{"id":5096,"date":"2025-07-15T14:57:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T14:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ullapoolguitarfestival.com\/?page_id=5096"},"modified":"2025-07-15T14:57:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T14:57:12","slug":"john-smith","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ullapoolguitarfestival.com\/?page_id=5096","title":{"rendered":"John Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!-- Facebook Like Button v1.9.6 BEGIN [http:\/\/blog.bottomlessinc.com] -->\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fullapoolguitarfestival.com%2F%3Fpage_id%3D5096&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowTransparency=\"true\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height: 30px; align: left; margin: 2px 0px 2px 0px\"><\/iframe>\n<!-- Facebook Like Button END -->\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/ullapoolguitarfestival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Unknown-5.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"172\" height=\"186\" src=\"https:\/\/ullapoolguitarfestival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Unknown-5.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1278\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>He was dubbed the future of folk music by Pentangle\u2019s John Renbourn, but singer-songwriter John Smith\u2019s unique synthesis of styles puts him halfway across the Atlantic.&nbsp;<em>The Living Kind&nbsp;<\/em>is his masterpiece in American atmospherics: a true musician\u2019s record, produced by Joe Henry, the man responsible for some of the subtlest Americana of recent times.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the start of 2022 they cooked up the idea for an intimate record \u2013 \u201can acoustic album that sounded like&nbsp;<em>Spirit of Eden<\/em>\u201d, Smith explains, referencing Talk Talk\u2019s 1988 classic. Along with John Martyn\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Solid Air<\/em>&nbsp;and Joni Mitchell\u2019s electro-acoustic odyssey<em>&nbsp;Hejira<\/em>, it was one of the three creative inspirations for&nbsp;<em>The Living Kind<\/em>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like&nbsp;<em>Hejira<\/em>, the new album is a cohesive song-cycle that seems to be cast in one rich tone-colour. In 2020, Smith\u2019s family suffered a cluster of personal crises in the space of three months. After that and the resultant rebuild, as he sings in&nbsp;<strong>The World Turns<\/strong>, Smith had to \u201cfind a new way to feel\u201d.&nbsp;<br><br>\u201c<em>The Living Kind<\/em>&nbsp;is about responsibility and being very keenly aware of your place within a family dynamic,\u201d he explains. \u201cWhen I started writing these songs, I knew what was happening; in the space of three years, I had essentially become a different person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The album was cut over just four days in February 2023, in Joe Henry\u2019s remote home in Harpswell, Maine. With temperatures dropping to -25 outside, the band \u2013 consisting of Henry\u2019s son Levon and bassist Ross Gallagher \u2013 didn\u2019t leave the house at all. You can hear the darkness and warmth in the new songs. Smith adored the spontaneity of recording live, \u201cmoving air around, making eye contact, dancing and weaving\u201d with his core musicians. Gallagher, a jazz player, could intuit his next moves effortlessly. Drums were shared between Jay Bellerose (Robert Plant) and Joshua Van Tessel (Bahamas); Henry\u2019s regular keyboardist Patrick Warren, who composed the music to&nbsp;<em>True Detective<\/em>, can be heard adding keyboards, strings and unmistakeable gothic vibrations to many songs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He was dubbed the future of folk music by Pentangle\u2019s John Renbourn, but singer-songwriter John Smith\u2019s unique synthesis of styles puts him halfway across the Atlantic.&nbsp;The Living Kind&nbsp;is his masterpiece in American atmospherics: a true musician\u2019s record, produced by Joe &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ullapoolguitarfestival.com\/?page_id=5096\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4315,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"showcase.php","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5096","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ullapoolguitarfestival.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ullapoolguitarfestival.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ullapoolguitarfestival.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ullapoolguitarfestival.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ullapoolguitarfestival.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ullapoolguitarfestival.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5097,"href":"https:\/\/ullapoolguitarfestival.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5096\/revisions\/5097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ullapoolguitarfestival.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ullapoolguitarfestival.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}