About Cherry

cher·ry [ˈCHerē] (noun) (1) a small, round, red, sweet fruit; (2) a car, motorcycle or other object which is in pristine condition and deserving of admiration; (3) the burning end of a lit cigarette or cigar; (4) virginity

In the chaotic shadow of the pandemic, after a tornado leveled his East Nashville, Tennessee, neighborhood, and a bomb took out two downtown Nashville city blocks, Stuffy Shmitt released his last album, ironically titled Stuff Happens (2020.) While that album was admittedly about purging past demons, once the world opened up again, Stuffy felt remarkably unstuck. “It was like we were emerging from a zombie apocalypse,” Stuffy says. “I had this incredible rush of freedom. C’mon, let’s go. Let’s color outside the lines. Let’s run and fly and lift this shit up and feel crazy-good alive. I felt like everyone needed to remember how to have fun. Remember fun? I needed fun.”

In that flash of inspiration, the eclectic, textured grooves of Stuffy’s new album, Cherry, was born, featuring some of the finest players in the Nashville underground, who also happen to be some of his closest friends. “It was like somebody let the boys out,” Stuffy says. “We made our escape, and then cranked it up. Cherry is the sound of me and my gang being free and having a blast—not following any rules, trusting each other and being in the moment with the songs.”

The new record is a wonderfully crafted musical crazy quilt, guided by Stuffy’s charmingly off-kilter brain, inviting you to join his party as he insistently chases good times, mischief and electric moments of instant gratification. Opening track “The Little Man in the Boat”—a piña colada-smooth ode to the female orgasm—unfolds as a slow-and-steady subtropical groove, propelled languidly forward by the airtight rhythm section of bassist Parker Hawkins and drummer Dave Colella. If you were ever curious what it might’ve sounded like if Harry Nilsson ditched John Lennon and spent his lost weekend in the Florida Keys with Warren Zevon and Latin funk rockers War, look no further.

Up next, lead single “Billy Kilowatt” feels like you’ve hit a hairpin curve at 100mph. The song is a two-and-a-half-minute jolt of manic, punk-tinged Farfisa rock & roll, coming off like a harder Elvis Costello & the Attractions. This is dangerous, Evel Knievel-jumps-the-Grand Canyon kinda fun, crash helmet strongly encouraged. “Little Brother”—a tribute to Stuffy’s hard-partying, deceased-too-soon younger sibling Danny, who played drums for John Hiatt and Mountain’s Leslie West—shows off some legit funk, while “Food for the Mosquitoes” is bleak, absurdist psychedelic synth folk that would feel right at home on a classic Ween album.

A few songs deeper, Stuffy murders with a wistful, heart wrenching gem of an Americana ballad, “110 Shotguns.” It’s a classic Stuffy Shmitt tune; a soul-searching and fearless moral inventory in song, a cold steel barrel between the lips of an aging barfly as he replays faint memories of reckless youthful glory—nostalgia cut with regret and longing so potent you’ll need a shot of Narcan. Finally, after laying all that heaviness down, Stuffy dares close the record with a wink and a nod to his Wisconsin roots—a legit, beer and bratwurst-style polka, albeit one that revels in bawdy ridiculousness.

Refreshing and unexpected, Cherry is an engaging amusement park collection of songs. “Everybody wants to pigeonhole an artist,” Stuffy says, “which I suppose makes a lot of sense commercially—you know, if you like this tune, he’s got another one that sounds just like it. But I wasn’t going to do that. I was going to do whatever the fuck I felt like. I took more of a ‘no filter’ approach, trusting the songs that came out, and not cluttering up the process with ideas about what the music industry or anybody might think. Who cares? Make art. Dive in the deep end. Turn it up. Go on a supersonic joy ride. I mean, the music biz is nearly impossible to negotiate these days. Forget it. I’m done worrying about it. I just want to have fun making music with my friends.”

This unrepentantly cavalier attitude has always bubbled beneath the surface for Stuffy, who could easily be crowned the definition of untethered independent artist. But this most recent unmasked incarnation was fueled by a conversation he had with his buddy, singer-songwriter Aaron Lee Tasjan. “Aaron played guitar in my band in New York, and we both moved to Nashville around the same time,” Stuffy says. “One night, we were sitting on my porch discussing our music careers, and it was such a depressing rap. I said, ‘well, ok, I guess were fucked.’ He paused, then looked at me and said, “Or… we’re free,” and I thought, ‘Well, whaddaya know about that?’ So, these days, I’m being free.”

Cherry was produced by Stuffy, Dave Coleman (guitar, vocals) and Chris Tench (guitar), and features the previously mentioned Hawkins and Colella on bass and drums respectively, plus Michael Webb on keys and accordion, Dick Aven on sax, as well as bassist Jeff Thorneycroft and drummer Chris Benelli, who take over as rhythm section on “110 Shotguns.” The sessions that led to the album began (under fleeting moniker The Acorn Club) with the modest goal of recording a two-sided single for kicks—just a party in the studio with some close pals.

