Richard Smith has released 10 solo albums amassing accolades such as Best New Artist and Album of the Year with his solo debut, Inglewood. His career skyrocketed while simultaneously holding down guitar responsibilities for another smooth jazz icon, Richard Elliott, with whom Richard recorded six, #1 albums for the Blue Note label, over 10 years.
Before he was 30, Smith chaired the one and only department of its kind, Studio/Jazz Guitar at USC. The opportunity to tour the world has brought even more ambition. Smith now sets to lay groundwork for new musical adventures and expand the repertoire of guitar in music education.
He was kind to take some time for an interview in which he talks about his new album, jazz fusions, his passion for guitar.
1. In your bio, I read that a Chick Corea concert changed your life. What about his music and that experience affected you so profoundly?
RS: Seeing how young, accomplished and poised Al DiMeola was – he was 19 then – set an example. It suggested to me, with hard work I could achieve a lot at a young age. Seeing him play so well also gave me a sense of urgency, because I was 14 at the time, and I wanted to be where he was by the time I got to 19. It was an incredibly motivating “thunderbolt” that changed my life. I never looked back after that night.
I think that Chick’s music had all the elements I felt were necessary for me to express myself at the time – deep harmony, great beats, raging improvisation and a little mayhem. It was also different, and I have always felt that different was and is good!
2. You have quite the guitar collection displayed on your website, were they all acquired along your journey as a musician or were some of them ones you’ve always wanted?
RS: For the most part, they were purchased for various gigs that I have had over the years. I have done a lot of gigs that required a double. I got into semi-hollow and solid body acoustics, steel string and nylon strings, like the Gibson Chet Atkins, the Sadowski, the Soloette and so forth. They are the lowest stress for quick, reliable grabs in a concert.
The Sadowski nylon electric has an amazing vibe in the studio, but you have to get the e.q. and processing just right or it will sound like dental floss. The 1959 ES355 mono is a remarkable instrument, it is on all of my discs and I’ll never sell it or the James Tyler Studio Elite. Jeffrey Yong, in Malaysia has made me several wonderful instruments, including a fretless.
I am in a full-on acoustic steel string stage now, getting ready for the Un Mondo Due Chitarre tour this fall. I have gone through three pick-up systems and a trunk full of processing options to find a great live sound on a hollow body.
3. In March and April you toured Norway and Holland. How does your tour scheduling process work? Is there a place you still plan or hope to play?
RS: I was invited to teach a few advanced guitar classes at Agder University, Norway, and added the NISS school in Oslo to that schedule. They have a remarkably high artistic level there and I was able to work closely with the students in an intense and fast-paced environment. They are some of the best of Europe’s next generation. It was an awesome reading, improvisation and performance-coaching environment, similar to what we do at USC.
For the return trip, my people booked a week in Holland doing theaters and clubs with my band there. At night we played theaters and clubs, and during the day I worked on my new album with a brilliant tango/jazz pianist, Tico Pierhagen, near Amsterdam. The way it works is that I usually have an anchor date in some part of the world. I add peripheral activity around that. It usually is 50% teaching and 50% performing or producing music.
Next up is the West Coast Buzzurro duo tour, then a Smooth Jazz concert in Los Angeles. After that, I do a festival and teach at Rock School in Tasmania and do some things with Guitar Player Studios in Melbourne, Australia, with lots of playing in and around Hobart and Melbourne. I will teach a popular music collaboration class for USC at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London, and an Italy tour with Buzzurro right after that. The Buzzurro Italy tour will be all playing, and eating(!), no teaching.
4. Your new release Un Mondo, Due Chitarre (One World, Two Guitars) is a collaboration with classical guitarist, Francesco Buzzurro. How did you bring everything together to make this happen?
RS: We met online! I am 1/2 Italian but it is the dominant half, and jumped at an opportunity to connect with Francesco during a European tour with Steve Trovato. Francesco and his brother, Giovanni – an excellent bassist – set up concerts and master classes for us all over the region. They were incredibly gracious. Francesco is a real genius on the instrument – an innovative and adventurous spirit and has no boundaries.
I invited him to L.A. to play on a grant performance I put together at USC. During all this we became great friends. There is an awesome energy in two guitarists coming from two very different places. He is a European classical/jazz virtuoso, and I am a more contemporary/studio/pop player. We have since toured every year, in the States and the Mediterranean. I think a lot of that energy comes across on Un Monde Due Chitarre.
