Shadric Smith is one of my favorite Iowa singer-songwriters. He has that magic touch to write, and then arrange what he writes the way he would like to hear it. He's dedicated, and his first song is a really neat one. Has some nice steel in it, but get this, he also uses an accordion to highlight the steel and the song. It's kind of like my logic about music in the State of Iowa. It came first from the East, in covered wagons with homesteaders, then from the North, Scandanavian polka and accordion music, and then from the South, with slaves escaping on the underground railroad through Iowa, and finally from the West when cowboys drove their cattle to the worlds largest stockyards in Omaha. Shadric has all these elements in his music, and his "When You're Down In Iowa" captures all those feelings, all those combined musical influences, all those great diverse experiences. The whole CD is right on the money. There are 16 absolutely great originals here, and I have to tell you, any one of them would be a better listen than anything we're hearing on radio today, except of course the great classics Dale Eichor plays on Fort Dodge Radio. Shadric, you have my complete congratulations on a CD well done, well engineered, well produced, and very well written and sung. I just think it's a sad world we live in, when a good one like you comes along, and no radio outlets to play your material. You just keep on keepin' on.
November-December 2002 Issue
National Traditional Country Music Association, Inc.
By Bill McIntyre /Special to This Is Entertainment
It was 21 years in the making, but for Fort Dodge singer, songwriter and musician Shadric Smith, it may well have been worth the wait. Smith's 14-song set recorded in 1978 for the small Minneapolis label Cognito Records has been digitally mastered and released as a package for the first time on a new CD entitled "Shadric Smith and the Billy Buffalo Band."
As Smith says, Cognito Records became "incognito," as in belly-up, before the 1978 sessions were ever released. One score and one year later, enter Kirk Kaufman and Ed Wilson of Junior's Motel, the small, but highly regarded recording studio on the Kaufman family farm near Otho, who took the tapes of those early sessions and digitally reworked them for CD quality sound. The result is a delightfully strong sampling of Smith's piano and guitar driven country rock with a western swing feel.
Smith has been the driving force behind various central Iowa groups for more than two decades. His 1980's Billy Buffalo Band underwent several incarnations, and his current Frontier Fiddle Band assembles periodically with Smith on guitar, mandolin, fiddle and vocals. The new/old CD, on Junior's Motel Records, features a sound that pre-dated new traditionalist country and blends Smith's vision of rock, country, folk and western swing, with a strong lineup of players. Smith wrote all 14 songs, led by the signature "Yankee Cowboy," which became the Billy Buffalo Band theme.
The band includes Minneapolis session player Bruce McCabe on piano, one-time Fort Dodgers Chuck Henderson on guitar and Dolor Adams on drums, Gary Durr on bass, and Smith lending rhythm guitar and jazzy vocals. McCabe, today, plays with Twin Cities teenage blues phenom Jonny Lang.
A trio of fiddle players, led by the legendary Vassar Clements, added fiddle parts to several of the tracks. Clements has recorded with all the greats from Doc Watson and John Hartford to Jerry Garcia and Richard Betts, and fronted his own "Hillbilly Jazz" ensembles. Getting his blues and swing fiddle on the album for three cuts, including "Ride The Texas Wind," was quite a coup.
"I was always bummed out that this album was never released. Finally, with the help of Junior's Motel, it happened," Smith said. All of the basic tracks were recorded in the Otho studio more than two decades ago. Clements, and additional fiddlers Mike Russell and Kenny Putnam, added their parts at the Minneapolis end. "I had just come out of the folk genre at the time and fallen under the influence of (western swing kingpin) Bob Wills," Smith says. "Then I kind of drifted into country rock."
Blending all of the elements of country music, minus a steel guitar, many of the cuts have the honky-tonk, lost love, and highway themes, and some are up-tempo and some are ballads. One mentions Hank Williams, another suggests Merle Haggard. It's good music, local artist or otherwise, and even more interesting given the fact it was recorded in 1978 when Waylon and Willie, Jerry Jeff Walker, Emmy Lou Harris, Joe Ely and Asleep At The Wheel were about the only ones keeping progressive country afloat, in the five years following the death of it's chief innovator, Gram Parsons.
One of the selections on the disc, the sultry "Diamonds Don't Mean A Thing," was covered by Dixieland and swing balladeer Leon Redbone on his 1986 album "Red To Blue." A trio of other selections, "Yankee Cowboy," "The Moon Is My Companion," and "Tearin' My Way Home," were released on Smith's 1986 cassette "When You're Down In Iowa." The Frontier Fiddle Band covered "Riverboat, Sail Downstream" on a 1990 offering.
Smith has maintained his interest in country, folk, swing and hillbilly music through the years, and the "Billy Buffalo" CD shows him to be ahead of the times, before the glut of uninspired mainstream country gave birth to what is known today as "No Depression" or alt-country.
Pick it up. It's good, by any standards. The CD is available at Rieman Music in Fort Dodge, or by mail. Visit Smith's internet website at www.shadric.com and order it from there or phone (515) 955-8659.
CD REVIEW by Bob Everhart
Shadric is well known in Iowa for his fine work up at the Fort Dodge Fort. Here, he is in a tremendously different element. He's writing some really good songs in the traditional western-swing vein. This CD was recorded in 1978 for Cognito Records but was never released, much to their own financial loss. It is newly digitally mastered, and is better now than ever. First out of the chute is one fine composition and fine western swing sound (Yankee Cowboy). Shadric also demonstrates his fine ability to yodel on this CD. Put this together with some fine musicians called the Billy Buffalo Band, and you have some of the tastiest licks since Asleep at the Wheel decided to "save" the music. Ride the Texas Wind, another fine "western" song has Vassar Clements on fiddle...wow is this nice Shadric, really nice, and your voice is so really really nice. Gives me shivers, and that's what I like. I'd say you have really improved all of your fine songwriting and vocal abilities since the last time I reviewed one of your tapes. Shadric did this fine session down at Junior's Motel in Otho, Iowa. There has been a monster amount of good work coming out of this studio. I'd have to say Shadric is now up where he wants to be, perhaps higher than Greg Brown as a fine representative of Iowa talent. Ride the Texas Wind is of course sexually stimulated, but it's got all the ingredients of the best Spade Cooley/Bob Wills style. Expect the Nitehawks has some Jerry Lee influence. Some nice supper-club western-jazz like sounds pop up occasionally, plus some super acoustic guitar work on Riverboat Sail Downstream, and Redbird. Nice gentle sound with excellent mix and engineering. You'll find it on Country Boy too. That nice after-hours smoky nightclub sound is again apparent on It's Late, that borders on western-swing-country-jazz. Nice! All around terrific CD, well worth my highest 20+. I liked 'em all, good going Shadric. Available directly from him at Supposed To Be Music, 1104 3rd Ave. North, Fort Dodge, IA 50501.
Center stage in the Western Swing we found "Shadric Smith & the Billy Buffalo Band". Shadric Smith and the Billy Buffalo Band is the name of the group from Fort Dodge, Iowa that in 1999 debuted their feature presentation of this album. Fourteen songs in the most pure musical style like Bob Wills or Asleep At The Wheel are a part of this album, confirming that this album is not going to disappoint people who like this type of music. Songs like Yankee Cowboy, The Moon Is My Companion, Ride The Texas Wind, or I Can't Stop My Feet From Dancin' besides sounding really good, express a declaration of intention by Shadric Smith and the BBB. We also have to mention the collaboration of the master Vassar Clements at the fiddle, that contributed to the success of this record, making it fresh and interesting.