Mr. Smolin

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Biography

Mr. Smolin is the performance moniker of Los Angeles songwriter Barry Smolin, aka Shmo. Best known as the host of the psychedelic radio show The Music Never Stops on KPFK 90.7 FM in Southern California, Smolin has been writing songs for 30 years in a variety of genres, finally settling on a piano-based offbeat pop sound that reflects influences ranging from Stephen Foster and Hoagy Carmichael to poet-artists like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen to singer-songwriters like Cat Stevens and Harry … Nilsson and Elton John and David Bowie and Randy Newman and Tom Waits to pop eccentrics like Gilbert O’Sullivan and Tim Buckley as well as theatre composers like Jerome Kern and Stephen Sondheim, among many others.

Smolin’s first band, The Wake, formed post-high school in 1978, was also his first musical interaction with the artist now known as Stew, who played guitar in that late-adolescent outfit. Other members of the group included drummer Eldad Tarmu (now well-known as a jazz vibraphonist), bassist Viken Garabedian, and pianist/singer Ron Dumas (later of Dumas & Attack Group), who also wrote some of the songs. The Wake played its first professional show together in April of 1979 at The Troubadour in West Hollywood, CA. The group disbanded in 1980 after a year of gigs in the Los Angeles club scene.

The next 21 years Smolin spent variously playing solo (including appearances at Gerde’s Folk City while residing in New York in the mid-’80s), as a duo with college-chum Harvey Canter, and as the keyboard player in Canter’s bands Sea of Green and Ruby Flux.
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  • mondobozo

    Lovin LOvin LOVIN Don Steele!

    6 Jan 2010 Reply

  • sardonicus

    "Bring Back The Real Don Steele" is groovy, baby.

    22 Nov 2009 Reply

  • astrosistah

    OK, I just listened to the "Bring Back The Real Don Steele" stuff for the first time just now, and I gotta say this is your masterpiece, Mr. Smolin. The songs are exquisite, both in writing and in playing. The band is amazing. Thanks so much for the advance copy. Are you ever going to put the spoken word tracks up here? How was it making an album without Stew? That must've been weird. Anyway, I am going to listen to this thing over and over again. I'm kicking myself cuz I totally could've gone to the show at Echo Curio when you recorded this and was just too lazy and flaked out. What a mistake. Oh, well. And I agree with sooterkin about the "upper echelons" regarding your songwriting. I hope people start noticing what a major league talent you are finally!

    7 Oct 2009 Reply

  • sooterkin

    Hot DAMN, "Bring Back The Real Don Steele" sounds tremendous! Even though Stew wasn't involved with this one the production is ultra-fine, and, of course, the songwriting is in the upper echelons!

    26 Sep 2009 Reply

  • sooterkin

    Just heard "Lily of the Valley" and "One And The Same" for the first time here. Beautiful new additions to the bootleg demo series. Can't wait to hear what these will sound like with the full-on studio treatment. Wonder if Stew will produce the next one . . .

    17 Sep 2008 Reply

  • mondobozo

    Many congratulations on the Weeds soundtrack placement! Here's to many more!

    13 Jul 2008 Reply

  • astrosistah

    So glad they included "The Earth Keeps Turning On" on the Weeds soundtrack album. Well deserved. Any plans to officially release the bootleg demos?

    7 Jul 2008 Reply

  • sabrinadrill

    Great songwriting! Greetings from a new fan!

    5 Jul 2008 Reply

  • astrosistah

    the bootleg demos stuff is wicked cool. scarecrow jesus is my favorite.

    13 Jan 2008 Reply

  • sardonicus

    The Earth Keeps Turning On sounded great on Weeds. Perfect song for that scene!

    4 Oct 2007 Reply

  • danybus

    Head on the closing title of the last Weeds episodes (3x07). He sound like The Mountain Goats and I love The earth is turning on

    27 Sep 2007 Reply

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