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www.oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver, Friday October 26, 2007 - 35 Artscene Oakville Beaver · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2007 Guitarist provides sizzle with your steak By Ann Cope SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER When Oakville-based guitarist Curtis Ray Smith was growing up in 1950's Lubbock Texas, Sunday dinner was usually either fried chicken or chicken fried steak, but in all likelihood the dinner music emanating from his mom's record player was Ray Charles. The music for those Sunday dinners, combined with the other blues, soul and R&B that permeated the southern airwaves during that era, left an indelible imprint on the youngster. Now in various Oakville restaurants (Trattoria Timone at present) Smith is providing the dinner music. Although `soul food' isn't on the menu, those early soul influences can certainly be heard in his guitar style and repertoire. "I guess growing up `in the center of the storm' so to speak really had an impact on me, so I've always gravitated towards blues, soul and R&B performers, as well as contemporary artists that were clearly influenced by them," said Smith. "You get a fairly broad spectrum of age groups in a high quality restaurant like Trattoria Timone, so I structure my repertoire to include songs in each set that appeal to all age groups, but my favorites are from the soul and R&B era, along with material by George Benson, Carole King, and blues artists like B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughn." If the response Smith receives to his guitar instrumental arrangements of classic and contemporary melodies is any indication, he's certainly not alone in his love of those genres. "I've found over the years that people love the classic melodies. Since my repertoire is exclusively guitar instrumental, I've done instrumental arrangements of many songs that people have never heard instrumental arrangements of before," he said. "In terms of repertoire selection, I'm constantly scanning the audience for what I call the smile factor and tweaking the repertoire accordingly. When I play the guitar intro to My Girl, or Just My Imagination, or something like George Benson's Breezin or Affirmation, the big smiles tell me I'm on the right track." Despite having played in trios and quartets Guitarist Curtis Ray Smith for most of his recent career, the realities of the restaurant/lounge music scene forced Smith to take a different approach so that cost and stage size could be reduced without compromising the quality of the music. "Most restaurant owners I know would love to provide their guests with a live trio or quartet, but space in a busy restaurant is an extremely valuable commodity, so sacrificing three or four tables for a stage simply isn't feasible," Smith said. "I was asked to scale things down to a single, but still produce the full sound of a quartet, so I spent a couple of years arranging bass, keyboard and percussion parts in a very sophisticated electronic sequencer, which I now use to provide the background parts for my live performances. The real challenge in that approach is ensuring that those sequenced parts sound and feel like real musicians, which I accomplish by using real musicians to play the parts into the sequencer." During the `80s Smith became a guitar clinician and product specialist for Yamaha Canada Music, an activity that led to a cross Canada concert tour with classical guitar virtuoso Norbert Craft. Smith's activities in guitar product development and artist endorsements also led to close relationships with several prominent Canadian guitarists, including Bruce Cockburn, Bob Mann (James Taylor's guitarist), Liona Boyd and Rik Emmett. "The real highlight of that work for me was helping to design custom guitars for Bruce Cockburn. During the `70s my main specialty was acoustic finger-style guitar, and I played a lot of Bruce's material in lounges and folk clubs," he said. "Working with him on new guitar and pickup designs was a real treat for me. Working with Rik Emmett was also a blast, especially since I was able to accompany him through his transition from Triumph to a successful solo career as a highly respected jazz musician." Smith's first foray into the music production arena came in the mid `80s, when he was playing with Quebec based blues master Brian Monty Smith. He produced a four-song demo for Brian that led to one of his most memorable gigs, when he and Brian -- supported by several Long John Baldry band members ­ played two nights with blues legend Albert King at The Brunswick in Toronto. The most fortunate chance meeting in Smith's musical career occurred in the mid `80s when he was fulfilling a friend's request to add a guitar solo to a demo he was recording for GRT Records. The producer on that session was former Ronnie Hawkins keyboardist and producer / engineer, Glen Johansen. Smith ended up doing most of the guitar work on that project, as well as countless others at Johansen's Toronto studio, including Johansen's first solo album, Walkin' A Fineline alongside the late Canadian guitar icon Domenic Troiano. Their musical collaborations have continued over the years ­ the most recent being Johansen's production of Smith's latest release, the EP Masquerade ­ an all-instrumental collection of classics from the `50s, `60s and `70s by writers such as Leon Russell, Kenny Burrell, Tony Joe White, and Van Morrison. These days Smith divides his time between performing three nights a week (ThursdaySaturday) at Trattoria Timone in Oakville, and doing corporate work in Toronto. Information regarding Smith's latest CD ­ Masquerade is available at www.curtisraysmith.com.