It’s hard to overstate the importance and impact Gary Smith had on the Boston independent music scene in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The producer and ultimately owner of Fort Apache Studios in Cambridge had a firm hand in launching the careers of then unknown acts like Pixies, Throwing Muses, Blake Babies, Juliana Hatfield and more. His “artist first” ethos, which focused on the cultivation of careers steeped in principle and vision rather than selling out to make a buck, led to a wealth of admiration over the years within the industry.
It was little surprise then that in the wake of Smith’s death in January 2023, following a brief battle with cancer, plans were set in motion for a tribute concert. It took some time to line up everyone’s schedules, with this weekend’s Fort Nights: A Celebration of Gary Smith & the Music of Fort Apache Studios, the culmination of those efforts, taking place over two nights in Somerville. Proceeds from the pair of events will benefit the Gary P. Smith Trust and local youth music organizations Zumix and Boston Music Project.
Night one is at Crystal Ballroom in Davis Square on Friday (March 15) and will see Buffalo Tom, Tanya Donelly, Fuzzy and Thalia Zedek paying tribute to Smith. Saturday’s second night (March 16) moves one door down to Somerville Theatre where Donelly and Buffalo Tom’s Bill Janovitz will perform together on a bill that also features Kristin Hersh, Arc Iris, Juliana Hatfield. The night is headlined by Billy Bragg with some “very special guests” promised.
At first glance, with all the other musicians having direct ties to the Boston area, Bragg, the revered English folk-rock troubadour, seems out of place. It turns out, however, that he might be the closest to the Gary Smith story of all. The two met in the mid-’80s and hit it off, with Bragg at one point investing himself as co-owner of Fort Apache Studios.
“I was fortunately in the flush of fame at the time, and notorious for sitting down with my accountant and telling him I didn’t want to invest in shares of anything,” Bragg tells Vanyaland. “So, when I rang him up and said, oh, it’s the studio in America that I’d like to invest in, he was like, ‘Oh, brilliant. Finally give me something to do.’ I thought supporting what Gary was doing at Fort Apache was both exciting because as he had a vision, but also helped me to put something back [into music].”
Smith’s journey eventually led him to Walpole, New Hampshire, and just across the way in Vermont’s Bellows Falls, was where he relocated Fort Apache. While in the region, he also founded a local radio station, a magazine, and opened a farm-to-table restaurant. Everywhere he went, he was always making the community better. And through each step, he remained close with Bragg.
Perhaps known for his political activism as much as his brand of folk-punk, Bragg sat down with Vanyaland for a spirited 617 Q&A (Six Questions; One Recommendation; Seven Somethings) ahead of Saturday evening’s gig and the weekend’s festivities. During the conversation, the 66-year-old went deep on the genesis of his friendship with Smith, what made Fort Apache different from other studios, and how losing friends and fellow musicians has affected his own mindset in recent times.
:: SIX QUESTIONS
Michael Christopher: Tell me how you first met Gary.
Billy Bragg: Well, I met Gary in the 1980s, mid-’80s. I think it was at… there was a gig in Providence, Rhode Island, which for the life of me, I can’t remember the name of it. But yeah, he was in a band called Lifeboat and they were opening for me, and we just generally got talking about life’s universe and everything. I was kind of in my one-man Clash phase, and he, I think was interested in the politics of that and how that worked. So, he started writing to me – that was how long ago it was – he started writing to me, and from that we developed a really close friendship that lasted up until he passed away last year.
And he was pretty impactful in your life. I mean, he was even the godfather to your son.
He was. He was very close to both me and my partner, and he was just one of those kind of people that when you went out on tour in America, you always hoped that there’d be some opportunity for us to meet if I was playing anywhere or in the Boston area when he lived there. And then later when he lived up in New Hampshire, if I was playing somewhere like Northampton or Troy or Burlington, sometimes even he’d come down to Boston or I would plan a day off to the tour so that I could go back with him and hang out for a day and then make my way back to wherever the tour was headed. So yeah, I think of him as a dear, dear friend.
It seems like he went quickly. Diagnosed in September and then passed away in January. Were you able to connect with him much during his illness?
I was, yeah. I mean, he was hospitalized in late 2022, and I was on tour then, and I’d already, again, it was exactly almost as I described it, between Northampton and [Troy]. I scalped out a date for me to go and visit him, really. I was hoping to go up to Bellows Falls in Vermont where he lived after the Northampton show, and then reconnect with the tour, which had moved on to Troy in New York, but sadly he was in hospital, so I ended up hiring a car and driving up to Lebanon to see him while he was not very well in hospital, and that was the last time I saw him.
What are you looking most forward to as far as the celebration of Gary’s life and for Fort Apache this weekend?
