Bette Smith

Bette Smith Releases Her New Album The Good The Band And The Bette

By Kevin Wildman The train station was dark. The young lady on the platform stood there silently looking at the train that was pulling away. She could hear the wheels on the tracks as the train started to move. Smoke from the train filled the air as she gazed on. A woman on the last car of the train was waving goodbye to her. She stared on in bewilderment. How could this woman be waving goodbye to her? The young lady was devastated. The woman on the train was her mother. How could this be happening? How and why was she leaving her? What would she do now? As panic started to grip her she…. All of a sudden Bette woke up. The dream has come to her more than once and finally she knows what it means and knows how to deal with it. She sits down and starts writing. The result is the song, “Whistle Stop,” which appears on her new album, The Good The Bad And The Bette. The song is about Bette’s recurring dream about a time when her mother had to leave her for a while. It’s true to experience and the writing of this song is the catharsis that Bette needed to do to help her deal with this dream. The problem is solved and now Bette can move on with her life. This is just one of the many moments that helped Bette Smith in the writing of her new album release, The Good The Bad And The Bette which has just been released on Ruf Records, a small, but powerful record label based in Germany.

The Good The Bad And The Bette is Bette’s second full album. Her previous album was titled Jetlagger.” For this album, Bette teamed up with Matt Patton, whom you may know from his band, the Drive-By Truckers, and engineer/drummer Bronson Tew to produce and engineer her new album at Dial Back Sound in Water Valley, Mississippi. Patton had also played bass on her previous album Jetlagger, and the two of them had struck up a good friendship. He was very familiar with her style of writing and singing, and it made him the logical choice to help her out with this project. He also performed bass on this project as well along with Bronson Tew doing double duty on drums also. The producer on Jetlagger was none other than Jimbo Mathus, who would also go on to guest on this new album. Jimbo and Matt had also worked on several projects together.

Bette had a definite vision for this project, which she revealed to Matt Patton. She says, “When I called on my producer Matthew Robert Patton, I told him that I wanted a southern rock soul / Aretha Franklin / “I once was lost but now I’m found” theme.” Knowing just what she meant, Matt then turned and gave his friends, the North Mississippi Allstar Luther Dickinson and fellow Drive-By Truckers Patterson Hood, a call and enlisted them for a couple of songs. Luther performed guitar on “Signs And Wonders,” and Patterson lent his vocals to “Everybody Needs Love.” I know what you’re thinking now…. These names seem awful familiar… Well they should, Luther, Jimbo, Patterson, along with Matt Patton and Bronson Tew are some of the hottest names in the Southern Blues scene. This album contains a veritable who’s who of some of the hottest Blues performers the south has to offer, and once you hear this album, you’ll swear it’s one of the hottest Blues albums you’ve ever heard. It also has a bit of a rock twang to it. Just ask Matt Patton… “We wanted to get heavy into her rock side” says Matt. “Even the ballads on this record hit hard. We were pulling from Ike & suggested by a life coach she was working with. had never thought of doing that… a western of us that “Jimbo Mathus, my producer of Jetlagger Tina, Betty Wright and Betty Davis, stuff like thumbs up and then went on about my business. that.” I went on tour to Europe, Switzerland, Spain, Canary Islands and Poland. We went on two Her new album is somewhat of a journey tours on 2019. We also had gone to Mississippi for Bette. It touches on various aspects of her and recorded five songs from which to shop this life as a young girl to an adult, bringing out new album to acquire a deal with a new various emotions in ever song. Bette tells us, company. And so after we recorded “Fistful of “The album’s message is a story as seen through Dollars” and four other songs, we went on tour. the lens of a child, and then an adult, who still The producers, Matt Patton and Bronson Tew wear her scars of childhood - but also of hope, said to feel free to try them out on stage and see strength, and optimism going forward in life. how it feels. I always think that’s a great idea Often people think I’m very confident and because then the song starts to live in you. We strong, but they don’t know I’ve faced many did it and people just went wild. I like the song obstacles and traumas, I fought hard to and I’m having so much fun on stage and people overcome.” pick that up and they start hooting and hollering As the title of the album might suggest, soccer game out in Spain and we had so much Bette is a big fan of ‘Spaghetti Western’s’, but fun with that song. I can’t tell you how much subliminally it may have been somewhat fun we had.” Even the first song on the album, “A Fistful Of Other songs on the album such as “I’m A Dollars”, is named after a Spaghetti Western. Sinner” are definitely favorites of Bette’s. She’s “I’m a big Clint Eastwood fan,” says Bette. “I a big fan of that song. “I love that smoking love the Spaghetti Westerns. I was working with guitar riff that is on that song. I was very lucky a life coach in 2017 and she said to me, ‘you Jimbo Mathus was on board with that one. He know Bette, any time I feel down I turn off all did the guitars on that track and it’s just the lights, light up a candle, and put on a smoking. I never put it on and not have a rush. I Spaghetti Western. It always does the trick and I just start dancing in the street. I get real upbeat.” all things. I tried it and the westerns really Another great song on this album is “I absorb you, especially if it’s a good western. Felt It Too.” You want to talk about a rocker… You can really get into it.” this one screams. Bette also did a video of the So that brings us back to the first song off performing it on stage. “I always call it ‘about the album, “A Fistful of Dollars.” No folks, it the one that got away.’ It’s that kind of a song wasn’t really a play on the “Spaghetti Western” and I just love it. I’m able to really work myself theme, but it simply worked out well there, up into a lather when I sing that song on stage. I especially at opening up the album. Bette tells really love it.” and saying ‘Ole ‘Ole ‘Ole. It was like being at a song on Coney Island and she just loves stayed in touch with me after we finished There’s a lot of interesting songs and working together and from time to time, I would subject matter on this album. Some of the open up my inbox and find a song that he liked. inspiration comes from the strangest places, such So he just sent me this song called “Fistful of as the song “Human.” “Human” was inspired by Dollars” by Lonnie Shields. I immediately took her dog, Jeremiah, as she explains, “ I go to the to it. Jimbo did his own cover of it and he had park every day jog and try to stay in shape for done it with a rapper. I guess he does that with a my upcoming concerts. And so they have an offlot of his songs. He was also a songwriter on leash time. If you get there before 9 a.m. in the some of the songs, which appear on Jetlagger. So I said, I really like this one. I gave him 3 continued on next page October 2020 • Rock and Blues International 19

