Common Chord presents an uncommon concert on Friday, April 7 at 8 p.m., in the Redstone Room, 129 Main St., Davenport.
In the candlelit evening of “Songs & Stories,” you can experience the magic of a listening room event unlike any other in the Redstone Room. Headlined by prolific Americana songwriter and guitarist David G. Smith, the native of Cascade, Iowa releases his 11th LP, “Witness Trees” on June 2nd, an album about equality, love, death and legacy. Throughout Smith’s storied career, he’s collaborated with Mary Gauthier and Grammy winner Keb Mo.
His songs have been featured on TNT, Lifetime Network, and the Travel Channel, and he’s shared bills with folks like Justin Townes Earle, Griffin House, Rory Block, Dave Moore and Kelly Willis.
On Friday, he’ll share the intimate Redstone venue with special guests Anne E. DeChant and James Turley, and opener Soultru.
Smith last did a “Songs & Stories” concert at Redstone Room in November 2022, and plans to average twice a year there. It’s modeled after songwriter gigs at the famed Bluebird Café in Nashville, the music hub where he’s recorded for years.
“They hold maybe about 100 people at the Bluebird and you sit in with the audience, three or four of you performing songs and telling the stories behind them,” Smith said recently, noting they don’t use the actual stage at Redstone Room.
“I have walked beside David G. Smith for many, many years, and I am in awe of his body of work,” singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier said in Smith’s bio. “David’s brand-new record, Witness Trees, produced by Neilson Hubbard, contains groove, story, great singing and great songs. The pairing of my two friends, Neilson and David, has generated beautiful art, just like I thought it would. Bravo!”
Story-driven folk rock
On “Witness Trees,” Smith moves from blues-driven roots music that showcases his slide guitar work, to more story-driven folk rock. It’s an album about recognizing the injustices of the world, looking to our future, and acknowledging that we can do better, according to a release on the record.
“I was thinking a lot about the next generation with this one,” Smith said. “I was thinking about Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban for fighting for girls’ rights to education. I was thinking about Greta Thunberg fighting for climate justice. And I was thinking about my own granddaughters, and the world I’m leaving for them.”
Album opener “River Gonna Talk” (a single released this week) is a blues call to climate action.
There’s a universality in his lyrics, “Blue Jay he don’t know his song / Summer wind won’t keep me cool / Mother Earth what are we doing to you,” that reflects our symbiotic relationship with our planet.
“River” was written in the ‘80s, when Smith lived in Colorado, inspired by the Snake River.
Most of the other tunes were written in the past couple years. “During the COVID lockdown, one of my favorite co-writers and I were on Facetime or Zoom almost every day writing,” he said of Tom Favreau.
The title track of “Witness Trees” is about old trees (thousands of years old), and “what have they seen, what have they witnessed, as far as history?” Smith said of the song penned with Favreau. “We kind of wrote from that perspective, and we kind of focused on the maybe not so nice side of human nature, and the things that we do to each other. But we also put in as we almost always do with my writing, something to shoot for a bridge to build hope in the world.”
The song “Witness Trees” carries the album’s theme of egalitarianism and fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised. The symbology of a tree looms large in the U.S. through the Civil War, to lynchings, to modern day Jim Crow and the continuing fight for racial justice, according to the release.
“Some trees have root systems that have lasted over 10,000 years.” says Smith. “How much of mankind’s poor treatment of each other have these trees witnessed?”
“Give Us Free” was inspired by the late civil rights activist and Congressman John Lewis’ posthumous essay “Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation,” and the provocatively titled “Women Are Not Equal” supports female equality.
“The album is a plea to recognize the past and, in many cases, the present, and own up to it,” says Smith. “We need to evolve into something better than where we’ve been and, in some cases, where we are. We can envision a better future.”
Of Lewis, he said peace should triumph over violence and aggression and war.
“You let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide,” Smith said this week. “His writing was so powerful. The message was so powerful and that was a springboard for really how we wrote the entire album.”
For “None of Em Dead,” Smith relays, “We lost songwriters Bill Withers, David Olney and John Prine in 2020. This song is my offering to honor those songwriters who’ve come before me. I’m a link in a chain and happy to be a part of it.”
The song “Gone” was inspired by the Henry Van Dyke quote, “Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.” Smith found the quote on a pamphlet that he picked up at a friend’s funeral, and he has carried it with him for years.
