Born in Miami, during World War II, Chris Smither grew up in New Orleans where he first started playing music as a child. When he heard Lightnin’ Hopkins’ Blues In My Bottle album he was hooked - he couldn't believe the sound Hopkins got. At first he thought it was two guys playing guitar. His style, to a degree, came out of trying to imitate that sound he heard. In his early twenties, Smither turned his back on his anthropology studies and headed to Boston at the urging of legendary folk singer Eric von Schmidt. It was the mid-’60s and acoustic music thrived in the streets and coffeehouses there. Smither forged lifelong friendships with many musicians, including Bonnie Raitt who went on to record his songs, “Love You Like A Man” and “I Feel the Same. (Their friendship has endured as their career paths intertwined over the years.) What quickly evolved from his New Orleans and Cambridge musical experiences is his enduring, singular guitar sound – a beat-driven finger-picking, strongly influenced by the playing of Mississippi John Hurt and Lightnin’ Hopkins, layered over the ever-present backbeat of his rhythmic, tapping feet (always mic’d in performance).