Anthony Smith is a Nashville-based, award-winning singer, songwriter, musician, and producer with over 200 songs recorded by a virtual “Who’s Who” list of Nashville’s superstars, including; George Strait, Montgomery Gentry, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Lonestar, Trisha Yearwood, Van Zant, Lori Morgan, Sammy Kershaw, Josh Gracin, Trick Pony, Kenny Rogers, Shooter Jennings, and many others.
Some of Anthony’s hits include: George Strait’s Run, along with the crowd favorite, Cowboys Like Us, Trace Adkins’ two out-of-the-gate smashes, Chrome and I’m Tryin, Tim McGraw’s Kill Myself and Kristofferson, Rascal Flatts’ My Worst Fear, and Montgomery Gentry’s recent top five hit, Whattaya Think About That?
Smith showed what he could do on his own with his first album, If That Ain’t Country. The Mercury Records release included three Top 40 hits and won over a broader group of fans everywhere Smith performed or where his songs were played. And he did it again on Sunshine, his most recent album with Krankit Records, where he mixed aggressively catchy guitar chords and uplifting chorus-like tones for a hard hitting set of all original compositions.
Table of Contents
5:59 – If you had to describe yourself as a band, song, or genre, what would it be?
9:07 – How did you get started in the music business?
17:51 – Looking back at your career, what stands out to you as your proudest moment?
29:32 – What’s been one of your biggest failures, and what lessons did you learn from that moving forward?
35:04 – Three things artists should be doing today to grow their fan-base and move their careers forward
If you had to describe yourself as a band, song, or genre, what would it be?
The Fluxu8ers. Because it’s always something I wanted to do. Musically, it’s the essence of who I am. As a guitar player, it’s the first time I’ve never had to be a singer. It gets me to express myself without the feeling of being inside of a box.
How did you get started in the music business?
When I was a kid…I don’t even remember how old I was was, three or four years old maybe. My Dad was always playing a little guitar around the house. He liked to be on the guitar. I remember on the guitar stand he had this powder blue Fender Mustang. I just thought that it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It had a maple neck on it and I have never seen anything like it. I didn’t even know what it did, really. I just knew that it was beautiful and that I wanted to touch it.
Looking back at your career, what stands out to you as your proudest moment?
My proudest moment was working with Porter Wagoner. He and I became really good friends. I had a friend from my hometown in Tennessee that played piano with Porter, and he had given him, unbeknownst to me, a copy of my Mercury Records album before it was actually out.
Porter absolutely loved it. I got a phone call one day and somebody was telling me: “Man, they are playing your record in between the sets of the Opry.” They would close the curtain for a few minutes, and then raise it back up for the next set, and in between that, all of the music for several weeks had been my record. I thought, wow, that’s interesting…I wonder why? And then I found out that it was because Porter loved my record so much, he made them play it.
So I get a call from Porter Wagoner one day, and he wants me to play the Opry. You don’t just schedule the Opry, you have to be asked to do it. So I played the Opry, and Porter was there and he had his arm around me and he told everybody: “This is my favorite country record of all time. If you don’t like this record, I’ll give you your money back.” The crowd laughed, and I made him sign my guitar right there. He and I became really good friends after that.
What’s been one of your biggest failures, and what lessons did you learn from that moving forward?
If you’ve ever experienced watching someone you’ve followed through college, a football player, for example, and you become a huge fan, and they’re doing great, say that it’s a quarterback and they are passing for a lot of yards, and they end up being the standout player in the league. They win the Heisman trophy, so the expectations are super high. They end up going to an NFL team, and never meet those expectations. The performance, for whatever reason, doesn’t come to fruition.
That’s kinda what happened with me. I was so hot as a songwriter, and there were so many expectations, and a lot of confidence on my part. I really felt like we had made the best record that year. And that wasn’t from an arrogant place, we just felt like we really put more time and effort and arrangement into making that record. The songs that I had written to that point were all on it. The bad part was, we were faced with all these options between major record labels, and we just picked the wrong one.
We picked a label that really wasn’t ready to handle this kind of act. They were consumed by the Shinia record. Most of the people that were working at Mercury Records at that time were young, and didn’t really have the talent to launch new acts. It was all they could do to manage the Shinia thing, and that was really the only successful thing going.
So that was a real heart-breaker. And along with that, I wasn’t business minded. I was on the creative side. The performance side. And it really takes a good businessman. People used to take artists and guide their career. It’s not like that anymore. Most artists nowadays have to be good at managing their own career. I put wonderful people around me, just not the right people around me. They weren’t what I needed. I’m still friends with all of them today and they would tell you the same thing. It was just one of those things. Everybody in our camp, we really thought we had a winner, and that it was almost a given. With all that hope, for it not to pan out, was pretty hard.
Three things artists should be doing today to grow their fan-base and move their careers forward:
- Set yourself apart from all the the other bands and artists out there.
- Strive to make each show better than your last, and make true believers of your fans.
- Songwriters must detach themselves from their songs. Don’t let your last song get in the way of writing your next song, the next song will be as good or better.
The best ways to reach Anthony:
On the web:
http://www.anthonysmith.com/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/OFFICIALAnthonySmithFanPage
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/AnthonySmithHQ
Outro Music:
Bringin’ Back the Sunshine
Sunshine
Anthony Smith
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