minutes. It was just came out of me, it was a closest friends as well as being my babysitter and I really, really was affected by that. I was just at the Laundromat one day washing my clothes and I just started crying and I just wrote. I wrote it down on a napkin in the Laundromat. When she died some person was saying that she wasn’t all this and that and backtalking about her. I’m like, no, she was all that. She was all that to me. So this is where the song came from. I’m still very close friends with her sisters and her remaining family, but she was one of one of one of a kind.”

photo by Shervin Lainez On her song “Pine Belt Blues,” Bette Smith Bette’s Gospel side starts to emerge. The first time she heard that song, she continued from previous page knew it had to be included on The morning, and dogs can run off leash. There And The Bette. It just spoke to her and reminded might be about a hundred dogs on any given day her again about where she comes from… the in the park. It’s a big park in Brooklyn. The dog peacefulness and the serenity of just taking a was free and it was running and he was running break with her dog under the trees. “I love that away from me. I couldn’t keep up with him, so I song,” she says about “Pine Belt Blues. “I went hid behind a tree to see if he’d come back to me. down to Mississippi, back south in Water Valley, I popped up from behind the tree and he just was and they played the song for me and I instantly in a lather and when he saw me, he just jumped liked it. I was like “wow”. They thought I was out of his skin. He started running at me at a talking about the pine trees down south, but speed and I don’t even know how fast he was he there’s some beautiful pine trees up north too. was going. It was pretty fast, and he was just When I walk to the park, I always put it on in my running to me and I said, you know these dogs CD player and I just lie down under the pines are so loyal. There’s so amazingly loyal and and I just love pine trees. I just love the smell. steadfast. These are all qualities that I really, It puts me into like a sort of ‘Little Bit of really love in human beings. So I said “run to Heaven’. I just lie down and my dog lies down me I want to be your human and you know when next to me and it’s shady under the pine tree or a your heart is in pain, I want to be your human,” set of pine trees. You can look out and see the so he inspired that. When I got home I quickly sun kind of filtering through. It’s just amazing. wrote down a little poem, and I broke out my And when I sing that song, I always have that guitar and I started hitting the E chord and I just imagery in my head. It’s a really wonderful song kind of like kind of wrote the song in like 15 with nature lovers. I really like that.” Good The Band great Epiphany. It’s about loyalty and devotion Probably the hardest song on the album and what relationships really are made of.” for Bette to record, was the one about her mother, “Whistle Stop.” Of all the songs on the Along with writing about dreams, or album, it is perhaps the most emotional for her. animals, Bette also wrote a song about an old It brings back so many childhood memories, as friend of hers that she had when she was a little well as a traumatic experience that she has girl. It’s a bit of a sad song, but on this album, finally been able to come to grips on. It’s also Bette is open to bare all her feelings, even those one of the hardest songs on the album to talk of sadness, even if it really hurts, like this one about, as well as being one of the easiest. It stirs does. The song in particular is simply titled up an emotion in her that was hard to deal with “Song For A Friend.” “Well when I was a little for so long, but she has finally come to terms girl,” explains Bette, “I had a babysitter and she with it. “”Well, the hardest one was “Whistle took care of me from the time I was about 5 to Stop”. It was hard because I have to take myself the time I was about 16 and then the next thing I into a trance-like state. I meditate. I practice knew she died. She had anorexia nervosa and Transcendental Meditation. So when we did bulimia and you know, the whole combination. I “Whistle Stop,” I said, ‘hey fellas, can I get 15 or was just so stunned because she was one of my 20 minutes just to meditate’ and they were very 20 Rock and Blues International • October 2020

