Artists Info

Back in the old days, muses resilient troubadour Chris Smither, writing new songs and making new albums were just chores. My priority was, and still is, performing live. I guess I still write the songs and make the records so that I can go out and play except that now I actually look forward to it. I've learned how to do it, and I'm very eager to get stuff recorded once I've written it.

Recorded in only three days, Time Stands Still is just the eleventh studio album of a career that now spans over four decades. Time Stands Still (Signature Sounds/Mighty Albert) is both pensive and visceral an album whose songs alternately ponder life's mysteries in some moments, and let them lie undisturbed in others. Featuring eight new original compositions and a song apiece from Bob Dylan, Mark Knopfler, and 1920s country-blues songster Frank Hutchison, Time Stands Still's immediate, intimate sound is the direct result of one gig, and the challenge it presented.

This is the most stripped-down record I've made in a long time, Smither explains. That came about thanks to a trip to the Netherlands. Invited to perform at the Americana-centric Blue Highways Festival in Utrecht, Smither was told he had to bring a band over with him. I usually perform solo, he continues, but they said "We don't hire solo acts." He reached out to producer and guitarist David Goody Goodrich, who produced Smither's last two studio albums. Goody said, "Let's get you, me, and a drummer, Smither says. So I called and asked if a trio would be okay, and the festival agreed. So Goody, the drummer Zak Trojano, and I went there, and we killed them!

Playing with just the three of us was a lot of fun, Smither reflects. At first it scared me, but we did a few rehearsal dates before we left. We booked them under a pseudonym, so there was no pressure. Right after our set at the festival, the soundman gave me a CD he made off the board. I put it away for a while, then listened to it one day. It sounded so good to me, I called Goody up and said "I'm sending you a CD. This is how we should do the next record."And that's what we did it"

For Smither, going into the studio is preceded by an intensive period of songwriting and road-testing new material. I'm not one of these writers who write all the time, he says. I write for a project. If you want me to finish a song, give me a date that we're going into the studio. His process insures that the songs hang together as a group forming a snapshot of Smither's experience and perception in a given time. They all relate to each other, he says of the songs on Time Stands Still. In a way, it's a case of realizing after the fact how they fit together, not whether they fit together.