5. You’ve recorded several lesson DVD’s for Lick Library. For beginning guitarists, how would you prioritize what they should focus on learning? Also, early on in your career you seemed to have been playing with other musicians vs. alone at home … Is that crucial to developing as a guitarist?
RS: Music is a team sport. Books, recordings, classes, educational DVDs and private teachers are only a component to the essential act of getting out and playing what you love, a lot. One MUST have fun, be fun and give fun with acquired skills. The DVDs are good to pick up a few ideas, and wow, what a great way to learn, and to teach. It is really different from what I normally do – very informal, just sitting and playing and talking through the music – no paper!
Nothing replaces taking whatever it is you can do on a guitar, let’s say five well placed blues phrases, and learning how to play them musically everywhere. By musically, I mean learning how to play them with great touch, taste, time, tone and ‘tude. All of that while communicating with your band and your audience. That is where the magic is; doing something musical with whatever it is you have. Quality, not quantity.
6. What aspects about the seminars and master classes you hold through the Studio/Jazz Guitar Department at the USC Thornton School of Music were the most rewarding and fulfilling for you?
RS: Preparing students to engage the music world of the present, while finding their own artistic signature. There has never been a better time to be involved with making new music. New music is at the burning epicenter of the information revolution! I just love enabling students to play more styles, get to know their rigs, chops and musical priorities, and apply that to actually getting work and making art.
One of the most rewarding moments in what I do as a teacher is catching a glimpse of one of my students on Good Morning America, Letterman, Leno or Lopez, or in a video with The Eels, Miley Cyrus, David Foster or Michael Buble. Having said that, with all of the fast-paced changes in the music World, my teaching style has become much more dialogue, than lecturing.
7. Is there a guitarist or musician that you would love to work with if you had a chance to?
RS: Sure, and that is a very long list…Flying Lotus, Alejandro Sans, Supervielle or Gotan Project would be at the top – split evenly between composition and guitar playing!
8. What’s your understanding of music theory? Chords, keys, etc. Is it part of playing or do you strictly play by ear and what sounds good to you? Do you advise beginners to learn it?
RS: I started playing in clubs when I was 15, but, I am also a college-trained musician. I had theory, ear training and analysis classes three hours a day, four days a week for three years. Then a brace of entrance examinations for a master’s degree in history, conducting, theory, aural skills and counterpoint. It all informs how I think as a player, good and bad(!). On the other hand, transcribing the greats – Wes, B.B., Carlton, Robben and Ritenour has been a big part of my learning experience as well. I am learning drum set now, and I think every college freshmen should learn to play – classical students as well. Universities are just beginning to get that popular music is an essential part of music education, for all students. Well, don’t get me started on that subject!
9. Guitar tabs are hugely popular these days. What are thoughts on using them as a learning tool and as an artist … do you feel that free tablature websites do a disservice to the artist?
RS: Tab websites are a disservice only if the guitarist wants to work professionally in a variety of situations. I don’t use tab, or teach with it because it is a shortcut that keeps the guitarist from learning how to communicate with musicians (other than guitarists) in written form. I want my students to be able to communicate the way professionals communicate in a professional environment – the more situations one plays in, the more one works, and, ‘work is goood’. But, hey, learn it all!
Having said that, the internet is changing everything. Perhaps even a college education will be extinct in a few generations, replaced by more efficient, vernacular methods, like TAB. Academia is re-examining the core ideals of teaching and learning, brought on by the information revolution. It is kind of scary, actually.
10. Can you describe what it is about jazz that drew you to it?
RS: Honestly? I never really liked pure jazz music much, other than a little later Miles, Grant Green or Kenny Burrell. I am not a purist, the opposite really. In this day and age, mixing and smashing things together is where the real art is. I have always liked the sound and surprise of fusion – jazz/funk, latin/jazz, hip-hop/jazz, pop/jazz, R&B/jazz (which is all that smooth jazz is really) and so on. My next CD will be messing around with chill/tango/dubstep/electronica sounds. I do appreciate the beauty of a jazz ballad, played well. I also like jazz/pop lyrics from the last 100 years, that is a dying art, and some big band. Big band is actually perfect ensemble vehicle, but not too much fun for the guitar player. While it is beautiful music, I just don’t hear me in much of the pure, traditional jazz. It took 10 years of classical and jazz playing to come to that conclusion, when I did, I started finding success.
For more on Richard and his music, visit:
RichardSmithGuitar.com
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