Music Site of Greg Smits

Welcome to my music site. I am a singer and songwriter, who also enjoys sawing on the fiddle and playing the mandolin. In addition to those instruments, I play guitar and anything with 4 strings tuned in 5ths such as the octave mandolin or tenor banjo.

My interests are broad, but my preferred genre is something called "old-time music." Old-time music is traditional music of the Appalachian region, although it is played more widely, including places outside the United States. Old-time music has two broad divisions: dance tunes (= fiddle tunes) and old songs, mostly gloom-and-doom ballads. The origins of these tunes and ballads is mainly the British Islands, so American old-time music is a cousin of the various styles of traditional music in England, Ireland, Scotland, and adjacent areas.

Those unfamiliar with the varieties of traditional music, including many musicians, often erroneously refer to the types of music I play as "bluegrass." I rarely have the energy to try and explain that it is not. So, if you don't know the difference between bluegrass and old-time music, click here for a straightforward answer that includes a definition of old-time music. I dabbled in bluegrass when I was in college but never felt a strong attraction to it.

For many years my musical activity consisted of singing old ballads while playing the melody on the mandolin--typically an octave higher than my voice. This singing was a solo pursuit, which suited my introverted nature fine. Gradually, though, I began to interact with the world of old-time music festivals, where the common currency of social interaction is fiddle tunes. At first I learned tunes just to be sociable. Little by little,  I came to appreciate them more, and now I am addicted to them. (What does an old-time music festival look and sound like? Click here for a short video of a typical daytime scene. The intensity level tends to be higher at night. Here is a good clip from YouTube.)

I finally got around to writing songs the start of 2007. After a slow start, by the end of the year I had written somewhere between 40 and 50 songs of varying quality. And I've kept going. It is hard to categorize these songs precisely. Most could fit into a label like "country music" or "folk music"--broadly defined. Some sound like something you might hear on country radio and others would have less of a popular appeal. My main purpose in writing is to create songs I like to sing. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake.

Thank you for stopping by, and feel free to send an e-mail message.