good about it… like ‘oh sure Bette’. No problem, very accommodating, because they’re right in the heat of things. Everybody went outside for a smoke or cigarette or whatever and I just went to the back of the studio and I lit a candle. I just closed my eyes and pulled in my arms and I just disappeared. I went back to my childhood memories when I was 5 years old. My mother abandoned me when she had to go to off. She had left me in Trinidad with some people and the problem was that there was in a family emergency. The problem was she left without saying goodbye, in the middle of the night and I was so devastated. Don’t you know that memory stayed with me for my entire life. I thought I’d get over it. I would go to therapy and talk about it… Talk and talk and talk about it. Have a good cry, you know… go through the tissues… some Kleenex. I thought it was over, but it was just a recurring dream of the time when I woke up and I was in my pampers and she was gone and no one told me where she went and they never told me she was coming back. In my child’s mind, I thought she had disappeared forever. So the thing was, she went away… and she went away for three whole months. And I thought my mother had died. So I had this recurring dream and the dreams accumulated when she died. She actually died in 2005 and I was like, ‘oh no, now she really is gone’. But the night before she died, she came to me in a dream. And the vision of the dream was really blurry, but she was in the back of an old-fashioned train and the train was pulling away and she just was waving at me. She didn’t say a word, but she was just waving very slowly. The train was just pulling off… pulling away and I was spellbound and I was like “Oh my God”. When I woke up I said, “oh my God”, she came to say goodbye to me, and then my sister called me at 5 a.m. that morning to tell me mother had passed. She was in Trinidad. So I didn’t really tell anybody because I was just so dumbfounded by the whole thing. During the next two years I mourned her… my loss… So the words of the song came to me and I just kept refining it and refining it. Then when I got down to the studio in Mississippi, I told Matt the story and he asked about the dream… ‘did she have anything to say to you?’ I said, no not a word. And so he polished it up and that’s what you’re hearing on this album. It was a recurring dream when I was 5 years old. When I was four years old, she left me for the three months without saying goodbye and I thought she had passed. So it was a recurring dream and that’s just awful. It was rough.”

As you can tell, this album is just packed with emotion, good emotion, bad emotion, happiness, and sadness. This album encapsulates just about everything a human being can endure. There is just so much here to digest on this album. It is one of the most powerful albums I’ve heard in a long time. When I sat down to write about this, I felt that instead of just talking about my feelings about the album, the real story is how Bette felt when she recorded the album. Yes, it’s a long story, but there is also so much that still needs to be told about it. For the time being though, you’re going to have to discover all of that yourself. You’ve gotten a brief look at Bette and what makes her tick, so when you listen to the album, you should also be able to understand the songs we haven’t mentioned here. I urge everybody out there to check this album out. Take a listen to some of the other songs on this album that we haven’t discussed, such as “Everybody Needs Love,” and “Don’t Skip Out On Me.” There are some real powerful moments here. Yes people, now you have an idea who Bette is… The Good The Band And The Bette.