Hank Smith, fearless leader of Hank, Pattie & The Current, is the latest banjoist to be featured in the series of Oral History interviews conducted by Bud Bennett at Radford University. Based on his personal interest in the banjo, and being surrounded by Appalachian culture in southwestern Virginia, Bud has recorded a series of lengthy, in-depth interviews with prominent five stringers, capturing their thoughts, history, and influences for posterity.
Bennett, who maintains the Archives & Special Collections for Radford’s McConnell Library, is now up to nine of these banjo player segments, most running just over an hour with some going much longer. He got started in 2014 with Butch Robins, who had so much to say that Bud just kept the tape rolling, and when they were finished, he had over 6 hours of interesting discussion and music.
When the segments with Butch were posted, the response was so strong and immediate that Bud decided to keep going with this project. As he told us a few years ago, he loved getting to meet and interact with his banjo heroes, and if folks enjoyed the videos, he would keep making them. Since that time, he has shared episodes with Sammy Shelor, Jens Kruger, John Bullard, and Gina Furtado, plus noted builders Geoff Stelling and Tom Nechville.
For this most recent installment, Bud travelled to Raleigh, NC with two of his colleagues at the library to interview Hank at his home. Despite his youthful look, Smith has been hard at work as a banjo professional since finishing college. Initially touring with jamgrass titans Barefoot Manner until they left the road in 2009, he stayed in their home base of Raleigh, playing with a number of regional groups and founded the world’s only Béla Fleck & The Flecktones tribute band, Blu Bop.
Since 2016 Hank has been recording and performing original acoustic music of the progressive variety with his musical partner, Pattie Hopkins Kinlaw, and their talented band. He also teaches banjo at the University of North Carolina, and maintains large number of private banjo students in the Triangle area.
Though adept with the bluegrass style, Smith has dedicated most of his energy of late to pursuing jazz and classical forms with his banjo. In a pair of interviews running nearly two hours, students and fans of the five string banjo can explore the creative mind of Hank Smith with Bennett.
The videos are posted on Vimeo, and are free and available to the public to view online.
You can see all of Bud’s interviews on his Appalachian Music and Culture blog. Anyone with an interest in modern music on the banjo will find them fascinating.
Everything that Hank, Pattie & The Current do is decidedly and intentionally modern. Though they follow the model of the bluegrass ensemble, as far as the instrumentation is concerned, their music is seasoned for a more contemporary, urban taste with rough edges smoothed and backwoods accents removed.
They are a North Carolina band, based in Raleigh, with a mission to bring the sound of the banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and guitar to audiences unaccustomed to bluegrass. That element remains in everything they play, but with perhaps a dash of Latin rhythm for zest, or a bit of a jazz kick for spice. But through it all, it’s always clear that they know their grass.
Hank is Hank Smith, a banjo player who has carefully studied the music of Béla Fleck, so much so that he once fronted a Flecktones tribute band. And his co-bandleader, Pattie, is Pattie Hopkins Kinlaw, a conservatory-trained violinist and vocalist, with a knack for the fiddle as well. They have assembled a group including Billie Feather on guitar, Robert Thornhill on mandolin, and Jonah Freedman on bass.
To help promote their upcoming release, Rise Above, Hank and Pattie have offered to share this track premiere for our readers, the opening track titled Ain’t Gonna Be Treated This Way. As is their way, the song takes a familiar trope from the world of traditional string music, and applies a little twist.
“Ain’t Gonna Be Treated This Way sits in the familiar bluegrass subgenre of the murder ballad, only here it flips the perspective to the woman’s point of view. Tired of the way her man treats her, the protagonist decides that today is the day she gets her revenge. The driving rhythm evokes a call to action and hearkens back to a modal old-time musical theme with a modern twist.”
Rise Above is set for a June 28 release, with pre-orders enabled now on the band web site.
Credit ought to be accorded any band that writes its own material and delivers with the kind of adroit ability demonstrated by the ensemble that bills itself as Hank, Pattie & The Current. Seemingly impervious to any preset formula, their instrumental make-up is of the bluegrass variety, but a more accurate description of their sound might rank them more as grassicana, especially considering their supple melodies and nuanced delivery.
That is to say, the songs on the recent project, Live, grab hold quickly and get under the skin straight from the get go.
The only question is — why are only two members of this Carolina quintet given top billing up on the marquee? This is an aptly talented outfit after all, and one so deft and astute, it finds all the members playing a key role in the making of its music.
