Patrick Smith’s music is heavy with tradition, beautifully crafted, and well performed. It is edgy, explosive, funky, and those low notes can usually be found dancing along in those dark spaces in barrooms sometime ‘round midnight before bursting forth in a blaze of white-lighted gospel that sends dancers’ hands writhing towards heaven. His music is full, bringing all that Mississippi River melting pot has to offer with it.  Influenced by many of the great artists that rolled in on that mighty river through his hometown of Vicksburg, Mississippi, Patrick deftly fuses the old with the new.  Weaving into his songs, one will be moved by the Delta blues, barrelhouse rocking piano riffs, wailing jazz, underbelly soul, heart-wrenching gospel, and the funkiness of a New Orleans brass band. Patrick’s throaty, warm, whisky voice ties his sound tightly together.

The Patrick Smith Band’s recent CD, Free Beer and Fried Chicken, produced by multi platinum producer John Keane,  features musicians with whom he has toured and played with over the years such as the North Mississippi Allstars, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and Jimbo Mathis. Some of the legendary artists Smith and his band have appeared with across the US and Europe over the past fifteen years of touring are B.B. King, Doctor John, the Neville Brothers, Little Feat, Galactic, Junior Brown, and Buddy Guy, among many others.

Patrick Smith is a self-taught pianist who had his first paying gig at the age of fourteen. Throughout high school, he played the explosive Highway 61 blues corridor between Vicksburg and Greenville, Mississippi, having to sit outside the kitchen door or in the parking lot during set breaks because he wasn’t old enough to stay inside the bars he was playing in. Patrick honed his skills by playing constantly and jamming whenever he could, jamming with the now-legendary Beanland on riverboat cruises on the Mississippi as a teenager and playing with JoJo Herman of Beanland and Widespread Panic fame while in college in Oxford, Mississippi. Now, Patrick often tours with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Heavy touring keeps Patrick’s own band fine- tuned as they currently perform more than 100 gigs per year. The Patrick Smith Band’s music is funky, bluesy, and soulful, but rocks. It’s new and old at the same time. Patrick Smith’s show is electric and kinetic. You can’t help but be moved.