Josh Smith is quite the Renaissance man.
The Handsome and the Humbles frontman released a short solo album, “Dogwood Winter,” on July 24 under the moniker Rev. J. Mikhael Smith and the Brimstone Miracle. On it, he’s joined by his regular bandmates Tyler Huff, Laurel Brisson and Zack Miles, as well as by Miles’ fiancé Madison Brown and the ubiquitous East Tennessee fiddler Evie Andrus. The EP is a tight, hooky batch of straightforward Americana story songs.
Most days, though, you’re more likely to find the bubbly, self-deprecating Smith posting on social media about his milestones in bodybuilding or sharing a loving yet tongue-in-cheek tribute to his pedigree in semi-professional wrestling than you are seeing him discuss his prolific catalog of tunes based on his wealth of life experiences.
Growing up in Clinton, Smith’s religious life was rich and full to the point where he was ready to share his faith as part of a ministerial team at a church there. His close friendship with another young pastor who came out to him as a member of the LGBT community led him to fight against his own extended church leadership on his friend’s behalf.
“I got fired for it,” Smith laughs.
But he got in good musical practice, playing for some serious Christian bands in high school at the turn of the millennium before eventually forming Handsome and the Humbles out of some of the friendships he had made. Smith has helmed that band through multiple releases crafted at their good friend O’Dell Brummett’s Brimstone Studios, again returning for the “Dogwood Winter” sessions.
Smith’s work with both bands is imbued with a sense of constant wrestling with the concepts of mortality and faith. The new album contains several nods to this struggle: “10:18,” “Scoundrels and Sinners,” “Searching for Jesus” and the title track all examine the universal humanity that fuses the fabric of his antique characters with the experiences of his listeners. The songs, which yearn for more romantic and adventurous times, showcase Smith’s gorgeously depressive lyrical dexterity. The backing group comprising longtime friends and bandmates clicks in smoothly with rolling banjo from Miles, soaring fiddle from Andrus and the rich, deep rhythm section of Huff and Brisson. Brown offers adept harmonies.
“It’s pretty fluid; it’s wherever my head is at the time,” Smith says of his songwriting process. “It just depends … God, I don’t really know how to answer that and be completely honest other than to say I write what I am thinking about. And if I am curious about something, it’s likely to end up in a song. It’s just whatever’s going on in my head. I’m pretty obsessive about things. Like, if I get an idea, I’ll read about it, think about it and then I write a song about it or just sleep [on it] for a couple of days.”
Smith seems to draw a lot of inspiration from friendships with other songwriters and bandleaders like Brian Paddock, with whom Smith often has undertaken double-bill solo jaunts as far as Texas. In our interview, he glows about fellow folkster Adeem the Artist (and any and every other artist whose name he mentions), and the sincerity and exuberance with which Smith talks about their music while approaching his own with such humility and self-deprecation is endearing.
Smith projects a warm, inviting persona to go along with his smooth vocals and well-coiffed appearance, all of which ease the delivery of some truly dark material on occasion. Taken together, all of these elements – the earnestness and humility of old-time music with the pizazz of rock ‘n’ roll and borderline American Gothic lyrics – conspire to reaffirm the apt descriptor of the performer as a Renaissance man. Ironically, though, adopting the Rev. J. Mikhael Smith persona appears to have given him freedom to elucidate more clearly on difficult topics in a more personal way than ever before. However, Smith doesn’t spend much time reflecting on such deconstructions of his work.
“I just wanna enjoy what I’m doing,” he says. “Dad [was a] professional wrestler – I was always proud of that and thought that was really cool. I was 20 and I was in a band, and we were gonna get this production deal and all this promising … and I remember talking to my dad about that, and he said, ‘You know, son, you should go and live your dream because, hey, I did; I’m a professional wrestler!’ I feel so lucky, I feel that way about both my parents that are cool with all the ridiculous things I want to do. My dad was the model of that for me: a dude who did what he loved.”
While Smith, an extrovert, has struggled as a result of the social restrictions imposed by COVID-19, he looks forward to reentering the post-pandemic world and holds hope for the progress that can be made.
“I think we’re living in a pretty special time, and I think good things are going to happen,” he says. “And people who keep towing that ridiculous line are going to be looked at as [being] on the wrong side of history, and I feel like their kids are going to look at it shamefully. It sucks right now, but the dawn is on the horizon, and people are going to be better.”
