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By Steve Cook
“Security has always been a big thing for me,”
says Kari Smith, a Richmond native who grew up in
Mechanicsville. “I had a 401k when I was twentyone.”
By the time Smith, a soft-spoken young woman,
was in her mid-twenties, she also was on her way to
what appeared to be a lifelong career with Capital
One. She owned her own home, had an Associate’s
degree in Liberal Arts, and was pursuing a
degree in Business Management from ODU.
She also had two passions...horses and music.
Following an injury from a horseback accident, she
changed gears and began to sing karaoke, and was
soon operating the karaoke at a local nightspot. Her
musical exposure had been limited to religious and
classical music, and singing in school and church.
“It (sacred and classical music) was the only thing I
was allowed to listen to while growing up,” Smith
says. Her entire primary education, kindergarten
through her senior year in high school, had been in
a local Christian school.
While she enjoyed singing, she says she never
considered making that a career. Never, that is until
something happened in 2005 that forced her to reconsider her career path. In September of that
year, she was laid off from her job. “It was quite
a surprise,” Smith admits. “We knew layoffs were
coming, but my manager felt it wouldn’t affect our
team.”
“When you’ve never gone through that experience,
you don’t know what to expect,” she says.
“You know it’s not a personal thing, when you’re
part of a large group, but, still, you take it personally.
You work hard and when your job ends, you
feel that you somehow didn’t do well enough.”
While dealing with those feelings, Smith also
began to deal with the realities of life after Capital
One. She had been singing professionally on
a part-time basis with some local bands, but she
felt that there was no way an entertainment career
could pay the bills. But, she continues, “After
a month of putting in applications at other businesses,
I began to wonder, what if this (a career in
music) could work?”
So as Smith says, “I started to do the math. I
knew I’d have severance pay for a short time. I decided
that if I got a roommate perhaps I could do it.”
She continues, “The numbers were tight, but they did work out.” She also had other sacrifices to make. “I
drove a big diesel truck that I had bought to eventually pull
a horse trailer,” she says. “I loved horses. I wanted to have
horses, but I decided that if I was going to pursue music,
I couldn’t afford to keep the truck and it wasn’t practical
for traveling to gigs.”
By this time, Smith had begun writing music as well as
performing. “It had become an outlet,” she says. So she
wrote a song about her truck, aptly entitled HER TRUK,
a reference to the vanity license plate on the beloved
Dodge.
She began doing gigs with a local musician, Dave Tinney.
“He pushed me out of the nest,” she says. “He told
me, ‘Now that you have experience, you need to go out
and pursue this on your own.’ So I went out and bought
a guitar.”
The attractive, young redhead says things began to
move quickly at that point. “I was making a pretty decent
living, getting close to what I was making when I began
working at Capital One. I had recorded my first CD”, an
EP of 6 original songs entitled Go With You, “and was
working on my second”, a full-length album self-titled Kari.
Smith had already made some big decisions, but the
biggest was ahead. She decided that if she really was going
to succeed as both a performer and writer, she needed
to be in Nashville, and she made that move in September
2006. In her personal journal, she revealed her thoughts
about the choice she made. In the early morning hours of
January 15, 2007 she wrote:
“I realized tonight that I am finally in a place in my life
where I can realize things about myself. It’s this process of
peeling layers back until I can figure out what’s really going
on. Peel back the layers of stability, comfort, and complacency.
That’s
where it gets
tough – pulling
back the layers
of expectations,
approval,
criticism. Even
then, more layers
come up,
many that I
didn’t even know
were there…I moved 600 miles away from where almost
all my family and friends were to a city where I knew absolutely
no one. I left behind a boyfriend, my dog, and
everything else that didn’t fit in a 5x8 trailer, and had
no idea what my new circumstances would be. It was
terrifying.”
That sounds like the making of a country song in
itself, and certainly aspects of her life continue to show
up in her music. She continues to write and to perform.
In order to finance her third album Gypsy of Love, this
time to be recorded in Nashville with a Music Row producer
and professional studio musicians, Smith sold her
house. Today, she stays busy in the business. She now has
her own band and says this will give her more opportunities
to play larger venues.
Looking back on her choice, a choice that led from
a comfortable home in Richmond to the uncertainties of
a city that has seen dreams both fulfilled and destroyed,
Smith says, “The most rewarding thing is looking back and
seeing that I actually had the courage to do it; on an ongoing
basis to know that I’m doing it. I’m living it. I’m
making it happen.”
Sometimes, she
says, friends and
acquaintances will
ask about all the sacrifices
she has made.
“They ask me, ‘What if
you never make it?’
“It’s not about being
famous,” she says. “It’s more about being able to
support myself while doing what I love.” So how does
she respond to the “what if you never make it” question?
“My reply,” she says, “is ‘I already did.’”
Kari tours and performs in the Virginia area often.
To view her schedule, check out her website at www.
karismithmusic.com or www.myspace.com/karismith or
send an email to karismithmusic@gmail.com. Her albums
can be purchased at Plan 9 stores in Carytown, online
at www.cdbaby.com/Artist/KariSmith, or search “Kari
Smith” on iTunes.
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