SONG PREMIERE: Veteran Rocker Stuffy Shmitt Delivers Rock Anguish & Punkish Delights Via ‘It’s Ok’

It’s only right that the new Stuffy Shmitt album comes out in the “WTF” months that we now perilously call 2020.

Stuff Happens is Shmitt’s first record in eight years because, well, he went crazy. “I was living in New York and my brain was on fire. I got that bipolar thing. I was bouncing between full-blown depression and a jailbreak manic buzz rush. After nearly a decade of getting 86’d from bars in the West Village, I made it to Nashville six years ago and finally got my head screwed on tight enough to make a new record.”

This album finds Shmitt not quite exorcising his demons, but exercising them—wrestling with them until they’ve been knocked around enough to be manageable. “I didn’t realize until the record was finished and my wife, Donna, pointed it out,” Stuffy says, “but this album is all about trauma. Disasters big and small. It was an accident, though. It was all subconscious. I guess, eventually, that shit’s gotta come out.”

A madcap tour through the folds of Shmitt’s charmingly off-kilter brain, Stuff Happens runs the full spectrum of manic depression in glorious stereophonic sound. There are bizzaro blues rockers and exhausted, desolate Americana ballads—some bleak to the bone, and others begrudgingly grasping at hope; never so naive as to look for a silver lining, but dogged enough to skim the horizon for the dull glimmer of aluminum. And when you need a jolt, there’s plenty of naked, unapologetic, torn-and-frayed American rock & roll to carry you kicking and screaming through all that beautiful sad-bastard music; the full-tilt end of the spectrum best represented by “Sweet Krazy,” a revved-up ode to mania that features fellow Nashville songsmith guitar shredders Aaron Lee Tasjan & Brian Wright.

The story of the album begins with a chance encounter Shmitt had in an East Nashville dive. “I walked into The Five Spot, and there was this tall, skinny guy with a beat-up hat at the bar,” Stuffy says. “I didn’t know him, but I walked up to him and said, ‘Didn’t you push me off a ferris wheel once?’ Which actually is a Steven Wright line—I stole it, I admit it—but it’s a great line. So I said that to him, and he looked at me and shot back, ‘Oh, that was you?’” Yes, it was love at first sight for Shmitt and Nashville singer-songwriter and producer Brett Ryan Stewart.

Meanwhile, that same night, as Shmitt was performing at The Five Spot, his wife sat down at the bar next to a long-haired character who was throwing back Jameson and talking in word pictures about the lyrics he was hearing. That guy was Chris Tench, who would become the guitar player in Shmitt’s band and ultimately the producer of Stuff Happens. “So here’s where it gets really freaky,” Stuffy says. “come to find out, Chris and Brett not only knew each other, they had partnered on music projects for years, owned a killer studio together and were both razor-sharp rockin’ madmen.”

Brett wound up engineering and co-producing the record with Stuffy and Chris. “I’ve always produced all my own stuff,” Shmitt says. “Don’t get in the way, don’t tell me what to play, don’t say what goes where because I’m the boss. But this time I did a trust fall. It was the first time I gave up the reins, and I’m glad I did because they’re brilliant. It was magic how we fell in together.”

Stuffy took his band out to Stewart and Tench’s studio, 20 miles south of Nashville in Franklin, Tenn., where they could clear their heads and work without distraction. The measured pace and attention to detail and mood helped ease Stuffy out of his comfort zone. “Chris and I did two months of pre-production, sitting in my living room with acoustic guitars breaking down the songs. It was a new thing for me. I hate to admit it because I like to do stuff on the fly, but it made a big difference. The pre-production work gave us a roadmap and freed us up to get lost in scenic detours. Working with Chris and Brett was all about groove and flow. They connected with the stories I was telling, and so did the rest of the band, which was Dave Colella on drums, and Parker Hawkins on bass. By then I’d worked with the band for a couple of years, so they got me, no learning curve, they knew the groove and the flow, too. We’re all brothers and everything clicked in a big way.”

The lush sonics of Stuff Happens make a compelling backdrop for Shmitt’s austere, blunt-force poetry and gutter-of-consciousness lyrics. His songs are disarmingly direct and personal, built with words you might find scrawled on a crumpled napkin in some sawdust jukebox bar with chicken wire on the window and a pig foot in the jar. These are not your garden variety genericana tunes. He’s weird. And honest, too. When he opens his mouth to sing, Shmitt can’t help but tell the truth, consequences be damned. Even when he’s doing his best to lie his scoundrel ass off, he falls face first into the truth. His stories are our stories. He makes us feel stuff.

“Staying inside all the time makes me absolutely nuts—I start crawling the walls,” Shmitt confesses about the past six months. “But what are you gonna do? God, I miss just walking down the street and feeling my boots on the pavement, going into a club and saying, ‘Ok, this band sucks, let’s go to another other club.’ I feel caged. Rock & roll is supposed to be live. You’re supposed to turn up the bass and listen to a person’s guts. If you play the new record loud enough you’ll definitely get some of that, but I’m holding out hope for when we can all get back out there in the flesh, pile into a club, order two shots of Jack, a pint of Kahlua with a side of Pop Rocks, and just go wild. Let the bass echo in our chests.”

Glide is thrilled to premiere the mystical rock and roll boogie stew of Stuff Shmitt’s “Stuff Happens” (below). While not precisely a punk, like The Replacements and The Hold Steady, Shmitt can wave any rock banner he wants. This ageless rocker holds nothing back with lyrically scalding vocals and tough guitar solos and riffs. Read on about the candid inspiration behind the song..

“All my songs are very autobiographical. “It’s OK” is about someone who is really dear to me, a beautiful soul who can’t get her shit together, who can’t get out of her own way. I’ve been there for her. Really there for her. I’ve tried to be her safety net. But she doesn’t see it that way. She came down to Nashville from New York City, and I set her up for a fresh start and things exploded. It hasn’t worked out—it’s been a train wreck.”

“She’s always struggling. There’s always trouble. And there’s almost always collateral damage. One night, she tore the moon in half, and she broke my heart. So I wrote a song like I always do. This one came rushing out of me. It’s me in her face. I’m saying, “it’s ok,” sarcastically—the chorus is very sarcastic. One of my friends picked up on it. She said, “‘It’s ok’ is the saddest line ever written.”

“Look, I write very openly about my personal life. The only time I let it out is through songs. I’m being totally fucking honest. Here’s how I see it. Here’s how I feel it. Here’s how I sing it. I don’t play games. She knows it’s about her.”