Meet Grant Maloy Smith | Billboard Top 10 Recording Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Grant Maloy Smith and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Grant Maloy, why did you pursue a creative career?
I have been an artist as long as I can remember. When I was a toddler it was clear to the adults around me that I could draw better than other kids my age. It was expected that I would become an artist as an adult. But I also loved music. I was raised on a strange diet of children’s music from Captain Kangaroo and Rusty’s Magic Piano, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash played by my Kentucky Grammy, and the Beatles, which had become the biggest band in the world by the time I was in Kindergarten. I never took any music lessons, but I could sit at a piano and play those melodies by ear. As a child I had no idea that everyone couldn’t do that, so it didn’t seem special to me. In junior high school I had a drafting class followed by a music class, and the rooms were adjoining, so I was always first in the music room before anyone else. I would go immediately to the roll-around spinet piano that was there and improvise. One day I got really immersed in it, and played for too long. When I stopped, I was shocked to see that 30 kids had taken their seats and had been listening to me. The teacher, Mrs Carpenter, was also there, smiling. Suddenly everyone started clapping. I was shocked. I lost myself in the music and I hadn’t heard anyone come into the room. But I was still on target to be a graphic artist. All the way through high school that never changed. But one day, a few weeks before graduating, I was walking across the outdoor courtyard, and I heard someone playing the guitar and singing. As I came over the crest of the hill I saw that another male student was sitting on the grass with his back to me, playing the guitar. I couldn’t tell who it was yet, but I kept walking. He was singing folk songs. He was surrounded by girls – at least 20 of them. they were listening adoringly. They were all smiling at him sweetly. As I got closer suddenly I could see that it was my friend Scott. I stopped dead in my tracks, and no doubt my jaw dropped.

Scott was a good-looking guy, but he was painfully shy. Extremely shy. He’d go to a dance and then stand against the wall in the gym and never ask a girl to dance. And yet there he was playing and SINGING in front of everyone. As I stood there, a switch was thrown somewhere deep in my brain. If I didn’t know better I’d say that it made an audible click. My life changed at that moment. Seeing the reaction of my classmates (especially the girls, I will admit) to Scott’s playing and singing was like a lightning bolt, From one second to the next I knew that this was something that I wanted to do. I needed to do it. I needed to get a guitar and learn how to really play it. Sure, I had owned cheap guitars as a child, but I never really learned how to play them. I could play by ear on the guitar and piano, but I had no understanding of music theory. I didn’t know how to write a song, but I knew that I could if I tried. I didn’t know if I could sing, but I knew that I would learn. I was 17 years old, and my whole life changed in those few moments. I had already been accepted to art college, and I went for two years, but I had been bitten by music, and that became the focus of my life. Decades later, it still is.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I made my first American Roots record in 2012. Released in 2013, YELLOW TRAILER was the best work that I had done up to that time. I was well received, but as I started working on a follow-up album, I felt that something was wrong. I needed a sense of purpose or direction for the album. I didn’t want to make just another collection of songs. I wasn’t sure what the answer was, but I kept writing. One day I wrote an outline for a song that I had the title “Never Seen The Rain.” I didn’t know what the song would be about, but I really liked the title. So I started researching big droughts, and quickly came across the Dust Bowl from the 1930s. I remembered a little bit about it from school decades before, but not much. But using the internet I dove into the history of that terrible decade. It wasn’t long before I realized that I could not only make this song be about the Dust Bowl, but there was so much history and stories that I could make the entire album about it. So that’s what I did.

I labored for 3 years on this album. I read dozens of books about the history of those days. I avoided fiction like Steinbeck’s brilliant “The Grapes of Wrath,” because I didn’t want to be influenced by another else’s interpretation of the Dust Bowl. Springsteen had also made an album or two about the Dust Bowl, but I avoided listening to any of it. I wrote my own songs, trying to find interesting angles to tell personal stories in song set in that world. The album was on the Billboard Americana/Folk chart for more than four months, spending 11 weeks in the top 10 (five weeks at #5). it reached #1 several times on Billboard’s hear seeker charts.

As I played the songs around the country I saw the reactions from people who either lived through the Dust Bowl, or whose parents and grandparents had. The emotions were deep and powerful. I had done so much research that I felt that I was presenting something very real and compelling that was touching peoples’ lives.

I knew that I had to create albums like this from now on. Fictional songs meant to be fun to listen to and entertaining, but also set in a real historical context.

I had found my calling.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I live today in Rhode Island, aka “The Ocean State.” So when people come to visit me, especially if they don’t live near the ocean, I like to take them to some of our favorite spots on the water. Several towns close to me have great restaurants on the water, including Newport, Jamestown and Narragansett. For sure we will be eating at one or more of these every day.

Speaking of Newport, this is a colonial seaport from the early 1600s. It’s a great place to visit, not just for the restaurants but also for the historic mansions and beautiful harbor. Unless it’s Winter we will sail around the harbor, either on a tour boat or with one of my friends and their boat. It’s a great place to be.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Shirley Faye McIntyre Colwell was my maternal Grandmother. We called her Grammy. She was from Hazard, Kentucky, and she loved what she called her “Mountain Music.” She played it for me whenever she got the chance. I was honestly more interested in the jangly guitars of the Beatles as a child, but the high lonesome sound of Hank Williams stuck with me. Same with the Stanley Brothers, Bill Monroe and Johnny Cash. So Grammy is hugely responsible for the arc that took me to where I am as an American Roots music artist.

My mother Patricia Ann Colwell Smith was my biggest fan. She was the most supportive person ever. She thought I was great no matter what I did, or how bad I originally was when I was learning. Without my mother I would not have had the confidence to launch myself into art or music. She was a force of nature: an incandescent person that lit up the dark where ever she went. I miss my mama and my Grammy more than I can describe.

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