It all started with seeing the Beatles on television and a homemade toy guitar put together from an old cigar box.
As a child, Curtis Ray Smith was exposed to various kinds of music, especially blues, R&B and soul, which influenced the then aspiring musician.
Growing up my mother was a big fan of Ray Charles and that sort of music, so I grew up listening to him and bluesy kind of music,” says Smith, and then he chuckles.
Continuing on, he remembers how badly he wanted to play guitar. “I was trying to make one out of a cigar box, and my mother kind of took pity on me and took me to a store and bought me one of those plastic little ukuleles.”
At the age of 13, Smith got his first guitar while he was still living in Lubbock, Texas.
“It was after I got out of high school that I really started getting into the whole James Taylor sort of singer-songwriter thing and got into acoustic finger-style guitar,” says Smith. “People were playing in rock n’ roll bands and so on, and I really wasn’t. I was playing acoustic finger-style guitar. And I really specialized in that, playing stuff like Paul Simon and Doc Watson.”
In the early 70s, at the age of 21, the young musician moved to Canada and haunted the downtown Toronto area playing music. It was during this time period he played in an acoustic guitar trio called Appleshine, which played across played across the country.
From there, many opportunities came his way, including work from Yamaha Music.
“When I was playing and working with Appleshine back in the ‘70s, I was also active as a guitar teacher,” says Smith. “One of the music stores I was teaching in at the time was a Yamaha dealer, and I used to do these little clinics and seminars for the retail store. And some of the people from Yamaha saw those and then approached me after I moved out to Vancouver from Calgary.”
Smith remained with Yamaha Music from ’77 to ’87. During his tenure with them, he helped design custom guitars for individuals such as Rik Emmett and Bruce Cockburn.
In the mid ‘80s, Smith met a man named Glen Johansen.
“Glen owned a recording studio in Toronto, and a friend of mine asked me to come in and record a guitar solo on a project they were working on,” says Smith. “They were working on a demo for GRT records. Glen was producing that project and I met him there and I actually ended up practically living in his studio after that. For about four or five years I played guitar on just about everything he produced, including Glen’s first solo album.”
The friendship proved to be a highly valuable one, and their collaborations together lasted throughout the years.
In 2007, when it was time for Smith to record his first album Masquerade, he sought help from none other than long-time collaborator Glen Johansen.
“I was doing these gigs, and people kept coming up and asking if I had CDs for sale,” says Smith. “And so I finally just said, ‘this is crazy, I should just record a CD just to sell at gigs,’ cause people were asking for them. I called Glen and he helped me record this CD. He played pretty well everything on it, except my guitar parts.”
Currently, Smith can be found in the Oakville and Toronto areas putting on performances of blues and jazz music. He regularly appears at J Bistro at Jonathans on Church Street.
Regarding another possible album, Smith would like to get to recording, but his itinerary has been keeping him busy.
“I need to record another CD, but it’s really a matter of finding the time to do it,” says Smith. “I’m doing a new series of shows and they’re called ‘J Bistro presents,’ and they’re going to be music shows where we’re really sort of converting the bistro into a live music venue for that night… It starts May 28, and it’s basically going to be guest artists who will be coming in and performing with me.”
Smith also notes the importance of constantly writing new material due to his exclusivity at J Bistro when performing in downtown Oakville.
“I’m in the Bistro at least six times a month,” says Smith. “So when you’re playing a residency gig like that where you have a lot of regulars… you really have to spend a lot of time working on new material and developing the repertoire to keep it fresh and keep adding new things to it. When you’re doing a residency gig, the last thing you can do is let everything get stale, and keep playing the same stuff every night. Every week I like to add at least one or two new songs.”
