Written or Spoken.

They say you should never meet your heroes; they say the best thing to do in the event that you do is to treat them with some sense of normalcy, respecting them as human rather than fetishizing their celebrity. Of course all of this goes out the fucking window when you come across a larger than life figure like Steve Smyth.

On Thursday the 15^th of September, the velvet curtains of Golden Age Bar & Cinema parted just shy of 9:30 PM to reveal Smyth himself. There he stood on a rectangular stage lined with mirrors and just large enough room for an amplifier and mic. Armed with nothing more than a borrowed Fender guitar, a pack of anxiously purchased guitar strings, and a Sennheiser mic, he was like a lone gunslinger, straddling a weary steed into nowhere against all odds. Smyth would emerge from no-man’s land triumphant after an incendiary hour long set.

It’s difficult to describe who he is as an artist for the uninitiated. I vaguely recall throwing around such phrases as “Matt Corby with balls” and “Looks like Tormund from Game of Thrones.” I guess the best I can do in this case is offer the cliff notes, and let his own words complete the jigsaw puzzle. Tagged under the genre of indie rock, though you’d soon detect a pastiche of blues, soul and folk with an Oregon flair, Smyth has seen a rather active past two years. Following the release of his sophomore effort, Exits, in 2014, he has seen a continuation of what can only be described as a tenure at Bluesfest, multiple tours of Spain (which he has since adopted as a second home), gigs at the Oxford Art Factory seemingly every other month, topped off with an appearance on RocKwiz alongside Juanita Stein of Howling Bells fame.

“You don’t stop, you can’t stop. You’re not allowed to stop.”

“And so, you’re not even allowed to think about it. You’re not allowed to give yourself a pleasure of… tripping up. You’ve got to be one step ahead of yourself,” says Smyth, as he rolls a cigarette on the curb we are stooped over, our ad hoc interview room. “But it’s good to be able to be that busy for one, and you learn to have a respect for the road, and who it allows you to be as well in that constant state of movement in mentality and also in landscape. It’s been a very special moment to be able to just sit still… I’ve been doing tours in Spain but I’ve also been able to make it a home.” His expression softens.

This had been a sentimental point Smyth divulged to the audience earlier that night, the paradoxically abstract yet real concept of home. As he called for a brief intermission of his remarkable one-man performance in order to restring his guitar, he sat on the edge of the stage at our level and updated us on the going-ons of his private life.

“I live in the centre of Barcelona in a… they call it a little village inside the city,” he says, winding a string up. “It’s away from tourists and there’s always kids playing soccer on the street. You find yourself in a little daze of being lost in a culture that you’re trying to learn the language and also learn what they hold important.” We shuffle closer to the end of our seats as if it were another song on the set-list. “It’s been a good time to stay in a, like some sort of… metamorphosis. Finding a new language of yourself, not just the Spanish tongue.” There is a pregnant pause where we all contemplate the very notion. A female audience member offers him a drink. “I’d love a drink,” Smyth chuckles, the rest of the audience following suite in a low rumble of laughter. “You’re a beautiful woman,” he says, before tipping the glass back for a hearty swig. “You’re alright yourself,” she responds. More laughter from all sides. “I tell ya’, you’re all very wonderful people. It’s wonderful to be back,” he concludes, testing the strings with a few strums. “This string’s totally going to go out.” He rises to his feet. Take two.

“To call one place home, to get some writing done, to settle into some form of formality. It’s a beautiful feeling, knowing true fully well by the time I finish up all the writing that I need to get done, that’ll essentially spur me on and catapult me into another two years.”

“But for the moment, it’s paradise.”

Of course this constant forward momentum from one achievement to another is no surprise to anyone that skims Smyth’s bio. A childhood of travelling around Australia as the son of minsters who built churches from the ground up. One could easily see how this had prepared him for an adulthood as a touring musician.

“I guess that was the start of being able to understand that no matter where you go you will always find good people, and you’ll find that home isn’t at the end of the road, home is the road… I think it definitely helped. And it is kind of a slow burn until you get ridiculously… you know. Where every next day is a different town, different venue, different faces and that’s kind of something that doesn’t happen completely ‘boom’ like that… It was progressive.”

Smyth’s style is something to be noted as remarkably versatile yet consistent. In Exits, for example, he kicks off the album with the high energy thump, grind and wail of Get On and Shake It, simmers down with the soothing ballad that is Digital Hearts, croons on Paris – I could go on endlessly; but throughout it all, there exists a very raw emotion both in lyricism and instrumentals. The million-dollar question was where he drew such emotion from.