For starters, the vocal duties are divided between fiddler Pattie Hopkins Kinlaw — the Pattie whose name gets top honors — guitarist Benjamin Parker and mandolin Robert Thornhill, neither of whom get the star billing Kinlaw claims. Banjo player Hank Smith is accorded specific distinction, and though his sole compositional credit — an instrumental called Sundown — is deservedly a highlight of the set, it doesn’t necessarily account for why he’s singled out specifically. That leaves bassist E. Scott Warren, distinguished by his solid support.
Ultimately, none of that really matters. The songs are solid, and several standouts come to the fore. Freely exploring their melodic intents, the tracks that were chosen for this concert collection offer ample evidence that after this, and their two previous albums, The Current is perfectly positioned to reach a wide audience. The lovely Southern Mountain Sky, the torch song of sorts, These Arms of Mine, and the rousing and rollicking Not Much To Say, All I Remember, and What Whiskey Can Do are the most instantly infectious efforts in a set of consistently alluring offerings. Best then to credit Hank, Pattie and their other bandmates for this remarkably cohesive combination.
Raleigh, NC-based banjo player Hank Smith has accepted the banjo lecturer position with the Music Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He will be offering private lessons at the school beginning in the Fall 2017 semester.
Smith performs regularly with Hank, Pattie & the Current, a progressive string band also based in Raleigh. He is a South Carolina native who is well-versed on his instrument in a wide variety of styles, including bluegrass, jazz, and classical. In his non-musical time, Hank is also an author, and has published a novel of fiction about life on the road with a bluegrass band called Leaving Auburndale.
UNC students will be able to take advantage of his many years of experience teaching banjo lessons, and his overall mastery of the instrument. Interested students should contact the Music Department for more information.
This is the second bluegrass-specific faculty member hired at UNC, following Russell Johnson who came on last Fall to manage The Carolina Bluegrass Band, the school’s official bluegrass ensemble for students.
Hank, Pattie & The Current is a brand new group from Raleigh, NC making some waves through the southeastern bluegrass music scene.
Today they’re proud to premier their first music video, Losing My Mind.
Banjoist Hank Smith, known for his Béla Fleck and the Flecktones tribute band among other successful musical ventures, teamed up with fiddler Patty Hopkins-Kinlaw this past fall to explore their creative ideas within the bluegrass, jazz, celtic, and folk styles. The group is rounded out by bassist Scott Warren, and Ben Parker and Robert Thornhill on mandolin and guitar who also bring their distinctive duo singing style.
Hank and Pattie shared these thoughts…
“Directed by Gabriel Nelson, edited by Carter Reedy, and shot on an undisclosed location in Raleigh, NC, the video for Losing My Mind captures the slip we all feel sometimes that can lead to a downward spiral. While this song seems depressing or may hint at negativity, it’s actually a story of getting away from that mindset, or ‘breaking the spell’ and finding release, redemption and rebirth. The location captures the essence of something once vibrant, but now in decay and the band leads the way back into the light.”
Tour dates:
4/22 – Kings Barcade, Raleigh NC
4/24 – The Music House, Greenville NC
5/28 – Barrels & Bluegrass Festival, Hilton Head SC
7/17 – The Rooster’s Wife, Aberdeen NC
7/28-31 – Rockygrass Festival, Lyons CO
8/25 – Back Porch Music on the Lawn, Durham NC w/The Gibson Bros. (Official CD Release)
9/18 – Midtown Park, Raleigh NC
9/27-10/1 – IBMA World of Bluegrass, Raleigh NC
Keep an eye out for other shows and festival appearances this summer through their website.
Hank Smith, a banjo player from Raleigh, is a busy man. If playing gigs, keeping a steady stream of banjo students, forming a Béla Fleck tribute show, traveling to Wilkes County to study with Jens Kruger, and recently forming a newgrass super-group wasn’t enough, he has just released his first self-published novel, Leaving Auburndale.
Leaving Auburndale is a story about a band that travels to Florida in a converted 1971 Trailways bus for what they expect to be a typical small town bluegrass festival. As you can guess, the festival turns out to be anything but typical.
As the band gets close to the festival they start to sense something is awry, based on the people crossing their path. There is a man walking a tortoise like a dog and a liquor store cashier that has one arm and freely gives out spooky, cryptic advice with the vibe of a one-room-shack country psychic. Musicians who travel for a living quickly learn that experiences like these become, if not normal, at least expected. (Setting the story in Florida was not a random choice.) But that doesn’t mean you let your guard down or ever ignore your “spidey-sense” when things start to get weird. With their “spidey-sense” on high alert, they enter the festival grounds and quickly realize the weekend will not be a normal, boring one.
