Chirs Smither – HuffPost 7.16.14

Mike Ragogna: What advice do you have for new artists?

Chris Smither: Well, my first advice is to remember that it’s supposed to be fun. There’s no reason to get into this game unless you’re enjoying it. It’s hard enough as it is and if it’s no fun anymore, then there are a lot of other things you can do that are no fun that will make you more money. Another answer that I’ve heard artists give is that you do it because you have to. If you don’t have to do it, if there isn’t something that drives you to do it, then think about something else, maybe. At the same time, I think that’s a little harsh. To me, I look at it as a legitimate career choice. Maybe that’s because I’m from New Orleans, where that’s just one of the things you can do. You can be a plumber, you can be an electrician, or you can be a musician. Musicians are just working stiffs like anybody else. When I first moved from New Orleans up to the Boston area, I would meet people from Providence, Rhode Island, and if they were Italians, the mob was a career choice for them. That was just one of their options. It always took me aback. That was the most amazing thing I’d heard, and yet in New Orleans, the same thing is true of music. It’s just a career choice, something you can do.

MR: Speaking of career choices, what would you have told Chris Smither when you were first starting?

CS: Actually, my advice to Chris Smither, if I were talking to him now, I would say, “Go for it.” If you’re passionate about it and it makes you happy, go for it. You learn soon enough whether it’s going to work or not. You usually learn soon enough to change. People change their minds all the time. The interesting thing for me is that I never thought about it as a career choice until I was already doing it. I didn’t make up my mind that I was going to be a musician. I was going to be an anthropologist in real life. I always thought that music was just an avocation, it was something I did when I was trying to avoid what I was supposed to be doing. I dropped out of school after four years, I never got a degree. I just left and I said, “I’ll try to do this for one summer.” Now it’s been forty-seven years.

MR: So Chris. You thinkin’ this music thing might just stick after all?

CS: [laughs] I think I might be able to make a go of it.

MR: It is interesting. These days, I believe lot of kids get into music because it’s the American Dream, you know? Take American Idol. It presents the narrative of following the American Dream to superstardom.

CS: I always thought it was peculiar. Sometimes you can ask little kids, “What do you want to be when you grow up,” and they say, “A rock star.” When I was a kid, that wasn’t a legitimate aspiration, that was just something that might happen to you, like winning the lottery. Nowadays it’s kind of an aspiration, “I want to be a pop music star.”