“The search for extremity. I think Australia is a very strong point in that. It’s a very volatile country. And the different changes you experience on the road, there’s nothing really soft about it,” he says. Unforgiving, I offer.

“It can be completely unforgiving, and one of the slowest sunsets that you’ve ever experienced in your life,”

he says, “In a desert somewhere in between Uluru and… I don’t know, Humpty-Doo.” We chuckle. “That seeps into your soul, and you can’t escape that. And then… you’ve jumped off the bus from JFK, and you’ve got no money in your pocket, and you’re walking with your guitar through Harlem all through Manhattan down to the Lower-East Side, looking for a place to sleep. That is a brutal blues dry grind dirge. I have no choice but to replicate that in the music, and it comes through me, or I catch it as the breeze runs through the window.” As Smyth paints this unadorned imagery that so many romanticize and few truly understand, I find myself in such a demographic, and all I can do is nod with imagination. “There’s a lot of pressure… ‘oh you’re going to need to write a fucking song that’s like, a hook, and you’re going to need to put it on, and it needs to be for radio…’—I could not give a shit about it. The thing that I want the most, that I demand from myself, and ultimately I demand from the listener, [is] to be challenged in some way. To go a bit underneath, a bit scratched under the surface. This fucking life isn’t a damn…” To bare their truth, I blurt, feeling increasingly complacent as a supposed interviewer. Thankfully he appreciates the interjection.

“I dislike that pantomime that people pretend to play.”

I want, when I go to a show or when I have musicians, they’ve gone there for me to be able to step into [it] and to access that myself. I don’t think I’d be able to do it any other way, having to step up on-stage.” This very night had been no exception. Mid way through his set, a friend of mind leaned in, agreeing that he did seem like Matt Corby with a bigger dick. I didn’t bother correcting him.

The imagery painted earlier of wandering New York leads me to recall Oscar Isaac’s character from Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) based on Dave van Ronk, which becomes quite fitting when you hear Smyth cover Fare Thee Well from the film’s soundtrack.

“I don’t really usually play that song, tonight I was just…” he shrugs. I leap at the chance to prove my well-established fanboy obsession, and remind him he had played it at Mary’s a few months ago. “Fucking oath, I did too,” he grins. “I forget what I know. Every once in a while, a song will pop in and you’ll just play it… I don’t know how many countless shows it’s been since. Maybe it’s just being back here. It’s a song I feel I don’t do very well.” I disagree. Fanboy status confirmed with the three-peat. “Folk songs are… different people have done it, sung it, and its’ what folk music is.”

“It’s your responsibility as a musician to keep the song alive. It’s a damn good song too, and well worthy to still breathe.”

As we reached the end of the interview, we crossed the inevitable threshold of every music interview: what’s next. There was more in the air than cigarette smoke. Allusions of collaboration, perhaps even reuniting with Juanita Stein, wafted over in whispered clouds of promise and anticipation. Aside from their appearance on RocKwiz in which they covered The Air I Breathe originally by The Hollies, the duo had appeared together on Stay Young, a track featured on Smyth’s debut 2011 album, Release.

“She’s a phenomenal woman, and songwriter, and singer… It was magic to be able to share that time with her. I’ve got an idea, or a vision, for a record that will be coming soon where it’d be a complete collaboration with some artists that I respect. We’ll see how it all pans out. I think it’ll be… I shouldn’t really kiss and tell but, until it’s complete. It’d be nice. I think it’ll be called Matches. Both the strike of a match, and once you step into a ring. This sort of duet where it burns a light, it burns a flame, but there’s also the other side of the scale where you put your gloves on. The bell rings and, you know? But we’ll see. Maybe you shouldn’t say any of this…”

The time I was given to witness Steve Smyth, and then to pose my questions to him, will forever remain with my person. Steve Smyth, the soulful troubadour; the last champion of folk music; the vagabond king. He will forever be immortalized in my memory as this ruggedly, charming figure, looming from the mirrored stage with unparalleled grace and purpose. Smyth’s very presence somehow reaffirms your own, and though part of you is frozen in awe, the rest of you seeks comfort in the character that he exudes. But I could be wrong. Maybe I just look at him with rose coloured lens. Maybe the nights always seem better the morning after. Maybe it is because I will never know what it is like to command the admiration, adoration, and respect of so many people before me, in a room where I can reveal my innermost self, and it is in turn worshipped. That would, however, only account for 10% of my praise. The other 90%, well, you just had to be there.