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conducted by John Clay
via email, March and April 2008

Jonah Smith masters two instruments: the keyboard and the human voice. It's not that his voice is what you would call beautiful, just like not every every piano a master pianist sets fingers to is a paragon of perfect strings and hammers. Instead it's Jonah's flawless phrasing, the flow of breath and energy, that makes you lean back and listen. And you listen for the songs too. Jonah's style is soulful and sophisticated, and every song tells a story that you think somewhere, somehow, might have happened to you.

Jonah and his band—Marko Djordjovic on drums, Bob Reynolds on sax, Ben Rubin on bass, David Soler on guitar, and Jonah on voice and keyboards—tour across the US and Europe, but they are based in New York City. I first heard them at Black Betty—that fabled small club at the corner of Metropolitan Avenue and Havemeyer Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. From then on I would run into Jonah now and then in the NYC night scene, with its remarkable lamplit crowds of moving souls, flowing up and down midnight streets, together and alone, searching for meaning—or a night of companionship, or at least some good conversation, or at least one more drink before the long subway ride home. That describes most of the night crowd, anyway, including myself when I lived on those streets. Jonah, for his part, was chilling after one of his many latenight gigs, and I think that for him the music itself is where he searches for meaning, for conversation, and even for intoxication. We talked back then about doing an interview. It finally came together via email, oddly enough, after I had moved away to my new home on the wooded streets of Minneapolis.

Jonah's music has made a style shift over the years from the rich jazz harmonies of his first two albums, Industry Rule in 2001 and Beneath the Underdog in 2003, to the soulful blues melodies of his Jonah Smith album, released by Relix Records in 2006. He says he may have lost some fans along the way, and he is probably right. But he may have gained some new ones too. Jonah told us something was brewing, when he wrote the words to his 2003 song "Rough Trade for Wild Days": It's what's been hiding up my sleeve; it's what's buried inside me. And I have a feeling the revelation is far from finished.

CLAY: I have read that you started writing your song "Stay Awhile" when out on the street, away from your keyboards. How do you generally write your songs? And for you, what is songwriting about?

SMITH: I'm open to writing a song however it comes to me. It always starts with an idea. It could be a musical phrase or words that I want to build something around. I don't really have a standard approach. The hard part"and the craft"comes from working on material when you don't have a new idea. The ideal thing for me is to create something that someone other than myself can relate to...and hopefully be moved by. I think that's the biggest problem with the slew of mediocre bedroom songwriters that put their stuff out on the Internet. They think that since they created it and it came from an honest place then it must be great. It's most likely not. I'd rather hear a dishonest song that I can relate to somehow.

I recently wrote a song about Dust Bowl-Era Kansas. Why? I had written the line "dust bowl shins" in my notebook and, when looking at it later, realized that I didn't really know what that might mean since I knew very little about the Dust Bowl. So I went on the internet, and I read about it and looked at pictures, and then I made the song. It doesn't come from any personal experience, but I hope that when you hear it that it sounds honest and there is something you can latch onto emotionally. Telling a story, creating a character, or at the very least creating an image worth remembering, is the key to a good lyric.

There was a time when everything I wrote came from a personal experience, but I didn't want that to become a defining factor of my style because then I'd be drawing from a limited pool for topics. Most songwriters that only write from personal experience end up running out of stuff to write. Meanwhile, writers like Randy Newman and Tom Waits can keep creating because they never limit themselves in that way.

CLAY: Do you come from a musical family? How did you get started in music?

SMITH: My older brother played piano when he was younger, but gave it up. I came to music on my own. I had decided by a pretty young age that it was what I wanted to do. I started writing songs as a teenager, but didn't share them with anyone until my senior year of high school—and then only with my close musical friends. Getting involved with some other musicians and learning to sing harmony brought out that side of me, I guess.

CLAY: Did you train formally in music? How did it help or hurt your musical development?