“We all went to Dave Coleman’s place in Inglewood, Tennessee,” Stuffy says. “Its called Howard’s Apartment Studios; it’s not an apartment, and there’s no one there called Howard. Everybody was going by phony names—Dave Coleman was Benny Shapiro, and Michael Webb was Roger Wilco. It got really silly, but the tracks and the vibe blew me away. It felt like life. I felt fed.” They recorded two songs that day—The Hard-on Polka” and “The Little Man in the Boat”—one for the ladies, and one for the gentleman. “When we were finished, I thought, ‘Oh man, this just feels too good. Let’s do some more. I gotta do more.’ So, I sold three guitars, some old coins my dad left me, and emptied my checking account, and we all came back and did the record.”

Through the journey of assorted sounds and styles, a few things tie Cherry together like a drunken woman in red lipstick casually weaving a maraschino stem into a knot with her tongue—Stuffy’s unmistakable personality, signature vocals and lyrical prowess, and the genuine camaraderie and infectious enthusiasm of friends riding high on an adventure together.

“The energy and intensity are way magically out front on this record,” Stuffy says. “The vibe in the studio was incredible—all of us big kids getting back to being a basement band. That’s what Cherry is all about, really. We recorded live in the studio, with very few overdubs. We just got in there and banged out some noise in the most urgent, immediate, feel-it-in-your-belly kind of way. The music business might be nonsense, but music still lives inside us. It’s a life force. One night I played The Basement East in Nashville—we call it The Beast—and they were handing out stickers that said, ‘Get happier, fuckers.’ Yeah man, exactly, why not be happy? I get to make music, and that’s the best-est, fun-est thing you can do. Making Cherry was balls out, rock & roll. Fearless fun. It’s my booster shot for everything sideways going on in the world.”

About Stuff Happens

Stuff Happens is Stuffy Shmitt’s 2020 pandemic release, after a challenging eight years. “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 superhuman manic episodes . After years of eating the tin off the ceilings in West Village saloons, I went down to Nashville, crashed again, made this record and went to detox. Got out on Christmas Day and a big bomb went off downtown. Back to reality, Stuff.”

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 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.

“They were looking at their photograph / Black and white of a catered night / In Madison Wisconsin / Tuxedo and ball gown / The future dead ahead / Bright and shiny like the long smooth silver car / Now they don’t know where they are,” Shmitt sings on “Mommy and Daddy,” a heart-crushing rumination on his folks’ final years.

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.”

Shmitt grew up in Milwaukee in a family every bit as wild and unhinged as he is. “I don’t come from a family with a culture of tradition. I had a drunk drummer mother who wrote poetry in her sleep, and a dad who played guitar and had a thing for fast cars. We read a lot of books, listened to a lot of music and protested social injustices. Our home was loud and nasty and violent. We didn’t spend a lot of time hugging or talking about feelings. We didn’t have religion. I didn’t understand spirituality until I dropped acid as a teenager, and when I nearly died of pneumonia a while back. And then I got manic, which comes with superpowers and parties with angels.”

Stuffy ventured to New York, then L.A. then back to New York, playing in an endless parade of rock & roll bands. It was a gas. Loud, fun, kickass shit. He was in Actual Size, X-Lovers, Petting Zoo and a whole bunch of other projects. He snorted coke with Johnny Rotten at The Cat and the Fiddle in Laurel Canyon, and he made his bones pumping through blown-out speaker cones on both coasts, stalking the stage with his gang of musicians, and recording with greats including Willy De Ville, David Johansen (New York Dolls,) Levon Helm, Gordon Gano (Violent Femmes), and Jayotis Washington (The Persuasions.) But after a while all the drummers in his life kept blowing up like it was This Is Spinal Tap, so Stuffy decided maybe he’d better start playing solo acoustic gigs instead. Half a life and a half-dozen albums later, with Stuff Happens he’s managed to synthesize the disparate sounds of his past into his finest, most impactful record yet. And what better time to release your lighting-rod masterpiece than in the midst of a global pandemic?

“Staying inside all the time makes me absolutely nuts—I start crawling the walls,” Shmitt confesses. “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.”

Film and TV credits:

– Independent film, “Happy Tears” Susceptible llc, with Rip Torn, Ellen Barkin, Demi Moore

– Independent film, “Lost” Silvercrest Films

– Independent film, “Thirty Days” An Araca Group/Arielle Tepper Production, selection at Toronto Film Festival, two songs prominently featured

– Documentary, “Abandoned: The Betrayl of America’s Immigrants” Crowing Rooster Arts, Inc., winner Dupont/Columbia University Award for Broadcast Excellence, composed, produced, arranged and performed original soundtrack

– Award-winning children’s film, “Whatever Happened To The Dinosaurs?” Blackwatch Productions, composed, produced, arranged and performed original soundtrack and theme song

– Theme song, featured in Ace Award winning MTV show “Turn It Up”

– Song featured in Showtime’s “Californication”