American folk singer-songwriter.Hills was born in October, 1953, to a family of missionaries in India and grew up in Michigan. She studied at Interlochen, where she played in a band with Chris Brubeck and Peter Erskine. In 1976, she moved to Chicago and was a co-founder of the...

    ) 2000
  • Two Man Band Two (With James Lee Stanley
    James Lee Stanley
    James Lee Stanley is an American folk singer-songwriter.-Biography:Stanley was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania of Italian, German, Cherokee Indian, Scotch/Irish and English heritage. He said in a 2002 interview that as a child he was "shy, bright, blessed ... strict father gentle mother ......

    ) 2000
  • Weavermania!(With Barbara Barrow, Tom Dundee & Mark Dvorak) 2000
  • There 2002
  • Fourtold (With Anne Hills
    Anne Hills
    Anne Hills is an American folk singer-songwriter.Hills was born in October, 1953, to a family of missionaries in India and grew up in Michigan. She studied at Interlochen, where she played in a band with Chris Brubeck and Peter Erskine. In 1976, she moved to Chicago and was a co-founder of the...

    , Steve Gillette & Cindy Mangsen) 2003
  • Such Things Are Finely Done 2003
  • Michael Peter Smith Live at Dark Thirty 2003
  • The Gift of the Magi (With Jamie O'Reilly
    Jamie O'Reilly
    Jamie O'Reilly is an Irish Gaelic footballer he was a part of the down minor team in 2005 when they won the all Ireland and the down under 21 team who won ulster championships in 2008 an 2009...

    ) 2003

External links

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