Michael Smith still in high creative gear

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Michael Smith

Updated: February 17, 2012 2:30PM

“Lake County people are so cheerful and so happy and so encouraging,” said Michael Smith. The 70-year-old folksinger was speaking by phone from Missouri, where he’s on one of his many performance tours.

“They have a good time and they make you be in a good mood. My last time there you could hardly find your way through the crowd to the stage, it was so crowded.”

A longtime fixture on the Chicago folk scene, Smith will perform for the Lake County Folk Club at Aleks’ Restaurant in Lake Bluff on Sunday, Feb. 19.

Smith has a long resume that’s still growing. He’s recorded more than individual albums. He composed music for and performed it in the 1988 Steppenwolf production of “The Grapes of Wrath” that went on to Broadway and London, and created the long-running “The Snow Queen” musical at Victory Gardens Theater.

His set list in Lake County will include songs from his new, yet untitled album, as well as classics from the repertory of more than 400 songs he has written.

Smith classics

“I certainly will do things like ‘The Dutchman,’ ‘Dead Egyptian Blues’ and ‘Spoon River.’ People are going to ask for them if I don’t do them,” he said.

One of the new songs will be “Pagan Babies,” a song that takes a humorous look at growing up Catholic. “I wrote that for a show I did last fall with Jamie O’Reilly called ‘Songs of a Catholic Childhood’ and we’re going to do it again in April sometime.”

For the past year and half, Smith has been working in his own studio on his new album built on real folks’ stories.

“I thought it would be interesting to have an album full of real people being talked about or talking to you directly about their existence,” Smith said. “I’ve never had a theme for a record before. Having a theme is kind of nice because it tells you what you to keep out and what to keep in.”

Those real people will include convicted murderer and record producer Phil Spector, Western B-movie star Lash LaRue, movie legend Edward G. Robinson, and New York Yankee home run slugger Roger Maris. “I wrote a song about Roger Maris, about baseball players taking drugs to catch up with him. I’m not a big baseball fan but I really related to his desire to try to be as good as he could,” said Smith.

On stage

In June and July, Smith will be play the ship captain in the Lookingglass musical production of “The Eastland,” the story of an over-loaded excursion boat that capsized in the Chicago River in 1915 with over 800 hundred lives lost.

“It’s the first time I have gotten an acting role where I wasn’t making the play happen myself. I was crying by the time I finished reading it.”

Though he enjoys his forays into theater, Smith’s first love is still his music. “In truth, it is only in the last 10, 15 years that I have come to understand how precious it is, the chance to create,” he said. “One is lucky to get to write songs and luckier still to make a living this way.”