Artist: Darden Smith
Column from web archive November 5, 2008
Chicago, by way of Austin
If anyone knows the way from Austin to Chicago, it’s Alejandro Escovedo. The Texas veteran’s recent gig at Park West extended his amazing streak of playing more different venues in the Windy City than even most artists who live here have played. Since he first reached these shores with Rank And File in the early [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #62 Mar-Apr 2006
Darden Smith – Field Of Crows
Blessed with a seemingly effortless melodic gift and one of the warmest, most penetrating vocal deliveries in American music, Darden Smith has somehow eluded significant enduring attention in his two-decade career. His restless stylistic evolution — and the inevitable label-hopping that goes with such shape-shifting — no doubt played a part in this, yet from [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #51 May-June 2004
Darden Smith – Circo
Since his 1986 debut Native Soil, Austin singer-songwriter Darden Smith has bobbed up-and-down and in-and-out with the tides of country fashion. Although a consistently earnest, penetrating tunesmith, he has released seven discs on six labels. Along the way, he’s been positioned as a vintage Texas troubadour, an easy-rolling midstream country act, an alt-country collaborator (with [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #39 May-June 2002
Darden Smith – Sunflower
As Darden Smith’s penchant for pop melodicism carries him ever further beyond the corral of rootsy Texas tradition, his first album of fresh material in six years can be heard as both a creative renewal and a return to form. Sunflower is easily Smith’s most satisfying since 1993′s Little Victories, though the darker themes of [...]
Not Fade Away - Reissue Review from Issue #34 July-Aug 2001
Darden Smith – Self-Titled
Like a Texas version of Holden Caulfield hanging out at The Last Picture Show, Darden Smith has always been a dependably weary, yet persistent, chronicler of regret, melancholy and the knowing inevitability of the next day’s burdens. This sublimely gifted, if luckless, Austin native has released just six discs since debuting in 1986 on Watermelon [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #9 May-June 1997
Darden Smith – Deep Fantastic Blue
Austin singer-songwriter Darden Smith may be best-known for joining forces with Boo Hewerdine (leader of English band The Bible) to form an oddly successful transatlantic Americana act: the Hewerdine/Smith album Evidence is a minor classic (recently reincarnated by Nashville indie Compass). That disc and Smith’s solo records are loaded with killer melodies, initially unassuming songs [...]
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