HANAPEPE — It’s all about paniolo for Gregory Smith, aka Westside Smitty, the deep-voiced, multi-taskin’ musician who adds levity and fun to music when he plays for fans in Hanapepe. Smitty, a solo act known as a Westside staple for
HANAPEPE — It’s all about paniolo for Gregory Smith, aka Westside Smitty, the deep-voiced, multi-taskin’ musician who adds levity and fun to music when he plays for fans in Hanapepe.
Smitty, a solo act known as a Westside staple for his entertaining show Friday nights at Talk Story Bookstore, offers a talented, unique mix of blues, rock ‘n’ roll and contemporary, anecdotal tales about life on Kaua‘i in his performance.
Though he plays covers in homage to bass-baritone greats such as Johnny Cash, Smitty also takes on other well-loved, well-known songs and adapts them with new lyrics, partially in tribute to the blues tradition and the practice of many Hawaiian musicians, he said.
The result is songs that are light-hearted, funny and pleasantly-recognizable to the ear. And he is thrilling to watch: Smitty’s talent isn’t limited to his simultaneous guitar and harmonica, but his voice and porch-board bass to boot.
Among Smitty’s favorites of this sort of rendition is his “Kekaha Rooster Song,” set to the tune many know as a Rolling Stones song entitled, “Little Red Rooster,” as well as his “Hurricane ‘Iniki” song, set to the tune of what most know as “Texas Flood,” by Stevie Ray Vaughn. Though Smitty argues neither the Rolling Stones nor Vaughn are the original composers of either of those “original” renditions.
“‘Little Red Rooster’ goes back to Charlie Patton — it’s just a traditional blues song,” he said. And “Texas Flood” goes back to “an old man known as Moses ‘Whispering’ Smith,” he said, adding, “his voice was hardly had a whispering voice sounded like mine — concrete.”
“They just got to the recording studio first, so they get the credit,” Smitty said.
Smitty’s tribute songs offer humor and tales about living on Kaua‘i, something that appeals to both locals and tourists alike.
“I’ll get people coming up and saying, ‘man, I hate the roosters,’ and I’ll say, ‘yes, sometimes, so do I,’ and I’ll get those who say they ‘love ‘em,’ and I’ll say, ‘yes, sometimes I do, too.’”
As far as borrowing from the blues tradition and imbuing it with Kaua‘i-inspired anecdotes, Smitty said he took his cues from other musicians on-island and throughout the state.
“Local music was very much the trigger for that,” Smitty said, giving such examples as those who have borrowed from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” turning it into “Sweet Home Waimanalo.”
Smitty said the absence of “hang-ups” over who “put the first three chords together” is essential to the collaborative tradition of music.
“They all had a common stock of expressions and themes that they wove into their music and personalized,” he said. “And recognizing the blues tradition — it’s a bunch of shared, collected music.”
It was inspiration from someone else that got Smitty started in music in the first place, he said, as it was after seeing one of the most-legendary rock ‘n’ roll icons perform that he knew exactly what he wanted for his ninth Christmas.
“I’ve heard about a million people say the same story — I seen Elvis on TV when I was about 9, and that was it,” he said. “I got my first guitar after that.”
Though he’s been here for 23 years, Smitty hasn’t lost his twang, and it goes well with his persona — all questions seem to be answered with that southern charm, starting with a “yes, ma’am” — manners he no doubt learned growing up in the South.
“I’m from southeastern Tidewater, Virginia,” he said. “Of course Virginia’s a big state — very different from the mountains of Virginia or the north.”
Smitty came to Kaua‘i as a 23 year old, armed with little more than a backpack and $300.
“I was just following a dream,” he said. “I had some carpentry skills. Things were booming in those days.”
Smitty spent time on other islands, including pursuing studies at the University of Hawai’i in Hilo, but always missed Kaua‘i.
“I could never get it out of my system,” he said. “All the while the locals over there (in Hilo), God bless ‘em, every private place they’d take me, a wonderful beach or waterfall, I’d compare it to Kaua‘i. … There’s nothing like Polihale or Koke‘e or Waimea Canyon on any of the other islands, so finally I took their advice and came back to Kaua‘i.”
Those wanting to see Smitty can do so at Hanapepe’s Talk Story Bookstore, his main gig, Fridays from 6 to 9 p.m.
