A Conversation with Chris Smither (continued)

PM: Well, I didn't notice until right before our interview that the key line of "Father's Day" appeared also on the inside binding of the album jacket. That adds a beautiful touch.

CS: Yeah. Not my idea, but I sure did get a good designer for this one. I love the way the package came out. I think it's a very handsome package.

PM: It's very good. I mean, just the whole coloration, the ambience of the package is really superb.

CS: Yeah. A good photographer and a good designer, and you put them together. [Meghan Dewar is the designer and Liz Linder took the photographs.] I gave that record to a friend of mine and he looked at it and he said, "God, this picture makes you look like you know something."

[laughter]

PM: That's a good photographer.

CS: That's what I say.

PM: Yeah, I'm going to show this around to my older singer/songwriter friends--and I mean forty and over--

CS: Yeah.

PM: --who are like doing all these photographs from their prom, and blurry photographs. I'll say, "Look at this guy! This guy is sixty-one! Come on! Just get a good photographer, will ya?"

[laughter]

CS: You just got to find somebody who really knows how to shoot 'em.

PM: That's right.

PM: What kind of a home and a family did you grow up in, and what were you like as a youth?

CS: Oh, I was a faculty brat. My father was a college professor. And I grew up in a house full of books.

PM: Wow. Where was he a faculty member?

CS: Tulane University.

PM: Oh, wow.

CS: I grew up in New Orleans.

PM: That's something. Yeah, they're going through a lot of changes, Tulane, wow.

CS: No kidding. But I think it will probably be the making of them.

PM: Yeah. So were you one of several kids?

CS: No, I have one twin sister, and that's it.

PM: And what did she get into? Did she raise a family and all?

CS: Yeah, she did. Yeah, she's got a couple kids. In fact, she's got grandchildren now.

PM: And you're a survivor, and so many musician friends have died from natural and self-imposed causes.

CS: Yeah.

PM: What musician friends that have moved on do you find you miss, or miss the most?

CS: Oh, actually the only one--I lost a lot of friends, but not too many musicians. Peter Bellamy was an English singer, and he killed himself, probably, gosh, it has to be twelve years ago by now, fourteen, maybe, something like that. And I still miss him. He was a good guy. But it makes me mad. People who kill themselves really make you mad.

PM: Yeah, 'cause you never get to understand.

CS: Yeah. Well, it's like... I don't know. I don't know. I haven't lost that many musicians, yet. I mean, obviously, you don't live to be sixty-one without people dying, but most of my musician friends have done pretty well.

PM: That's good to hear.     continue

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