Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Tony Smotherman. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Tony, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?

I think all artist deal with being misunderstood on one level or another. I can only speak for myself of course, but early on in my journey as I started learning classical guitar, I wasn’t particularly interested in playing other genres of music at the time. I was wholeheartedly set on strictly performing and recording as a classical guitarist. This music requires complete dedication. I remember being advised early on that it wasn’t a popular form of guitar music and that I should be focusing my energy on genres that would attract bigger audiences. After my journey on electric guitar began (which was heavily influenced by classical music) I would hear criticisms about the fact that my guitar playing was too fast and too technical and that I should slow things down. So as I got heavily into the blues, I would start hearing things like “The blues has been rehashed over and over- find another genre that would easier to create your own voice”. I soon began to realize that what anyone else said, really didn’t matter when it came to putting my own music out there. It just hit me that I wasn’t going to please everyone all the time and that was one of the biggest lessons I learned. Subconsciously, looking back- (I believe as a result) I began really exploring a lot of other genres looking for creative elements like. Celtic music, fusion, Indian classical music, gypsy jazz, open tuning finger style guitar, African Soukous music.. and the list goes on. In hindsight, this was one of the best things to happen to me as I spent so much time on so many varied genres that I began becoming proficient in many other styles. As an artist, this can actually confuse new listeners because people begin to ask “What are you? Who are you? What genre are you? That’s one of the most difficult things to explain. When a distributor asks “What genre do we put your music under?” I’ve learned to say Melodic Rock. Although there are quite a lot of other things going on.

Tony, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

There are certain convictions that we just can’t ignore. Music was that for me. I always say that-I didn’t find music, music found me. It really all started with a short trip to the grocery store with my mother. As I wandered off into the magazine aisle, I noticed a guitar magazine that was out of place. It was by all the Home and Gardens magazines. I happen to pick it up, open the first page and see a black-and-white photo of the great classical guitarist Andres Segovia holding a classical guitar with a full Orchestra behind him. That photo was so powerful that I realized at that moment that I wanted to play classical music on a guitar. My next step was to seek out classical guitar recordings of him. Although I believed I actually knew what it sounded like in my head just from the photo. I bought my first guitar and a bunch of Segovia recordings and began my journey trying to figure it out by ear. I noticed very soon that doing it this way was not the way to go and that I needed to learn to read to be able to play this music properly. After eight months of begging, my parents gave in and got me guitar lesson so that I could learn how to read music. My goal was to learn how to play the music of Bach. I studied and practiced all day long. I would even take my guitar to school and my teachers would let me perform in front of the class. This was really a secret plan of not wanting to leave my guitar at home and have it under my fingertips at all times. Fast forward to a few years later and a substitute teacher heard me play in the library. She invited me to her class after school. She said she wanted to have a conversation with me about something important and little did I know just how important that conversation would be. The teacher was moved by my playing enough to offer to pay for me to record these classical pieces in an effort to have me perform in front of Queen Elizabeth II. We recorded the pieces and she sent a CD and a letter to Buckingham Palace and to our surprise, the Queen replied with a personal letter. She stated that she was traveling a lot, but to continue to send her music and to write to her periodically about my career. That letter reaching the Queen from the small city of Middleburg,FL (that I grew up in) inspired me and made me realize that if I could reach the Queen with my classical guitar and a vision, that I could literally do anything I put my mind to. Shortly after this, I heard Jimi Hendrix for the first time. I wanted to explore the limitless possibilities of the electric guitar and I became consumed with it. I continued my classical guitar studies on my own. I then started a band and began playing out and performing my own instrumental guitar music. After a show once, a guy walked up to me and asked me if I could teach him some of the techniques I was doing and I told him I’d never considered teaching anyone but “why not”. I began teaching this guy once a week for an hour. A few weeks into his lessons he mention his friend was interested as well. I began teaching his friend and a few lessons in asked if I’d help his friend too. I began teaching without ever planning on it. Within a few months I had five or six students and 23 years later I am still teaching around 50 private students a week. It just happened. I’ve never advertised the teaching. Throughout the last 23 years, I’ve been performing, releasing albums and instructional videos and the like. Who would’ve guessed that life would’ve turned out this way. All I knew is I had one passion and that was music. The reality is, you also have to make a living and survive and the guitar did that for me because I went into music not expecting anything. Everything ended up working itself out. To any artist out there who is struggling, if you stick with your passion and you do it for the right reasons, everything else always works itself out. It always does.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Creation. I’ve always found it fascinating where the creativity actually comes from. There have been many times where I have had melodies just pop into my head from nowhere or a word or phrase will spark interest for a song title. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written a song just from the title influencing the melodies and the structure of the song. It could come from something as simple as one word. Life experiences influence song creation as well. I could be anywhere and I’ll take out my notepad on the phone and just write down song titles, if not I’ll forget and they’re usually gone at that point. There have also been times where a student will ask me to create an exercise to work on a specific technique. I’ll just create something on the spot and a lot of times, those creations have become the foundation for some of my catchiest songs. When those things come together and you hear your music completed in the studio for the first time, there’s nothing quite like that feeling.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

For me, it’s creating a vast catalog of original music and instructional content. For the music, it’s about putting out as much music as I can get out. Exploring as many different genres as I can. For the instructional stuff sometimes I come across some very interesting things while I’m practicing that I’ve not heard before (I’m certainly not saying it’s never been done before because I don’t know) but once I come up with something unique I think is original I like putting it out there in an instructional format and enjoy the concept of branching those ideas out and exploring them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tonysmotherman.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/tonysmotherman1
• Facebook: https://Facebook.com/tonysmothermanproject
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@TonySmotherman
• Other: https://tonysmotherman.bandcamp.com/music

Image Credits
Drina Smotherman