Chris Smith Interview

J: February the 28^th, 1998.  What day is today, Wednesday?

C: Wednesday.

“If it’s Wednesday, it must be Melbourne.” Right.

                We’re here with Chris Smith, noted improvisationalist, who has a penchant for not wearing collared shirts.  Chris, why have you deviated from the indie dress code?

C: Not wearing what kind of shirts?

Collared shirts.

C: Collared shirts?

You do?

C: I do, I have at least three collared shirts, you'll see me wear them in winter at least.

Alright.  Long sleeve? 

C: Well yeah, definitely long sleeve, I wouldn’t wear a collar without long sleeves, I think.

Um, so you’re mostly known for doing improv at the moment –

C: Yeah, for the past couple of years I suppose. 

Was there anything that kinda made you make the leap to improvisational performance?

C: Well, no, it wasn’t like a conscious thing, just kind of fell into it, out of, um, it just seemed like I could slack off and still like not practice and still show up to a gig and do a show and it was perfect, uh…

We’ll have to edit that bit out.

C: (Laughs) I had some angle, I forget what it was now.  I guess that’s more or less the angle.   Just, um, yeah, not having to write songs.  I also was feeling phony, showing up and playing the same songs.  That type of thing.  Not that I’d hold that against anyone else, but…

Just for you.

C: Yeah, I just felt uncomfortable, and I don’t want to be playing the same songs for myself over and over again.

This raises other issues though, in terms of – if you get a really good lick off, or a really good night comes together – do you feel a need to document, record it more often if you’re doing a live performance?

C: Yeah, I try to record it as often as possible.  As long as there’s some recording device around, that’s definitely the plan.

You think it makes you looser, you think it makes you better overall as a musician, to do unrehearsed stuff?

C: Tough to say either way – I find myself getting techniques down but not as quickly as you would maybe by having prepared material, you’d be going through it beforehand, you’d have your technique.  But it’s just more gradually developing technique over time, onstage, in front of people. 

Many of the people reading this haven’t heard what you’re doing – technically, you’ve embraced a few mechanical and stylistic things.

C: Basically I’ve been trying to have as many open strings – either open tuning, that is , without having to use the fretboard necessarily like having it tuned into a chord, or on the other hand if I am working with a regular tuning, and using the fretboard, I usually have at least one or two strings that aren’t pressed against the fretboard, so they just ring out, resonate longer, and fill it out a whole lot more.

A one man guitar army.   

C: Yeah, I’m trying to cover a lot of ground with one guitar.  Occasionally two guitars.

How about the other people?  Do you see that as a straight-up improvisation a la jazz improvisation, or….

C:  More or less, sometimes we – in the case of where I play with Louis here, we might have a chord or two or an idea of what we’re going to play, just a very basic rough idea, and spread these one or two chords over half an hour or so.

Ha ha!

C: Just take it as it comes.

Yeah, I’ve noticed a lot of your songs – ‘songs’, well, ‘tunes’, ‘bits’ are longer than your average three minute pop song.   Although you have recorded a single, which is constructed much like a pop song more or less – that’s probably the first thing people overseas will have a chance to hear.

C: Well, the songs on the single came about once again by improvising, just multiple tracks of improvisation –

So it grew out of experimentation and then you formatted it?

Yeah, the track with drums anyway, I just put down a straight ahead repetitive drum track

And built it up from there.

C: Yeah, just without any idea of what I was going to do with it, I put down three tracks more or less all at once, added two tracks somewhere further on and it turned into a song…

Is it a CD now?

C: Yeah, it’s a CD which’ll be a consistent eleven or twelve tracks and go for forty-five, fifty-odd minutes – there’s maybe three, four other “guest musos”, if you will…

There’s also some other things you’ve been doing with partners in crime-

C: Ah, yeah.  There are such things as the Reactions, which is Dion (Nania) and I, primarily…and whoever else, really.

You and Dion used to play in the Golden Lifestyle Band, from Geelong –

C: That’s where I started from.

And you moved on to do your own thing, to the um, plateau, the pinnacle of where you are today.

C: Plateau? Pinnacle?  I just let them do it, I was not doing so well.  I was in the midst of a rough trot.  I think I just ended up quitting after a bad show.   I was having trouble keeping up with the kind of stuff that Matt, especially, was starting to write – he’s really accomplished, really talented, I couldn’t keep up with it.

So you decided to leap into the unknown….and the  more personal.

C: I guess it’s all – more or less – pretty personal, I suppose.  Just recording two or three chord pop  songs, and then I sort of regressed even further, turning into one chord pop songs (laughs) and then eventually not even pop songs at all.

                The CD is like mostly pop songs-

Improvisational pop songs.  In-the-moment pop songs. 

C: Should be out in a month’s time, Greg and I are doing a rough master tomorrow night.  I’ll have that to listen to for a week, just to make sure it’s all right.

Any plans for the future?

C: No, I really can’t say anything – I’m not being secretive, it’s just up in the air.

Improvised, like many of your things.

C: I’m going to take a break from playing, get the CD out and record a bit more. 

J: Well, unless you can think of a really good anecdote I’ll turn the tape off.

C: Mmm, no, the only way an anecdote could come about would be through a question.

J: I’m not that good.

(click)