John Smith has shared a powerful new single titled ‘Friends’, a precursor to a larger body of work from him this year on which he is to be joined by a plethora of incredibly talented collaborators. John’s last album, Hummingbird, was released in 2018 (read our interview with him here) and this new body of work is described as his most captivating, vulnerable music of his career to date. This new single certainly backs-up that statement…
Against the backdrop of a universally difficult 2020, songwriter and guitarist John Smith found himself facing personal and unrelenting change. In the spring of 2020, Smith and his wife lost a pregnancy, and his mother was diagnosed with cancer. With his touring schedule of two hundred days a year on the road suddenly on indefinite hiatus, for the first time in over a decade, John was home.
“With newfound pain coming from so many directions, dealing with the uncertainty it brings, I closed the curtains and picked up the pen, turning to song-writing as a lifeline” explains Smith. Watch the accompanying live video for Friends which was recorded at Real World Studios below.
“I wrote this song for my friends. Some of them feel more distant than others, after a year without contact” describes Smith. “The ties that bind these friendships are not lost or forgotten. They’re still there, as tight as ever. I imagine a lot of people are feeling this way, to some extent”.
Smith co-produced Friends with long-time friend and producer Sam Lakeman. They recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios and then sent the track to Nashville, where it was mixed by Grammy nominated/award winning Shani Gandhi and mastered by João Carvalhio in Canada.
Friends Is Out Now Via Thirty Tigers
https://www.johnsmithjohnsmith.com/
Photo Credit: Elly Lucas