SMITH: I had some piano lessons when I was in high school. I would say they were very helpful as far as giving me some fundamentals on the piano like proper fingerings. My high school piano teacher also showed me how to learn songs by transcribing them from a tape. This is an invaluable tool for me because it's a great learning process...to figure out what others have done before you by breaking it into it's components. It also strengthens your ear, which makes you a better listener. I've learned the rest along the way from all of the great musicians I've gotten to play with over the years, as well as a few generous teachers.

CLAY: Apart from piano and voice, what other instruments are part of your history? And what was it about piano and voice that especially drew you in?

SMITH: I actually started out on guitar when I was eight but didn't like the music my teacher was choosing for me to learn—things that weren't that interesting to my eight year old mind like "The Can Can"—and I quickly lost interest. My brother was already taking piano lessons and liked his teacher, so I decided to give that a shot and was hooked. She made it relate to my life. She pulled music out of the air—or from places where we heard it but maybe ignored it—and made it accessible and fun. There was a period when she was just teaching me TV theme songs. I never really picked up the guitar again, but I do plan on eventually learning some chords so I can go commune with nature and work on songs.

CLAY: Tell me about some of your earliest bands and gigs.

SMITH: Deluxe was the first band that I started by myself that featured only my songs. Before Deluxe, the first gig that I remember playing was at a place called the Blarney Stone in Burlington, Vermont. I think I got paid in beer.

CLAY: Do you remember the name of that band? And what was the crowd like?

SMITH: I can't remember. Not even sure if we had a band name; it was probably a pick-up band, just basic bar band stuff. The crowd, if I remember correctly, was drunk. In college, starting my own band wasn't really a priority. It was a period of intense learning, and I was just trying to play with as many people in as many settings as possible. I learned a lot of valuable skills in those days like how to improvise, how to deal with bad sound on stage, and how to relate musically to other people.

CLAY: What took you to Boston?

SMITH: I think I moved to Boston because I didn't know anyone in New York and the thought of moving there kind of scared me. I had been living in Vermont for five years and New York City was just too much of a culture shock. Boston seemed more doable, plus I knew a handful of musicians down there that helped plug me into the scene. I moved to Boston with the intention of starting a band and was lucky to fall in with some good people.

CLAY: What brought you to NYC in 2000?

SMITH: I was ready for a change. I was coming down to play in Manhattan periodically and I fell in love with the energy down here. There's just a lot more going. There's a lot more places to play and at least for me, a lot more opportunity.

Boston has a lot going for it, though. I used to love to go to Wally's Cafe on Mass Ave. to listen to music, and a club called the Middle East, too. Plus, because Berklee and NEC are there, young musicians are always playing. Lots of jam sessions. I think I made the right choice by moving to Boston for a couple of years, because a lot of the musical connections that I made there are still in my musical sphere. In fact, I'd say that most of the musicians that I met up there now live in New York.

CLAY: How would you describe the current state of music in NYC?

SMITH: There's so much going on here. Every day there's someone that moves here with a unique point of view and something to say. It can be humbling. I've also noticed that there are a lot of records being made here with interesting productions. People are taking ideas and concepts from a wide range of recorded musical history and incorporating it with new production techniques to create something modern sounding, but with an eye toward the past, whether it be a reference to the Phil Specter "Wall of Sound" or Brian Wilson's concept of vocal harmonies, or the sound collage of Captain Beefheart. A couple of examples would be Sufjan Stevens, St. Vincent, and Animal Collective. It seems like musicians are maybe more focused on creating art again rather than getting a deal.

CLAY: How has the music scene in NYC changed during the years you've been there?

SMITH: Well, I guess the one thing I've noticed is that live music has become more of a commodity since people don't really buy records. This has led to a lot of smaller clubs, like the scene on Bleeker Street, being diminished while lots of mid-size and larger venues have opened up to accommodate all the people that used to make their money on record sales that now have to tour. But then again, there's always new small places opening up that have music, even though some of the long standing places like Tonic and Elbow Room and Sin E have closed.

CLAY: Your band has maintained a stable core of membership from your 2001 Industry Rule to the present. That should make your band the envy of many. What gives your band such stability?

