A Lot of Talk

A guy named Joel who writes about music for The Inlander on his way to meet a guy named Joel who plays music and writes for The Inlander. We must be at the nexus of the universe, I thought to myself, or at least at the corner of Conflict and Interest. 

What I found upon arrival was that Joel Smith’s music exists at a less mind-blowing, more appealing intersection:  where story meets song.

Joel Smith’s new album, The Filibuster, is fuller and prettier than it has any right to be for a record made in a basement. Smith plays most of the instruments himself, his warm voice the red thread connecting stories of senators, Swiss Army knives and South African mountains.

As both a staff writer for this newspaper and a songwriter, Smith has a keen eye for the minutiae of the human experience, and his dual identities affect each other.

“If you’ve ever read just lyrics on a page, it’s the most boring, trite banal stuff, and it’s the melody and the composition that gives it its structure and gives it its meaning,” Smith says. His journalism work, however, is “more creative narrative stuff… you can get more detailed and develop a story and develop characters more than you can in a song. So I guess what I’m trying to do is sort of blur the lines a little bit, or bring the principles of one into the other field. I try to bring a sense of heart and sensuality to my newspaper writing, and that kind of five-senses detail to tell stories in my songs.”

The songs, tender Americana of the Josh Ritter/Andrew Bird school, are rooted in details of places and experience — not surprising, considering that Smith’s last record, 2003’s River Roads, was a senior project for his self-designed college major in “travel writing in narrative and song” based on “the whole theme of place,” he says.

It’s not that there’s a whole lot about the Lilac City but, as Smith says, “the kind of existence I have in this place puts me in the mindset of making a certain kind of music.”

It also influences his choice of collaborators, ranging from longtime bass player Dan Spalding, former bandmate Karli Fairbanks and a host of other local musicians who make guest appearances. Smith is about to embark on a tour of the West Coast with his five-piece band, but the title track and overarching theme of the record, “The Filibuster,” signify the intimacy of one person negotiating the crossroads of story, song and self.

The song, narrated by a speechifying senator, is “a metaphor for performance,” says Smith, who casts himself as “the one guy getting up there wasting everybody’s time, demanding their attention for good or for bad.”

“I was thinking about myself as that senator — what can I say to them once I’ve got the podium?”

Joel Smith CD Release Show with Karli Fairbanks, Kevin Long and guests at the Spokane Masonic Center’s Commandery Room (1108 W. Riverside) on Tuesday, Aug. 11, at 7 pm. Price: $7. All-ages.