Corey Smith will perform tonight at Rick’s in support of his new digital live album Outtakes From The Georgia Theatre.
Smith hails from Athens, Ga., the college town that formed Drive-By Truckers, R.E.M., Widespread Panic and more.
Born in Jefferson, Ga., Smith played guitar off and on throughout his high school and college career. After college he taught high school until his touring increased.
“I’ve been around music my whole life,” Smith said. “My dad played guitar, my uncle played guitar. My dad was in band, so I was always around music. I was in church, so I was in the choir, but I didn’t start playing guitar seriously until I was in high school.”
Smith likes to travel light even though it might make playing live shows harder on him and his band. He cited the three-piece new-wave rock band The Police as having a major impact on his minimalism.
“We travel as a three-piece,” Smith said. “It’s challenging when you have three musicians up there, everyone has to be careful about where they play and what they play, and you really have to use space in the right way. You have to be much more musical.”
In addition to Smith, Rob Henson plays bass and Marcus Petruska covers drums.
If it makes playing more difficult, it also makes Smith more creative.
“It’s made me step it up as a guitar player, where I have to get a lot more creative,” Smith said.
Listening to Smith’s laid-back sound, it is easy to see where his influences lie.
“Early on, I listened to a lot of Dave Matthews and a lot of acoustic rock stuff,” Smith said. “Then I went through a phase where I was going back to my country roots. Lately, I’ve been getting more into my rock influences. When I first started playing I listened to a lot of the ’90s alternative like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Nirvana.”
Smith’s lyrics parallel these influences and come from his own life and of those around him. He enjoys the simplicity of country and the rawness of hip-hop.
“I think the lyrics are mainly my country influences,” he said. “I think early country has really simple, honest and straightforward lyrics about life that draw from people’s experiences, and somehow they connect with people. That’s the way I’ve always tried to approach my lyrics.”
Smith said Hip-hop has also had an influence on his music.
“My lyrics tend to be more abrasive than a lot of country lyrics. If you listen to a rap song, like Tupac, sometimes the lyrics are hard to listen to sometimes-they’re painful. They offend people sometimes, but it’s usually just these people telling the truth about who they are.
Smith said he respects the honesty of Hip-hop lyrics also.
“In a lot of ways, I think I have incorporated that in the way I approach lyrics,” he said. “I have hopefully blended that with country music’s attention to theory.”
Often Smith’s lyrics involve drinking and love, and Smith shares these themes by writing what he knows.
“When I wrote my first record it was in college or just out of college,” he said. “So I was going through the process of settling down, I kind of missed college, I missed the whole carefree part of it. So that first record contained a lot of the stuff that college kids can relate to, so it became really popular. My next record still had a lot of the drinking references.”
But as many do, Smith grew up.
“In my later records, I think there’s less of that,” he said. “I like to think that the writing has gotten more mature; the content reaches a much wider group of people than just college kids.”
Smith’s first album Undertones came out in 2003 and he released In The Mood in 2004, The Good Life in 2005 and Hard-Headed Fool earlier this year along with Outtakes From The Georgia Theatre.
His ever-growing discography has brought an ever-growing fan base.
“We’ve gradually spread out in larger and larger circles away from home,” Smith said. “I started in Georgia and built up this state playing in all the nooks and crannies. Now we’ve played in Florida, Texas, Colorado and Chicago. It’s just the natural progression as we build up these other markets.”
Smith also has a huge online fan base. His MySpace account has thousands of plays daily with over 7.75 million views and over 75,000 fans.
“It really doesn’t mean that much to me,” he said. “What means a lot more is when people come out to shows and see how they respond.”
Smith, even though a Georgia “Dawg,” loves coming to Starkville, the real Dawgs’ playground.
“I’ve played in Starkville tons of times,” he said. “I love Starkville; it’s a great town. Starkville was actually the first place I played in Mississippi. I think we’ve sold out Rick’s, I don’t even know how many times.”
Corey Smith will take the stage at Rick’s Café tonight at 10 p.m. with special guest Gareth Asher. Tickets are available at Rick’s for $15.
Georgian Corey Smith, known for such songs as “Drinkin’ Again and “21” makes his return to Rick’s Café tonight.