The meditative and therapeutic “To Be Human” lightens the mood with an easy, lilting tune reminding us that we’re all human, that we should build bridges instead of looking for differences, Smith said.
“Weight You Carry” channels the raw delta blues energy of Blind Willie Johnson or Skip James, but with a bigger, more modern production brought to life by Smith’s twanging resonator guitar and Alicia Michilli’s haunting backing vocals, his release said.
It’s a song that imagines the difficulty of coming out as LGBTQ+ to friends, family and others that might not take it well, and the weight that’s lifted when you’re able to live as your true self.
“How do you let people know?” Smith asked. “What’s that journey? I heard someone say during an interview, ‘You don’t know the weight you carry before you come out.’”
The only song Smith did not write for this album came from his friend Dave Moore, artist and leader of the Prairie Home Companion band in its early days. “Let’s Take Our Time and Do It Right” brings some levity to an album full of heavy songs. It’s about not getting caught up in the rat race, slowing down and taking the time to take care of each other. That appropriately leads into the gentle soft-rocker “Some Love,” about finding that classic love story.
Album closer “I Wanna Go Out,” co-written with Smith’s frequent collaborator Tom Favreau, is about doing what you love until your last breath. The song touches on the death of beloved songwriter David Olney who suffered a heart attack while performing on stage in 2020, and country legend and yodeler Jimmie Rodgers who passed away 30 hours after recording his last song. Its foot-stomping cadence is anchored by Smith’s signature dirt-funk style guitar lick, and interlocks with Michilli’s gospel backing vocals and Mitchell’s playful piano lines.
“I want to make quality material and honor my own life,” says Smith, “while being as truthful and authentic as possible. That’s part of paying it forward.”
Paying it forward
Paying it forward is at the core of everything Smith does, particularly with his Give-Back Series where he donates a portion of all money that comes in to local charities like homeless shelters and national charities like St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, he said.
“Witness Trees” is an album about social justice, our time on this planet and what we leave behind. As Smith says, “It’s about our life, our contribution, our legacy.”
“Witness Trees” is built with the intention to inspire the next generation through music. “People helping people may be the most important work in anyone’s life. I know it is for me,” says Smith.
Of the other artists on Friday’s “Songs & Stories,” Anne E. DeChant is a five-time winner of Cleveland’s Singer-Songwriter of the Year, and a 2020 Kerrville Folk Festival Songwriting Competition Finalist. She’s performed with Melissa Etheridge, Sheryl Crow, and Stevie Nicks, and was the selected local artist at Lilith Fair (Cleveland 1999). She has delivered standout shows in storied venues ranging from the Bluebird Café, The Bitter End, The Alabama Country Music Hall of Fame, to The Clinton White House.
DeChant released her first “best of” record, “Every Little Everything” in 2020, fan-funded and Nashville produced by Mike Severs. Her 2017 fan-funded release, “The Sun Coming In,” climbed to #6 on the Roots Music Report’s national chart, and its first single “Sunday Morning Drive” (co-written with Smith) to #1.
James Turley is a Quad-Cities veteran who said writing songs came about at the suggestion of a therapist as a way to confront depression. “I write about experiences and events in my life that are common in the lives of many individuals,” he said in his bio. “One of the most rewarding performances I have experienced was after a show at a small coffee shop when a fellow came up to me and said, ‘Thank you, man. It’s like you were singing just to me. I’ve been there,'” Turley said.
“I now only play for ‘listening crowds.’ There’s a transfer of energy in groups like that. The crowd becomes part of the show, like Open Mic nights at Zeke’s Cafe, where solo artists meld with the audience,” he said. “I’ve played twice now on the Redstone Room stage with other solo guitar players. What Common Chord is developing with this ‘listener show experience’ is unique to the Quad Cities.”
Smith called Turley “one of the greatest songwriters I have ever heard. And I’m talking about whether in Nashville, in Colorado, on the circuit, this guy doesn’t even know how good he is,” Smith said.
“I happen to know James because of our songwriter roundtable sponsored by Common Chord,” he said. “I got to know him through that and over the years.”
“The way he puts his lyrics together, it’s always thoughtful and he’s really a master craftsman,” Smith said. “In his case, he writes pictures. If I may put it that way, he paints his songs with words. The images are just so vivid.”
He used the famous songwriting description of “three chords and the truth” about Turley, likening his delivery to Leonard Cohen. “It gets to the heart of the matter every time.”
Tickets for Friday’s show are $15 in advance / $18 day of show, available HERE.