Their band, evenly split with two girls (guitar, fiddle) and two guys (5-string, stand-up), come from solid bluegrass traditions but are currently interested in forming their own original style through their lead songwriter, Katherine. Each member brings a unique personality that is intimately familiar to anyone that has spent years playing music in a professional or semi-professional capacity. As anyone reading this will probably already know, musicians are not normal people. The mixtures of extreme and sometimes diametric personality traits–from serious to silly, laid back to intense, hard-working to lazy, optimistic to pessimistic, and goal-oriented to immediate gratification-seeking–are all represented within the group.
The band is scheduled for two shows on the main stage for the weekend, and it is here where Smith’s vast performing experience allows the reader to understand the range of thoughts and emotions about going onstage to perform music that you’ve created. As someone who’s performed over most of this country for almost two decades, I can testify that Smith nails it. Much like the countervailing, or in some cases almost schizophrenic, personality traits contained within musicians, there are extreme emotions that come with performing in front of an audience. The experience can be exciting or incredibly boring. It can be self-affirming or soul-crushing. A performer can form a level of cynicism over time that will insulate them from these extremes, and one could even argue that one should insulate themselves for a long-term performing career. Smith not only understands all of this, but he encapsulates it within his characters as they compete for attention with legendary acts of the past, going through the motions, and a band of kids experiencing it for their first time.
As the story progresses, a mystery develops concerning what is inside a secret tent at the outskirts of the festival, where admission is only allowed if you bring the right combination of intoxicants. Smith flirts throughout the book with going into a Tom Robbins-esque surrealism, as if he’s bouncing on the edge of a diving board and threatening to dive into the absurd at any moment. But it is the constant tease of the fictional absurdity that ultimately gives this book its power–a traveling band lives on the edge of a world of absurdities, albeit between massively long bouts of boredom.
The narrator of the story (the banjo player, of course) stays in contact with his girlfriend back home in NC as she’s dealing with moving into a new place with unruly frat boys as neighbors. This part of the story serves as the anchor to the realities of wanting a home life that is stable and consistent. Again, Smith, with clarity and ease, nails these seemingly opposite desires that drive so many musicians and can make or break a full time career in music. Few people travel without having some type of emotional foundation back home that they can count on.
As I was reading, I was constantly surprised by how easily Smith seems to pull off his first attempt at writing a full novel. “Writing the book was something I’ve always wanted to do,” says Smith. “A friend of mine introduced me to NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, an internet challenge of sorts to write a novel of 50K+ words in the span of the month of November. I thought that would be a fun challenge and I had an idea to fictionalize some of the more absurd road experiences I had in bands over the years.” Smith plans to follow up these adventures by taking the group north to Canada.
Leaving Auburndale succeeds on two basic levels: it’s very entertaining and funny, and it allows anyone to peek into the realities of performing music around this great country. As I was reading, I kept thinking about the family and friends to whom I will recommend this book, so they can truly understand what traveling and performing is really like: the drive to make a living producing original art, the frustrations of having crowds with no reaction to your performance, the feelings of loneliness and boredom followed by excitement and wonder that can bookend almost any day. As a first time author, Smith has channeled the Hunter S. Thompson style of gonzo-journalism of distilling so much truth under the veil of fictional absurdities.
Leaving Auburndale can be easily purchased here from Amazon’s self-publishing CreateSpace service.
If you’ve ever spent time listening to road stories from touring musicians, you know that they see a side of life not often visible to us work-a-day souls. From the late night eateries to the 24-hour truck stops, they encounter people and situations that make for memorable retelling.
But there’s a sort of code of the road that prevents many of these anecdotes from being widely recounted. What happens on the bus stays on the bus, and all that.
Now Hank Smith, prominent North Carolina banjo picker, has put together a fictionalized story of life on the road, based on his own experiences touring with a bluegrass group. It’s not exactly a squeaky-clean volume, and isn’t recommended for those who might object to cheeky humor and a bit of obscenity, but for those who would like a rollicking tale in a bluegrass setting, Leaving Auburndale is one to consider.
Hank says it’s really a composite tale, starting with a trip he took with Kickin’ Grass some years ago to play a festival in central Florida. As the Amazon blurb says…
It’s there they encounter a herd of bison, a one-armed elderly woman, a dance troupe leader and a living legend in the country music world among others.
Imagine 13 years on the road condensed and exaggerated for the sake of a good story. Sounds like fun.
Leaving Auburndale is available now through Amazon’s print on demand service, and will be offered soon in ebook formats as well.
“What if Bela’s Drive had the vocals of Chris Thile/Michael Daves?”
You’ve probably never asked yourself that exact question, but I bet you’re imagining it now. Hank Smith, a progressive banjo player from the Raleigh area, has started a project that will seek to make that idea a reality.