SMITH: Honestly, I'm not sure how that happened. I caught some lucky breaks when I first moved down here and got some gigs pretty fast. Suddenly we had a reason to rehearse. We all enjoyed each other's company, and everyone was into the music we were making, so it seemed natural.

CLAY: How did you first meet bass player Ben Rubin at the University of Vermont?

SMITH: I met Ben while walking through the halls of a dorm. I heard some live music coming from one of the rooms and peaked my head in and Ben was in there jamming with a few other guys. I convinced them to move their equipment out to the lobby of the dorm where there was a piano so I could play with them. The other guys were already in a band together, and the bass player was the guitarist's brother, so Ben and I just kind of fell in together.

CLAY: Saxophonist Bob Reynolds' bio on your website jokes of defending your music as "non-jazz". Despite the kidding, what were the drawbacks, as you saw it, of being thrown into the jazz category?

SMITH: Being put in the jazz category makes it harder to get gigs and harder to sell records, which is a sad fact. I really love jazz, and the guys in this town that are at the top of their game have given me some of the best live music experiences of my life (as a listener, at least). I never really called my music jazz even though some of the guys in the band come from that background, because for me it's always been about the song.

CLAY: How would you describe the way jazz works with song as opposed to the way you do. And what is it that makes people think of jazz when they hear Industry Rule and Beneath the Underdog?

SMITH: Jazz to me means improvisation first and foremost. I think that people associated my music with jazz because I would create solo sections in a lot of the songs, even if it was just a couple of bars. When you have great soloists in the band like Bob Reynolds on sax or Marko Djordjevic on drums, it just kind of makes sense to let them play a little bit. Also, because I've listened to a lot of jazz in my life, that came out naturally in some of the chord progressions, especially on Industry Rule. The problem that I experienced as a writer when working with complex chord structures was that melody tended to take a back seat to harmony, at least for me. As a writer, I want to constantly develop, and at a certain point I decided that I needed to be able to create stronger melodies. That lead me to stripping down the quality of chords to their basic building blocks.

CLAY: You said you also have learned a lot from other musicians you have played with. What were some of the "aha!" moments that changed the way you look at things?

SMITH: A lot of the "aha!" moments come from listening and watching master musicians do their thing, like watching Bill Frisell make something incredible out of "Three Blind Mice" at the Village Vanguard. Learning through playing is more figuring out what not to do like—"Aha! stop playing so many notes"

CLAY: Now let me toss some of your lyrics back at you. In "The Life" you sing of "the proper insight so the steps we take always move us ahead". And in "Stay Awhile", you sing of "the thinking man's game". Can you tell me about your thoughts on strategy in life?

SMITH: Interesting question. I'm not really sure that I'm qualified to give advice in this department. There is something from the ancient hindu text, the Upanishads, that was related to me at some point in my life: That there are things inside of us that drive us, and whether or not they are revealed to us at the present, they are real—like the desire to be loved.

CLAY: What do you think about Billy's strategies in your song "Billy and the Sandman", when he decides to write advertising jingles by day and hear his friends play music in clubs by night?

SMITH: I think Billy got it exactly right. If you aren't sure about pursuing a career in the arts, then you should make every effort to find out what makes you happy and do that.

CLAY: In "Aging Road Dog" you sing of the "truth of our tunes". What do you feel makes a tune true?

SMITH: The appearance of truth... and emotional integrity. I think the truth about our own nature is slowly revealed to us over time.

CLAY: Most artists have the experience, at one time or another, of struggling with the question of what they themselves want to do musically versus what their fans want to hear from them. How do you respond to audience preferences while keeping true to your own vision?

SMITH: I can't really take into account what my audience is going to like when I'm making music. I just hope that they are open-minded to hearing something new, because I don't generally stay in one place for too long. I'm sure I've lost some fans from my first record to my third, but I've gained others. As an artist, I'm always hoping to please my fans, but if I can't please myself first then no one wins.

CLAY: Your Relix recording is said to represent a "more song-oriented period". How does it feel, compared to what you were doing before?

SMITH: It feels good.

© 2008 John Clay