I mean a chance to meet together with other art musicians that were in these orbits. Some of whom I know, some of who I don’t know, gathering together with his friends. We did have a memorial service for him last year, which was lovely. I came over for that. It was very touching to him because there were sort of people of friends of his that I was aware of, and then other people that he spoke of that I hadn’t met before. I think he worked harder up there, but I think he got a lot more satisfaction from it because he was hands-on as he always was. And everything that he did, he was very much hands-on, but also managed to retain his own space and identity.
But really sort of trying to give some substance to the story of what he did at Fort Apache and how he came to have quite an interesting effect on the music scene around that studio. As a kind of sort of visionary in the music industry, you have people with talent and you have people with ideas, but you don’t often have people with philosophy. And Gary had a philosophy. He’d slap me down for saying it, but he did. He had more philosophy than politics. I had politics, but he had philosophy, and made for some interesting arguments.
* * *
What was so special about Fort Apache?
Oh, I think it was Gary’s intention to bring in artists that needed a break that were playing interesting music, to create a space where anyone could come in and make the noise that they were trying to make, find their noise. He was particularly open towards bands like Throwing Muses, which were female led. I think he had a sensibility that connected with what they were trying to achieve. In a music industry still, I would argue still, has racism and sexism running through it, and even more so in the ‘80s, Gary was able to, it seemed to me, to sort of make a space where those ideas didn’t permeate, and that was really, really important. I think the Fort was that space.
That’s a really interesting point you make, especially with a group like Throwing Muses. If it were in Los Angeles or New York City, especially around that time, they would’ve been packaged as something else. They would’ve been told what to play, how to play, and how to sound…
What to wear. They’d have been told what to wear. Whereas Gary was more about just letting ’em loose. I think he saw something in them, and so consequently was able to nail that and nurture it. Not many people can do that – not just as a producer, but also as a kind of a mentor as well. We’re talking about young people who didn’t have any experience in the music industry, and he was trying to make that space for them that they felt they could come into and do what they wanted to do in the way they wanted to do it.
Not to keep focusing on the downside of things, but 2023 was really tough in a lot of ways. There were also the losses of Sinéad [O’Connor] and Shane [MacGowan], Simon Emmerson [Afro Celt Sound System]. When you start to lose peers — friends — do you begin to think about your own mortality?
Well, I think once you get past 60, you can’t kid yourself that you’re young anymore. Up until you’re 30, you can get away with being young. Then from 30 to 60 you can get away with being middle age. But once you pass 60, you notice friends aren’t there anymore. You’ve listed a number of people there that I knew, that were friends as well, and you do notice that. I wouldn’t say it impinges on your thoughts, but it is something you’re thinking a little bit more of.
For me, it’s more a kind of all these things I’ve hung onto all these years. I’m a terrible hoarder. What am I going to do with them? “One day I was going to do something with these…” That day’s probably gone. [laughs] Let’s get rid of all this junk before it ends up my son just throwing it all in a skip after I’ve passed away. Let me just help him out of it. So yeah, I think I’ve more or less been feeling like that since my mum passed away and I emptied her house. I know Gary’s mum passed away just a year or so before he passed away, so it must’ve been on his mind as well. It comes with aging, just the question is not to let it get to the stage where it’s all you’re thinking about. It’s the thing that’s guiding all the things you’re doing. To still embrace life. There’re loads of interesting, exciting things to do. About 10 miles from me, there’s two little girls who call me Grandpa Bill. If that doesn’t make you feel, “Wow… this is amazing. This is really, really amazing.”
The getting is not the thing, man. It’s being on the road to it. Heaven forbid we should be the dog that catches the car. Christ. [laughs] What will we do then?
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:: ONE RECOMMENDATION
Billy Bragg: A book called Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera, which is about how the British Empire has affected our lives over the years. It’s the reason why you and me born in completely foreign countries from one another can communicate directly without a translator. And it’s how our world well, imperialism really, how imperialism has affected the British. Because this is something we grow up with without really thinking about, the British Empire. It’s just one of those things.
There’s Nelson’s Column in the middle of London, you don’t think what that meant, the Battle of Trafalgar, winning that supremacy on the Atlantic, all that kind of stuff. It’s just there. You don’t think about it. It’s like the Confederate flag. You see it everywhere. Growing up in America in the late 20th century and early 21st century, you don’t really think of…it’s The Dukes of Hazzard. But suddenly someone, something happens or someone does something that brings all that into focus. And in many ways, the British Empire is our slavery. It’s our thing that we don’t want people to talk about. It’s our thing that we don’t easily accept people criticizing. [They] get very angry if you criticize the idea of the British Empire.
So, I would recommend, as Americans, to have a read at this because obviously there are aspects of it that are about what happened in the United States of America, but really it’s about corporate imperialism, how companies take over the world. The British Empire was built purely on the exploitation of other people’s countries, by corporations. I mean, the colonies in America were all run by limited companies. That was the model. It’s written by a British Asian as well. That’s the key thing about it. I mean, he’s had so much hate mail.
