When George Gershwin created "Porgy and Bess", the blues attained operatic dimensions. As interpreted by fellow New Yorker, Smitty, that form acquires a chamber element. Playing acoustic metal bodied National guitars of various sizes and pitch, Smitty researches the percussive, whining slide techniques of the great Mississippi delta bluesman from Son House to Muddy Waters, and combines these with intriguing traces of folk idioms, such as bluegrass, country, tejano, Hawai’ian and fleeting glimpses of jazz. Smitty engorges and enlarges this rich material to create his own compositional, conceptual repertory of Americana with microscopic detail.
—John Farris, NYC
—John Farris, NYC