Valerie Smith

For much of bluegrass music’s early history, few women singers secured major visibility in a genre long considered as male-dominated as the broader country field. The 1980s breakthroughs of headliners Laurie Lewis, Alison Krauss, and Lynn Morris opened doors for female bandleaders, and by the century’s close additional fresh voices such as Missouri native Valerie Smith had stepped forward. Although jazz and pop listeners may know a different artist of the same name who performed and recorded with Natalie Cole, this particular singer, who arrived on the bluegrass circuit in the late 1990s, quickly earned a following even among committed followers of Bill Monroe’s sound.

The rural community of Holt, situated twenty-five miles northeast of Kansas City in western Missouri, was home to Valerie, daughter of David and Jean Stevens. Already performing by age five in church, she developed a strong attachment to country music ranging from the Carter Family’s classic style to the contemporary work of Emmylou Harris. A serious allergy episode during her teenage years temporarily silenced her, prompting her to take up the fiddle, yet her singing voice eventually returned. After high school she wished to head straight to Nashville, but her parents urged college instead; she enrolled at the University of Missouri’s Conservatory of Music on the Kansas City campus, where her studies expanded to include jazz, opera, Broadway, and further styles. She later described those years as far more formative than an immediate move to Nashville at eighteen would have been.

Upon graduation she returned to Holt intending to teach elementary school while applying her musical skills. Meeting and marrying Kraig Smith changed that plan when his work relocated the couple to Nashville. There she began appearing regularly at writers’ nights, refining her songwriting in partnership with her husband and sharpening her stage presence. At a local bluegrass festival she encountered Junior & Betty Parker, who hosted a weekly radio program in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, and soon became a featured performer on their show, gaining valuable experience singing and playing fiddle before an audience. That radio exposure led to steady bookings with her band at the Bell Buckle Café and to the creation of Bell Buckle Records alongside café owner J. Gregory Heinike.

For her first album, Patchwork Heart, she enlisted Nashville Bluegrass Band banjoist and producer Alan O’Bryant along with guest musicians Ronnie McCoury, Jerry Douglas, Roland White, Charlie Louvin, and fellow new-wave bluegrass vocalists Claire Lynch and Kathy Chiavola. Issued in 1997, the recording drew strong critical praise and found particular radio success through her light, reflective reading of Gillian Welch’s “Red Clay Halo,” which reached listeners across the United States as well as in Estonia and Australia. Rebel Records later acquired the project for wider distribution, and “Red Clay Halo” stayed on Bluegrass Unlimited’s monthly Top 30 chart well into 1999. After forming the band Liberty Pike and issuing Turtle Wings in 2000, she expanded her touring schedule; No Summer Storm followed in 2002.