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Michael Patrick F. Smith
HOME FROM THE WAR
Smith’s words are “Beautiful, funny, and harrowing.”
The Atlantic
Irish-American musician Michael Patrick Smith, author of the critically acclaimed book, The Good Hand, is releasing his first full-length album in five years.
In support of the record, Home From the War, Smith, a seasoned storyteller and actor—trained by none other than former Artistic Director of The Lyric Theatre of Belfast, Sam McCready—will perform songs, read excerpts from his book, and tell stories from his raucous life as a New York artist to his harrowing time as an oil field hand during North Dakota’s merciless Bakken Oil Boom.
“He’s the real deal.”
Harry Smith, The Today Show
With performance chops honed as a professional actor and a literate, gritty writing style that has been compared to Kurt Vonnegut, and Charles Bukowski, Smith started playing guitar in preparation for the role of Woody Guthrie in a New York stage play—a role which brought him into the sphere of folk luminaries Pete Seeger, Happy Traum and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. Since then, Smith has been taking the forms of folk music, rock and soul, and bending them to fit his own idiosyncratic vision in songs about working, about wars, about sex and love and the difficulty of trying to twist an inhospitable world into something like a home.
Smith, who’s Grandmother Kathleen Ryan hails from Tipperary and Grandfather, Anthony Edward Smyth, was raised in Ballymulvey, learned a wonderful lesson about home in fall of 2023 when he formally became a citizen of The Republic of Ireland.
ABOUT THE RECORD:
Produced by Lexington, Kentucky’s Duane Lundy (Ian Noe, Joe Pug, Ringo Starr) and featuring some of Appalachia’s finest musicians, including multi-instrumentalist J. Tom Hnatow (Horse Feathers, Vandaveer, John R. Miller), Home From The War has a sound that, like Smith, is both cosmopolitan and redneck, hipster and hick, reflecting and celebrating urban and rural life.
With the working class bonafides of a former oil field hand, Smith delivers his songs with a sharp wit of a New York playwright. Gritty and proudly messy, with the rhythm section recorded live off the floor, Home From The War is infused with a sense of danger that conjures the pre-woke character-driven songs of Randy Newman, John Prine and Warren Zevon delivered with the pop urgency of Tom Petty.
Image Gallery:
Listen to the album:
ABOUT THE BOOK:
The Good Hand was released in the US by Viking Press, a division of Penguin Random House, and in the UK by William Collins. Click the links below to read the reviews.
A TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2021
"This lyrical and engrossing memoir is an extraordinary tale"
Sunday Times
"A rambling honky-tonk of a book, with the soul of a songwriter and the ache of a poor white boy who grew up rough."
LA Times
"A book that should be read."
New York Times
SOME KIND WORDS FROM FRIENDS:
"You have the talent, the grit, and the wit to have a great life. I envy you and wish you all the best."
-Tom T. Hall
"Your experiences, and your eloquence in sharing them are so important for Congress to hear."
-Representative Katie Porter, US Congress
"That was pretty good."
-Ramblin' Jack Elliott
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