Smith needed faith and time
An attractive young woman strumming a guitar, singing about love, found and lost; life lived well and badly; paths taken and opportunities missed. You’ve seen and heard it many times: the prototypical singer-songwriter.
Well, maybe, but everyone’s story is a bit different, and it’s how the artists deliver their story that makes it entertaining, or not. The ones who do it right usually have faith in themselves and perhaps a higher being, but faith in something that helps them through the tough times.
Mindy Smith has faith, but it has been tested. She grew up on Long Island with a pastor father and a musically gifted mother. But her mom died when Smith was 19, and that life-changing event took her to, of all places, Cincinnati.
“After my mom died, I tried to figure out what to do,” Smith says. “I grew up in the church, so I went to Cincinnati Bible College.”
It would be great to report that the school in East Price Hill, now called Cincinnati Christian University, was where Smith’s musical dreams were nurtured and her road to stardom began. Not quite.
“I was a lousy student, I didn’t have a goal,” she says. “I was going there to cope with losing my mom.
“I played the guitar, and I was in a band for about two months, but I didn’t have a lot of control over the creative process. So I spent more time with my visual art.”
Let’s give credit to the college anyway. Sometimes when success doesn’t come easily, a passion begins to percolate, and it just needs more time to manifest itself. That process started when Smith left Cincinnati after two years to rejoin her family, which had moved to Knoxville, Tenn.
She wrote songs and played in public, then made the decision that hundreds of singer-songwriters do every year: She moved to Nashville. Recognition came slowly. Smith won a songwriting contest in 2000, which led to a staff writer’s job at a music company, which led to Alison Krauss recording one of her tunes, which led to her version of “Jolene” that was included on the Dolly Parton tribute album, “Just Because I’m a Woman.” Buzz was building.
Smith’s 2004 debut album, “One Moment More,” ranked 41st on WNKU-FM’s top 89 albums of the year as chosen by listeners. Two years later, she released “Long Island Shores,” which featured Buddy Miller, one of the top musicians in Nashville who was proclaimed Artist of the Decade by No Depression magazine this year.
“I was a fan of his wife (Julie) and we had played a couple of shows together,” Smith says. “I finally got the courage to ask him if he would do something on my next record.”
Miller added distinctive guitar parts to five of the disc’s 12 tracks, and sings a lovely duet on “What If the World Stops Turning?” Her work had paid off; she had a hit record.
“I’m lucky that I get to do this for a living,” Smith says. “I have a lot of compassion for people who are working hard for a living, and I really appreciate it when they choose to spend their money to see me play.”
For her fans, that choice doesn’t require a leap of faith.
