By TOM BOJKO

These whiskey-voiced songs of riverboats, New Orleans nights and past loves will speak to you like mellow old friends. None will blow you away the first time through, but many will replay themselves in your head long after you've turned the CD off.

Stanley Smith sings, plays clarinet and picks his acoustic guitar with a deceptive artlessness, planting ideas in the minds of his listeners and then anticipating and satisfying their desires for what comes next. Just when you think that a tune could use a little more of this or that, the slow burn of a steel guitar or a warbling line from a clarinet drops in and feels so right that you may think they are composing the songs themselves. Smith is either a mind reader or, as he says by e-mail from Austin, Texas, "just not the type to beat people up with my music."

Although he's 58 years old, "In the Land of Dreams" is Smith's first solo outing. At home in Austin, he is well-known as a member of the Asylum Street Spankers, a band that plays western swing music and favors an unamplified setup -- but judging from their "Live in Europe 2001" CD, the Spankers don't need amps to rock the house. In addition to the Spankers, Smith works as a session man, most recently playing with country music Hall of Famer Floyd Tillman and western swing fiddle master Johnny Gimble.

Sometimes, the greatest musicians are the ones who make their points using the fewest notes -- Jim Hall, Thelonious Monk and Art Blakey all come to mind as masters of simplicity. And while Smith may not rank among these greats, he does have one thing in common with them: an understated grace that says more each time one listens to his music. Smith and his small acoustic band carve out the barest of rhythms, and yet the bossa-nova "New Dreams" undulates like Gilberto and Jobim. Smith spins lyrics from everyday language, but on tunes such as "Up From the Bottom," they speak deeply of a life forever on the move. And though the band sketches simple melodies, somehow the music is sonorous and deep, as on the dirge-like "Took Hold of a Gypsy."

This last song, Smith says, is "about my little hometown in Arkansas where we lived in the back of my father's photo studio. Within the block was the river, railroad depot, highway and the bridge. I picked up on that gypsy spirit watching the highway, the river and the railroad trains in my hometown."

Smith's gypsy spirit will bring him to Japan this October -- stay tuned to www.buffalo-records.com for dates and venues.

The Japan Times: June 26, 2002
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