Doug B. Smith, Diving For Pearls (Sabre Records, 1998)
Doug B. Smith, A Slight Remove (Sabre Records, 2003)
Doug Smith is an English fingerpicking guitar virtuoso. His performance on these two albums is remarkable, but it also put me in a quandary. Seconds into Diving For Pearls, I was thinking how very, very much Smith sounds like Martin Simpson.
I could not banish the voice in my head that kept chanting "Simpson clone! Simpson clone!" It seems very unfair to pigeonhole a musician with Smith's tremendous talent in this way, but it is hard to avoid. Smith uses open tunings and plays with the same fire and delicacy as Simpson. His playing, like Simpson's, is by turns, sensitive, lyrical, fluid, lightening-fast, and smooth. At times Smith also shows himself to be a master of the percussive guitar style favored by English guitarists such as Simpson, Martin Carthy and Nic Jones.
I spent many listening sessions trying to hear Smith without the ghost of Simpson getting in the way. It was surprisingly difficult. Both Smith and Simpson have similar repertoires. They favor an eclectic mix of slow ballads from the British Isles folk tradition played as instrumentals with crystalline purity; traditional American blues guitar and vocals; and contemporary pieces (on his first album, Smith performed Randy Newman's "Bad News From Home," and on his second, Gillian Welch's "The Devil Had a Hold of Me"). Smith and Simpson are both excellent banjo pickers. On Diving for Pearls, Smith even performs "Roving Gambler," in an arrangement that seems very strongly influenced by Simpson's rendition of the same song on his Grinning in Your Face.
There are some differences. Smith is possessed of a more conventionally beautiful voice. He also writes songs and instrumentals. Anyway, because Smith's guitar sounds so much like Simpson's to my ear, I kept feeling that something was missing. It was Simpson's huge emotional range and dark, brooding, haunting intensity. Smith's music is very, very pretty; but Simpson's grabs me by the scruff of the neck and won't let go.
Part of this comes from the fact that English singer/guitarists such as Simpson almost always give primacy to the sense of the song lyrics and force the guitar to follow their vocal phrasing. Smith, however, allows his guitar to dictate his vocal phrasing. This leads to some difficulty in understanding what he's singing about. In the song "With My Rovin' Eye," for instance, Smith breaks up a vocal line in a way that seems weird: "As I went up yon highland hill, I met a bonnie wee lah-[extremely long pause]-ssie...with my rovin' high."
At other times, his diction is a challenge. In "Roving Gambler," for instance, I thought I heard him sing, "I'll bid that gal a Jew, I'll bid that gal a Jew." "Wow!" I thought, Jews in 'Roving Gambler!' This is a find!" It was only after several listenings that I realized that he was actually singing, "I'll bid that gal adieu, I'll bid that gal adieu."
Smith also does a whole lot of things right. A good example of this is his performance of "Hills of Shiloh," a lament written by Shel Silverstein and popularized by Judy Collins that begins his Diving for Pearls album. It is a breathtakingly beautiful and elegant guitar arrangement that allows the haunting melody plenty of breathing space. The guitar wizardry is there but it's restrained and doesn't overwhelm the quiet grief of the song. It is followed by Smith's composition "Things to Do," a quicksilver-fast succession of arpeggios and percussive effects. This medley is as close to perfect as a guitarist can get.
Smith's second album, A Slight Remove, has a more American feel. Blues and mountain music predominate, and while Diving for Pearls was a solo outing, A Slight Remove includes Lennie Harvey on Dobro, Fender Stratocaster and bass; Nigel Portman-Smith on fretless bass, Pick Withers (from Dire Straits) on percussion and Steve Simpson on fiddle. The group blends beautifully and adds a funky energy that was missing from Smith's first album.
The album begins with three original instrumentals by Smith, "Under the Weather," "Hangin' Out" and "Nervous Energy." These instrumentals all feature lightning-fast arpeggios and are very similar in style to the original instrumentals on the first album ("Hangin' Out," in fact, was also on the first album.) The second song is "I was Young When I Left Home," a rewrite of the traditional song, "500 Miles." The instrumental backing is very polished, but Smith's vocal seems detached from the sadness of the song's lyrics. (Is this why the album is titled A Slight Remove?)
A Slight Remove reveals a much more self-assured Smith. The excitement on this album begins with Gillian Welch's "The Devil Had a Hold of Me," which features beautiful (and suitably creepy) frailed banjo work. Smith's original composition, "King of the World," is a standout. It is a beautiful, dark and moody tribute to Sonny Liston, "the boxer and one-time heavyweight champion of the world...a man born in darkness who never reached the light." It had exactly the emotional intensity that I'd missed in Diving for Pearls.
Smith provides the perfect follow-up for "King of the World" in "Walking Boss," a traditional work song. With its driving banjo beat and wailing dobro, it has just the right mixture of resentment and sass.
After "Walking Boss," however, the intensity that Smith had been building dissipates. He follows up "Walking Boss" with two hymns; one Manx, the other English. Smith's arrangements of "Iree Seose" and "The Day Thou Gavest Lord, Is Ended," are lovely, but extremely mellow. Also, they strongly reminded me of Simpson's arrangement of "Leaves of Life."
Smith takes "Magdalen Laundry," a song about the Irish Catholic Church's gulag for fallen women, and gives it a funky blues treatment. Oh them baaaad, baaaad nuns! I feel this treatment trivializes the story, but maybe that's due to hearing Mary Coughlan's version first.
Smith closes A Slight Remove with a funked-up version of "Goodnight Irene." Perhaps it's just over-familiarity, but this is a cut I could have done without. Smith syncopates his vocal line, but he doesn't vary his syncopations so after verse one there are no surprises.
Diving for Pearls and A Slight Remove prove that Doug B. Smith is definitely a guitarist to watch.