Hank Smith’s banjo playing is equal to the best young progressive 5-string pickers on the scene, e.g. Pikelny, Pandolfi, and Thorn, but his career in the last 13 years been largely based in the southeastern jam-band/Americana scene more than the bluegrass circuit. Smith joined one of the top southeastern jam-grass bands, Barefoot Manner, in 2002. “I joined them straight out of graduate school. We toured the country until 2009 as a full-time band, but then people started getting real jobs and such,” says Hank. “But we still like to do fun pick-up gigs and festivals when we can.”
After a few different short-lived projects, Hank decided to tackle the grand poobah of all banjo challenges and lead a Béla Fleck and the Flecktones tribute band, which he called Blu Bop. “It was one of the more insane things I’ve done,” says Hank. “Everyone’s reaction was ‘Well, that’s ambitious!’ but we had some great gigs and raised some eyebrows, and it was also Bela approved!”
Hank, along with six other accomplished musicians, spent a year working up the material, featuring songs such as: Frontiers, UFO TOFU, Sinister Minister, Big Country, and Stomping Grounds. After booking some southeastern shows, Hank was at the 2013 IBMA conference handing out promotional handbills when someone alerted him that Béla and his wife Abigail Washburn were close by in the hotel. “I had never even spoken to Béla before, but a journalist told me I should go over and hand him a handbill. I gave it to him, he looked at it and said, ‘So you’re the guy!’ I had a brief moment of ‘Oh no, this could be bad,’ but he smiled and said ‘I think this is great. Some of the best years of my life were with this band and I think it’s fantastic that someone wants to do this! Best of luck.’”
Béla’s music has always been in Hank’s life since getting his first banjo. “I knew who Béla was before Earl,” he remembers. “I’d been playing his [Flecktones] stuff for a long time, so I knew it on a cursory level, but I’d never played it with anyone else. What changes when you unpack it is how much it works on an ensemble level. When we [banjo players] are playing bluegrass, we are just hammering through it, but this is ensemble music where you play your part; maybe it’s a few bars or maybe a very long passage, but then you step back and let the next person play their part. You’re just part of a greater whole. It’s great to see the inner workings of Bela’s music that I’d never heard before.”
In a true testament to the complexity of the Flecktones music, it took six great players to fully complete the sound of Bela, Victor, and Futureman. Blu-Bop consisted of Larry Q. Draughn on drums, Myron Koch on saxophones, Paul Messinger blowing the harmonicas, Justin Powell on the keyboards, Hank Smith on various banjos, Lindsey Tims on both fiddle and mandolin, and Scott Warren on bass.
“By watching the other musicians learn this music I realized that it’s still extremely banjo-centric,” says Hank. “These other instruments have to play these complicated 16th note runs that we take for granted because we roll. They can’t do that. It can be very difficult for them to play these banjo runs with the speed and precision required.” After seeing a couple of videos of their performances, Bela sent them a note saying, “This is great! You guys have worked so hard on this. I can’t wait to send it to the other [Flecktones] guys!” (Keep up with future Blu-Bop shows at their website and on Facebook.)
At this point, Hank and fiddler Lindsey Tims had played together in several bands, including Morning After and Barefoot Manner, and decided to record a duo album. “We wanted to honor all the music that we’d been listening to and playing through the years—the more progressive side of bluegrass,” says Hank. “We rushed through it,” Hank remembers. “We recorded and mixed it in our living room in five days so it would be out for IBMA.” The album, Impulse, is an instrumental powerhouse that revolves around banjo and fiddle interplay and can, in my opinion, stand toe-to-toe with any instrumental progressive bluegrass album out there. (You can find it on iTunes and Spotify.)
Impulse fell short of the IBMA instrumental album of the year nomination, but it was still one of the most successful projects Hank had done by this point. When Lindsey decided to take a break from the musician lifestyle, Hank started working on a band that would continue the progressive instrumental side of the album but would also feature strong vocals. Hank knew many great musicians that would work for the project, but replacing Lindsey on fiddle was the part he had to get right. Luckily, he had a lot of experience playing with fiddler Pattie Hopkins-Kinlaw in two other bands, Kicking Grass and The Morning After. Pattie, a classical violinist, started playing when she was 4, and her passion for the instrument took her to Asheville in her young adult years to embed herself in the heart of bluegrass. Her desire to trace the instrument back even farther led her to a backpacking trip through Ireland in search of teachers and jam sessions. “It is always eye-opening to be immersed in a culture that is not your own,” says Pattie. “Understanding the roots of our music was a real learning experience for me. As a fiddler, acquiring the skills that enable me to learn specific bowings, articulations, and melodies to produce a pure Irish sound on the fiddle was compelling. This particular journey changed my perception of the music from the stage and my own personal point of view. It made me contemplate my role as a young artist and educator at that time. I wanted to implement that feeling into my own world, both in performing and teaching.”