:: SEVEN OF SOMETHING
There are hundreds of shows coming to Boston this year. I’m going to give you seven of the ones I’ll be going to, and you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind about that particular artist.
Judas Priest.
Oh my God! Yeah. Kind of like proto heavy metal. That’s what I would think. That kind of British ‘70s type heavy metal.
Echo and the Bunnymen.
Oh, that’ll be great. Echo and the Bunnymen. I’ll tell you what comes to mind is the first time I ever came to America, which was me opening for Echo and the Bunnymen in 1984. So, the first time I came played in Boston was opening for the Bunnymen. It was the old Opera House, I think. I have nothing but happy memories of that tour. My first experience of America, it was like, “Oh wow…” And seeing it from the back of a tour bus for six weeks. So happy. Nothing but joy with Echo and the Bunnymen. What lovely guys.
Gary Numan.
Poor old Gary always got put up against me as “the conservative pop star.” I think he might’ve said somewhere that he voted Tory, or maybe it was that he had a more kind of Reaganite entrepreneurial view. And they would always put him up to argue with me in debates on telly. And he would always say to me beforehand, “I really don’t like Margaret Thatcher.” And I’m like, “I know Gary and I’m not here to have a go at you either, mate.” He said, “I just feel that we shouldn’t pay so much tax.” I’m like, “Gary, I’m not going to bite your ass off. Don’t panic. I know you’re not a Nazi – okay?” But I felt sorry for him. There were so few people willing to say that. No one would have the front to say it. So I have a lot of respect for Gary and good on him for still being at it out there.
The Rolling Stones.
Well, I’ve seen the Rolling Stones quite a few times actually, and never been disappointed. Oh, maybe at Glastonbury though a bit. They didn’t quite do it at Glasto, but I’ve never been disappointed in it. The first time I ever saw ’em was at Earl’s Court in 1976, I think, on the first stadium shows where they had the folding pedal stage. Me and my mates went. We were obsessed with the Stones and The Who, and then 10 days later we saw The Who at Charlton Football Club as well. So, in that 10-day period, we saw the Stones and The Who. To me, Exile on Main Street is one of the all-time great, great records. I would definitely go and see the Stones live, even though they’re in their ‘80s.
The Saw Doctors.
The Saw Doctors! Now there’s a good time band. You’re going to have a great time with them. They let rip, they really, really let rip. So yeah, I think that spirit of kind of “folk punk,” whatever you want to call it, still wherever you go in the world, there’s always a band out there doing that kind of thing. Dropkick Murphys and these kind of guys. Whenever I’m on a festival when one of that lot is on, I always make time to go and watch ‘em. You’re going to get a rousing show.
Peter Hook, who is going to be doing both the Joy Division and New Order Substance albums in full.
Well, good on him – I say. He’s always been a lovely bloke when I’ve met him, Hooky. He’s always like, “Bill, how are you?” I don’t really know him, but he’s one of those guys who’s very open, very into what he does. And I think given the reputation of the two seminal bands that he was in, he could very easily be aloof and not really going out there and playing and getting sweaty and stuff like that. But his commitment to playing, both in the way that he performs – is as highly committed – but also his willingness to go out on the road when he could easily rest on his laurels. And you’ve got to respect that. You’ve got to really respect that. I’m sure that’ll be a great show.
The final one, not in Boston, but it’s the last place I saw you play. The music festival Iceland Airwaves.
Well, that’s the only time I’ve ever been to Iceland, and that was a really new place for me – to go somewhere that you’ve not been. Because the thing is, I don’t want to say this in any negative way, but because I’ve been doing this for 40 years, I kind of know me way around Boston. I know what’s there. I’m not coming to Boston thinking to myself, “Oh, I wonder what Boston is going to be like?” I know if I want to get this, I know I’ll go there. If I go down Newbury, go down to Cambridge – partly through my connections with Gary as well. I’ve played the Somerville Theatre many, many times. So in my mind I have an idea of what it’s going to be like. Going to Iceland was a whole different trip for me and I [was] really, really amazed wandering around Reykjavík, getting a vibe. They’re a strange lot. You’d have to be to live on a rock like that, that’s on fire. But I really enjoyed that we played that gig in the church. I love the space. On that lake outside. It’s just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful setup.
A CELEBRATION OF GARY SMITH & THE MUSIC OF FORT APACHE STUDIOS FEAT. BILLY BRAGG + TANYA DONELLY & BILL JANOVITZ + KRISTIN HERSH + JULIANA HATFIELD + ARC IRIS :: Saturday, March 16 at Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square in Somerville, MA :: 6:30 p.m., all ages :: Event info
