One of the least successful bands I’ve been in!

There are guitarists and there are artists of the electric guitar. Neil Smith is one of the latter, a rarer species to be sure. He’s been around the Bristol music scene for a long time adding his brilliantly judged and ever-versatile contribution to bands ranging from psych rockers to Afrobeat, straight jazz to alt-folk.

Whatever he does he brings a touch of class to it that explains why he has always been in demand. Asked how many projects he’s currently involved in he counts them off: “There’s The Brackish, This Is The Kit, Helele, Hucklebuck, Milon, Sliders, Kat Cole Trio, Kay Grant Trio, The Liftmen, Slate Trio … and I sometimes dep in with Kirris Riviere’s band, which is fun.”

So that’s eleven, then, and this month he has six gigs with five different outfits – two of them on the same day. Asked if he could ever settle for just one band, however, and the answer’s an unsurprisingly emphatic “No!”

The one he wants to talk about the most is the Slate Trio who play El Rincon on Thursday March 13. It’s an instrumental threesome with longtime collaborator drummer Matt Jones and double bass player Alex Heane.

Neil writes all the tunes “but then we jam with them and it always gets changed, sometimes a lot. I had these tunes that didn’t fit with The Brackish style, maybe too jazzy or too afro-y, too groovy. And Matt wanted to be in a band where he could also drum more quietly, use brushes and that. And having a double bass instead of bass guitar gives us a more spacious sound.”

Spacious, yes, but definitely high energy at times, a fast-flowing mix of tight melodic music and improvised spontaneity. Neil sums it up: “Elements of African music, krauty stuff, like John Scofield and that’s kind of it, really. Funky … a bit.”

Slate Trio is one of the 11 acts guitarist Neil Smith plays with

Despite having started in 2018 the Slate Trio still has a very low profile, prompting Neil’s rueful comment that “This is one of the least successful bands I’ve been in as far as attracting people. I haven’t really tried, I guess.”

That’s a bit of an understatement – look for the band on the internet and you’re hard pushed to find them, they haven’t made videos or a record, they only gig rarely. The comparison with This Is The Kit’s international touring schedule is stark, and therein lies one problem: the three members of Slate Trio are all busy musicians, they’ve lost two bass players already due to over-commitment … and being very much Neil’s band means it’s largely down to him to get things together.

Ever hopeful, Neil thinks this is all about to change: “The problem was, because we can’t get together enough we couldn’t make a record. Matt always said we had to do two gigs close together before going into the studio. We’ve just finally managed to arrange that for this summer so there should be a record later this year. Amazing!”

Amazing indeed, and anyone getting down to El Rincon will no doubt be keen to get hold of that album as soon as they can. Meanwhile two of Neil’s other projects are about to bear recorded fruit. Sliders, a quartet with Waldo’s Gift bassman Harry Stoneham, Snazzback drummer Chris Langton and Modulus III synth wizard Dan Moore, have their debut coming out soon on Bristol-based Pig Records, and there’s an imminent album from The Liftmen getting a release from Twisted Nerve’s Andy Votel.

But hang on a minute: didn’t The Liftmen (slogan: ‘songs of beauty (songs of terror)’) fizzle out about ten years ago? Neil explains: “Ah yes – in 2013 (bass player/vocalist) Rasha Hasheen moved away and she’s become ridiculously successful in musical education in Brighton.

“After three years we realised she wasn’t coming back so me and Jamie (Whitby-Coles, drummer – also in This Is The Kit) jammed in the studio with (Get The Blessing’s) Jim Barr on bass. We got three hours of stuff that Jamie arranged down to an hour of music. I wrote the lyrics and then, about two years ago, we got Rasha over and finally finished it about six months ago.

Neil’s own trajectory as a guitarist saw him start as a teenage rocker – “Led Zeppelin, UFO, Motorhead …” before the Talking Head album Remain In Light opened his ears.

“That was a big shift into African music for me. When I got to Bristol in the mid-80s I learnt some Zimbabwean music and then I got into soukous in a band called Magoma led by a Congolese master percussionist. Later I joined Helele which has a more Afrobeat sound.”

He was of course still playing rock and, increasingly, jazz and jazz-fusion, learning on the job. “It is just what comes out, not a plan. It’s like .. for me I can see a line between Talking Heads, The Fall, Sonic Youth, Thomas Mapfumo, Grant Green, John Scofield. There’s always slightly jagged things, and a rhythmic thing that I can relate to.”

One notable thing about his playing is the use of tone and sound he gets from his guitars, yet he uses few pedals: “Well, before the 2000’s I didn’t really have a lot of gear, that was when I started getting more pedals.

“I still don’t have many – there’s the echo thing, the modulation wobbly sort of thing, then fuzz or overdrive. You can get so much out of not loads of pedals. I don’t want a massive pedal board.”

And the guitars themselves are distinctively stylish: “They’re all really looking lovely and they’re all brilliant to play. At the moment I’ve just got three offset guitars in the jazz away. One by this bloke Elliot Trent in Poole – a hand made guitar, brilliant – you pick the neck measurements, the pick-ups – and the colour! I went for slate black – slate! – with an orangey tortoise shell scratch plate.”

Asked about his experience with This Is The Kit and the contrast with Slate Trio is obvious: “It’s amazing – round the world touring, Europe and America, Canada. There’s no way I would have travelled as much if I hadn’t been in that band.”

So how does he find playing such big stages? “That’s fine – as in it’s not nerve racking, it doesn’t put you off. It can be more nerve-racking if you do a gig – which you can do with TIK as well – like in a library with everybody sitting down one foot away from you. That’s more scary.

“What is not very good is a big place where everyone is sitting down. That is crap! An indoor concert hall with everybody sitting down is kind of rubbish. I’m not brilliant at looking up but when you do you see people and, even if they don’t mean to, they look sort of bored or sleepy, just sat there. The vibe is never as good as when people are standing up.”

Maybe – hopefully –  the time will come when the Slate Trio have to face those big crowds too, but first they just have to get more people to notice them. That might be a bit of a long hard road, but it’s starting at El Rincon…

You can catch Neil Smith’s guitar in action this month with Slate Trio (El Rincon, Thursday 13) and also with Hucklebuck (Riff Corner, Clevedon, Friday 14 & Crown Inn, Bathford, Thursday 20), with Kat Coles Trio (Fringe, Sunday 16, 4pm), Kay Grant Group (Fringe, Sunday 16, 8.30) and with The Brackish (Ill Repute, Friday 28).

All images: Tony Benjamin

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