Kathy Smith was an American singer-songwriter from Californian who performe… Read Full Bio ↴Kathy Smith was an American singer-songwriter from Californian who performed at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970.

Smith was part of the California folkie scene, playing at local venues and coffeehouses. A legendary venue (but rather unknown) was Paradox where people like Tim Buckley, Jackson Browne, Steve Noonan, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, John McEuen, and Penny Nichols used to play. Nobody found out about the place so it had to close down. The musicians found a new podium at the Troubadour. Smith started to share stages there with people like Penny Nichols, Pamela Polland and Jackson Browne (which explains how their songs ended up on her albums). Polland (known from her album The Gentle Soul) was going to appear on Smith's debut album. Penny Nichols, who first sang with a bluegrass band with John, Bill & Alice McEuen (until John took Jackson Browne's place in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band), then formed a duo with Kathy Smith called the Greasy Mountain Butterballs which toured Vietnam in the fall of 1966. A testimony from her days at the Troubadour related how “Kathy was the first person I ever heard use the term "Love Generation", and she was housemother to the bunch of us. And she had this 100 megawatt smile.”

Smith recorded a couple of albums for Richie Havens' Stormy Forest label in the early 70s, a label that didn’t really make it enough and was closed down pretty quickly. The albums' personnel included Colin Walcott (only later he was going to focus much more on his sitar playing to become a great jazz fusion solo artist; he was part of the group Oregon around that time)*, Tony Levin, Jan Hammer, Artie Traum, jazz flutist Jeremy Steig, and Jim Fielder (Blood, Sweat & Tears) were among the players who appeared on either or both albums. The production (led by Mark Roth, engineered by Val Valentin) and partly beautifully orchestrated arrangements (and brass arrangements on the last track) are simply perfect.

According to her niece Elizabeth Wetherell "she is in fact an enrolled member of the Keweenaw Bay Band of Ojibwe. Also interesting to note, she played at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival. Her name was mispelled on one of the programs (Cathy) but it is indeed her." Another witness, Roland also confirmed that "she appeared at the 1970 Isle Of Wight festival on Wednesday 26 August 1970. The festival attracted more than 600 000 people."

Audio : "End Of World", "Same Old Lady", "Circles Of Love"
Info : http://www.soundlinkmusic.com/...
Details : http://www.collinwalcott.com/discography/somesongs.php
Some info on her early cooperation with Penny Nichols : http://www.pennynichols.com/bio.htm
About the Stormy Forest label : http://www.bsnpubs.com/mgm/stormyforest.html
Some remarks about Kathy Smith I adapted from http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/160/Richie-Unterberger-Turn-Turn-Tur-page06.html
Review of '2' : http://www-tech.mit.edu/archives/VOL_092/TECH_V092_S0230_P007.pdf

Visit the 1970 Isle of Wight festival forum at
http://isleofwightfestival1970.da-forum.com/

Kathy Smith Lyrics