JOHN SMITH

John Smith is one of the UK’s brightest rising stars on the singer-songwriter stage, but the onset of lockdown meant cancelling his first American headline tour. You can’t tie a good man down, though, and his response was to release a new live album and take to the internet in order to promote it…

- David Mead

Back in March, John Smith was in the middle of an Australian tour when the country announced restrictions on mass gatherings due to the Coronavirus. Shortly after, he found himself on the first flight home to the soon-to-be-locked-down UK. A little over a month later, however, and John had released his latest album, Live In Chester, and was set to embark upon a ‘virtual world tour’, a new landmark in his career so far…

Music has been part of John’s life from an early age. When he was only five or six he began playing the piano, then the drums. The guitar came a little later, entering his consciousness when he saw the movie Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey around the age of 11. “That big guitar duel at the end blew my mind,” he laughs. “I thought, ‘Oh right, I’m going to have to start playing guitar!’”

John’s father worked in the record industry and played guitar himself so, noticing his son’s enthusiasm, he bought him a red Squier Strat so he could have some most excellent musical adventures of his own. Since then John has gone on to tour the world armed with an enviable selection of Fylde acoustics, making albums along the way. We were curious to join the dots between those early Squier Strat days, a love for traditional English songs, and the effect that ‘working from home’ has had on an otherwise itinerant musician.