It’s been 20 years since the John Smith embarked on a career as a singer-songwriter, paying his dues opening for John Martyn, and to mark the occasion his new album, Gatherings, featuring Nick Pini on double bass, Jessica and Camilla Steveley-Taylor on backing vocals, alongside several very special guests, including Lisa Hannigan, The Staves, Siobhan Miller, Dan Mangan and more, sees him revisiting and reimaging songs – personal and audience favourites – from his first three studio albums.
Taking them chronologically, there are three numbers from his 2006 debut, The Fox And The Monk. The first being the moody huskiness of the emotionally raw, Something Terrible, featuring American jazz guitarist Adam Levy. The second is the slow lope, heartbeat pulsing percussive rhythm of Winter, the guitar break here coming slightly earlier. The other is the Martyn-influenced, slow choppy rhythm of To Have So Many, here, given more warmth, flesh and depth, with the addition of parping brass notes from Iain Ballamy’s sax and Charlie Ballamy’s trumpet, backing vocals from Lisa Hannigan and The Staves and Smith’s more measured delivery.
That was followed in 2009 by Map Or Direction, accounting for two selections, first up being the circlingly fingerpicked, whisky-fumed A Long Way For A Woman, the version here a whole minute shorter than the original version, more dust country than Celtic-tinged and minus the handclaps. The second, Another Country, which followed directly on that album, is, in contrast, a minute longer, slower with deeper, more resonant and introspective notes, and dispensing with the harmonica and banjo but adding strings by violinist David Shaw and cellist Garwyn Linell, it’s a transformative rework that surpasses the original.
By default, the remaining five numbers are all from 2013’s Great Lakes, the album opening in mesmerising form with its crushing end-of-a-relationship waltzing title track, here recast with The Staves on country crooning harmonies. Less breezy than the original but still light on its musical feet, Freezing Winds Of Change again features some aching strings with guest appearances from Siobhan Miller on vocals alongside John McCusker and Mike McGoldrick on fiddle and low whistle, respectively. Equally superior to the original version, which felt somewhat meandering, the new take on the fingerpicked Salty And Sweet comes with a different, more focused tempo, Lisa Hannigan reprising her duetting role, but this time stripped back to just the two of them in the studio.
Preceding it on the original album, the dobro-shaded Town to Town is, now with a short guitar preamble, again of a deeper musical hue, the retrospective ending with Smith joined by Canada’s Dan Mangan on vocals for a muted, far slower and more melancholic rearrangement of Forever To The End.
With John Smith’s now much higher profile, these revisited and, at times, transformative reimagined songs should, deservedly, find a far wider acclaim and audience than the originals. At the same time, ‘Gatherings’ serves to remind us that he is one of the true elite on the UK contemporary folk scene.
Gatherings (October 17th, 2025) Commoner Records
