Biography

Fire consumes the timber of a newborn Western town. The captain of an airship steams stoned into the night. A perfect home imagined is never to be found. In his debut recordings from the cataclysmic summer of 2020, Rocky Mountain songwriter Shulman Smith pulls us through a kaleidoscopic trip of humming guitars, shimmering pedal steel, and saloon piano. Each song takes a dreamer’s view of the American West, time traveling from past to present. Smith has walked a winding road of curiosity. Variously, an instrument-builder, painter, photographer, programmer… he’s always kept one eye on the tower of song. After working in and out of music in California, he found a collaborator in fellow Coloradan Josh Lopez (will.i.am, Macy Gray). Together, they whittled Smith’s collection of cassette-tape demos into a group of songs to be recorded with the best players in folk and Americana: Rich Hinman (Tanya Tucker, Molly Tuttle), Kaveh Rastegar (Springsteen, Beck), Jay Bellerose (Willy Nelson, Ray LaMontagne), Gabe Witcher (Punch Brothers), Blair Sinta (Alanis Morissette, Melissa Etheridge), Ben Peeler (Father John Misty, Dawes), Adam MacDougall (Circles Around The Sun), and more. Drinking a strange brew of old-time country, psychedelic rock and bluegrass, Smith tells stories that dive through the looking glass of history, biography, and fantasy. After mixing with Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, Hiss Golden Messenger, Gregory Alan Isakov), 2021 will see Smith’s songs come to life.