NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: [Smither] taps his foot to keep the rhythm, much like the late blues legend John Lee Hooker. His finger-picked guitar lines are sleek, unhurried and insistent. And then there’s the voice –equal parts gravel and molasses, Smither’s singing sounds like a distillation of the folk and blues heroes he grew up listening to in New Orleans.
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Smither is an American original, a product of the musical melting pot, and one of the absolute best singer-songwriters in the world.
ROLLING STONE: Bathed in the flickering glow of passing headlights and neon bar signs, Smither’s roots are as blue as they come. There is plenty of misty Louisiana and Lightnin’ Hopkins in Smither’s weathered singing and unhurried picking. So fine.
WIRED: The masterful combination of pure folk songwriting and intricate guitar blues are tangible signs of the singer-songwriter’s vigorous genius. A megawatt solo performer.
NEW YORK TIMES: With a weary, well-traveled voice and a serenely intricate finger-picking style, Mr. Smither turns the blues into songs that accept hard-won lessons and try to make peace with fate.
AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN: Chris Smither is America’s great blues poet, a master acoustic guitarist whose music suggests the power of Son House and a wisdom informed by the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.
WASHINGTON POST (Live review): Chris Smither has been so good for so long that it was a given that his show Saturday night would be nothing less than a competent, entirely professional exhibition of American blues-based folk music. Smither shapes the chords to fit non-traditional tempos. It’s that missing beat that draws in the ear and points to the lyrics, lyrics that find the compelling crease between literature and poetry.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: Smither continues to give ample proof that he’s matured into one of roots music’s most passionate, soulful songsmiths and interpreters. He has the perfect husky, country-music voice, and he keeps the tunes clipping with crisp acoustic picking.
NO DEPRESSION: If you’ve ever caught one of Chris Smither’s live performances, you know it’s hard not to come away knocked out by the amount of music that comes out of one man. His guitar playing is remarkably fluid. His songs are gleaming bits of gold performed in a variety of styles.
ACOUSTIC GUITAR: Chris Smither’s songs seem so casual everyday language drawled over fine blues fingerpicking and the happy tip-tap of his shoes that it’s easy to overlook how artful and deep they are. Smither is now at the peak of his creative powers.
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD/Australia: His ability to take the emotion at the heart of a song, make it transparent and pass it on to the listener is unmatched. Smither’s rich, deep, emotion-charged voice and his exquisite guitar playing imbue these simple thoughts with a profundity forged out of genuine passion.
MAVERICK/UK: Cast your mind back to the first time you heard Hank Williams, Big Bill Broonzy or JJ Cale and remember how good it felt. Think of the opening encounter with Leon Redbone or Leo Kottke. They say newcomers to Chris Smither’s brand of country blues-tinged southern folk experience those some emotions. It’s true.
IRISH NEWS: Chris Smither really does have it all. He’s an ingenious guitarist. He’s a songwriter of startling originality. He’s an expressive, grainy-voiced singer and he’s also an engaging, witty performer.
MONTREAL GAZETTE/Canada: With his Southern-drawl singing voice, tapping foot in constant motion and fingers pulling fluid blues patterns from his acoustic guitar, Chris Smither is an engaging, sometimes intense singer-songwriter who can convert almost any audience he sits down in front of.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE: Sitting all evening in a wooden chair, acoustic guitar cradled in his lap, feet miked to amplify him stamping out the beat, Smither coupled a firm grasp of nuance with understated, focused energy. Smither’s quiet intensity made itself felt most of all in his dazzling guitar picking.
BOSTON GLOBE: (Smither) is among the finest acoustic guitarists anywhere in American music (Bonnie Raitt calls him my Eric Clapton), and his songs, while banked in the blues, are as modern as tomorrow’s newspaper.
OTTAWA XPRESS/Canada: On stage, his songs are bolstered by stunning, intricate guitar work, expressive, gut-wrenching singing and the hypnotic tapping feetthat is the heartbeat of his performances.
AMAZON.COM: New Orleans-bred folk-bluesman Smither has few peers. As a musician he’s expanded the six-strings-and-foot-stomps delivery of John Lee Hooker into an elegant, original style that draws as much on the sweet jazz melodies of gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt as the spidery swing of country bluesman John Hurt.