About Me
Michael was born in South Orange, New Jersey on September 7, 1941 and raised in the Oranges, attending Our Lady of the Valley and Our Lady of Sorrows, Catholic schools that are the setting for some of his better known songs.He bought a guitar at fifteen (five dollars) and was soon playing in a group inspired equally by the Kingston Trio and Harry Belafonte. The act was called The Kalypso Kids and played a lot of VFW halls and psychiatric hospitals. The Kalypso Kids were the first to record a Michael Smith song: "Teen Dream". This recording, waxed on the spot, is lost in antiquity.College (St. Petersburg Junior, in Florida) saw a group called the Wanderers, a quartet organized by Michael, with gigs on the beach and at local coffeehouses. Michael began touring with a duet called The Talismen. "We hit every coffee-house in the world," Michael recalls. "Those were days when you got hired by the week and people stood in line. They didn’t even have to know who you were. It was Folk Music, and Folk Music was happening."Three years at The Flick in Miami followed, six nights a week. Michael did entirely his own material. "I would say the song was Fred Neil’s. People would say ’Oh, I hadn’t heard that one.’ I’d say ’It’s one of his better ones, don’t you think?’"At the Flick Michael met his wife Barbara Barrow, and they traveled with a quartet called the Baker St. Irregulars, signed a contract with Decca as Juarez, and produced a recording that you can still find in very out-of-the-way record stores. Michael and Barbara’s next recording was for Arista. It was called Mickey and Babs Get Hot, a title for which Michael takes the blame. They recorded an acoustic evening at The Raven Gallery in Detroit, called Zen.Steve Goodman had recorded "The Dutchman," and music lovers in Chicago were finding out about Michael’s songs. Michael and Barbara became regulars at The Earl of Old Town and Somebody Else’s Troubles and Holstein’s and No Exit and Orphan’s. They played the Philadelphia Folk Festival, worked with Corky Siegel and John Prine, taught at the Old Town School of Folk Music, organized a benefit in commemoration of their friend Gamble Rogers, separately and together continuing to record. Michael was asked to write the music for the Steppenwolf production of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and with that production he toured for two years: Chicago, La Jolla, London, England. Finally Broadway, the Cort Theatre (the Marx Brothers played there) and two Antoinette Perry awards (Tonys) for Best Director and Best Play.Michael began to record for Flying Fish, produced by Anne Hills. They had met when Michael was playing bass for Bob Gibson (and writng a two-man show with him: The Women in My Life). Anne and he have worked together for quite a while, and that’s Michael’s bass on the Gibson-Paxton-Hills recording "Loving You." Michael’s last two records have been on Wind River, "the closest I could get to Flying Fish," says Michael. He began to tour more frequently, doing exclusively his own material.Michael, Margaret, Pat & Kate played Victory Gardens in 1994, and won four Joseph Jefferson awards, Chicago’s equivalent of the Antoinette Perry. This was Michael’s musical autobiography, and it won every Jeff it could but one. Our hero was encouraged.With Jamie O’Reilly, Michael created Pasiones: Songs of the Spanish Civil War, which played the Theatre on the Lake in Chicago and at veteran’s reunions in both San Francisco and New York. Hello Dali (songs about art), created by Jamie and Michael, played Theater on the Lake and Victory Gardens, followed by Scarlet Confessions at Victory Gardens (with Anne Hills).With Barbara Barrow, Michael created Weavermania, following in the footsteps of the Weavers. A highlight, if not the pinnacle of the Weavermania experience was a concert where Pete Seeger played onstage with them. You can’t buy that.Barbara created a show based on the music that Michael wrote for The Grapes of Wrath. Michael continues to tour, and writes at a "feverish" pace. "I feel so grateful to get to do what I do," Michael says. "I feel I was born to write songs."Michael Smith travels constantly, playing concert halls and house concerts, clubs and festivals. In the future: a new album of comic songs and a holiday CD/show collaboration with Jamie O’Reilly, "The Gift of the Magi".