Both Hank and Pattie are IBMA Leadership graduates who consistently immerse themselves in both learning and teaching. “I am very passionate about education,” Pattie says. “I believe that as Americans we should learn our indigenous music. I started a violin studio in which my students learn classical and American styles, and like me, they sit in symphonies, read music and chord charts, and can jam on the 12-bar blues. I feel education walks hand-in-hand with my artistry and one without the other would not make me as passionate about my art.”
Bassist Scott Warren, who also holds down Victor Wooten’s lines in Blu-Bop, will be laying the foundation for this project as well. “Scott will add add a whole new element to the bluegrass side of us,” Hank says. “Most bassists can’t play lines and solos like he does.” And to bring back the Drive album with Thile/Daves vocals teaser, we have Ben Parker and Robert Thornhill on mandolin and guitar. They’ve performed as The Reckless Brothers duo since 2011 and sing with the comfortable ease that is the foundation of all the great duos in country music.
A common trait of bands who could be described as having an “all-star lineup” is the varied degrees of musical experience each person brings to the group. “All of the members are seasoned and serious about the music,” Pattie explained. “We all come from different backgrounds but seem to have a common link that has connected us from the beginning. Each individual brings his or her piece of the puzzle to the table, and this ensemble forms its own unique sound.”
One might think coming off the Flecktones tribute project and starting an all-star band might be enough for someone to tackle, but ever the life-long student of the 5-string, Hank has also become an understudy with Jens Kruger. “One of the world’s premier banjo players has taken an interest in what I’m doing,” says Hank, who is still surprised at his fortune. Jens Kruger, easily one of the greatest all-around banjo players to pick up the instrument, is creating some of the most beautiful instrumental music in the world right now, both in symphonic and progressive bluegrass areas. (Check out The Kruger Brothers album Suite- Volume 1.)
Hank describes his time with Jens as “profound” and “life-changing,” and from the sounds of it, quite Yoda-ish. “Jens has taught me to approach the music from outside yourself,” says Hank. “He tells me things like ‘Most people write from the heart or from an intellectual level, but it’s only as good as you’re willing to tolerate. You want people to discover new things about themselves that they didn’t know before. We paint with sounds. You start with a blank canvas and add a color and then another. So you start with a bare bones thing and build it up until you have a beautiful melody. We tweak [our shows] each time a little bit. We try to find the moment where we lose the audience and then we go back and try to fix that part where we thought we lost them. It’s really just melodic content and emotional delivery and inspiration outside of your own mind.’”
The Hank Smith and Patty Hopkins-Kinlaw Band hopes to record a full-length album in January of 2016. “Pattie will write half of it, and I will write half of it,” says Hank. “It will be an evolution of the Impulse album, but with vocals. It will be a one stop shop for all of the musical influences we’ve ever had.”
The Hank Smith and Pattie Hopkins-Kinlaw Band will be performing throughout the IBMA conference at the following dates:
Tuesday, Sept. 29 – 2:30 p.m. Duo showcase at Raleigh Convention Center, Room 304
Tuesday, Sept. 29 – 7:00 p.m. Full band showcase at The Vintage Church
Tuesday, Sept. 29 – 9:00 p.m. Full band showcase at The Convention Center, Room 304
Wednesday, Sept. 30 – 9:00 p.m. Full band showcase at The Pour House Music Hall
Wednesday, Sept 30 – 1:00 a.m. Full Band showcase at The Vintage Church (MerleFest)
Friday, Oct. 2 – 12:00 a.m. Full band showcase at King’s Barcade (After Hours Showcase, without Lindsey Tims)
Other performances by Hank Smith this week:
Friday, Oct. 2 – 6:30 p.m. Homegrown Music Network 20th Anniversary Festival with Barefoot Manner
Saturday, Oct. 3 – 1:30 p.m. Morning After Music at Street Fest on The Hargett Street Stage
Saturday, Oct. 3rd – 5:00 p.m. Acoustic Manner at The Shake It Off Benefit Show, Lincoln Theatre
On September 18th, they debuted the band at the Lincoln Theater in Raleigh, NC. A set of videos from the show has been released, showing off their progressive instrument chops with the Hank Smith-penned tunes:
Pattie’s soulful voice takes center stage with the great JJ Grey tune, Palestine.
Ben Parker and Robert Thornhill singing the Danny Barnes classic, Get It While You Can.
