Let’s face it.

If you really want to step your game up, you need other people talking about your music.

You need to build a buzz.

Your local newspaper, online magazines, music blogs, and college radio stations all need to know about you. They all need to like you. And you need them to want to press play…over and over again.

When this mission is accomplished, you need them to start talking about you and sharing your links with their friends, fans, and followers.

How do I do that?

Sometime in the 1730s, a man named Samuel Smitherman was arrested in Britain for theft. What he stole, we’ll never know.

His punishment?

Shipped to this new place soon to be known as the US of A. He was to spend 7 years as an indentured servant in (current day) Virginia.

After 7 years he was a free man. He eventually bought a piece of land, found a wife, and had 8 children.

Over the next 380 years, the children grew up and had children who had children who had children who spread themselves out across the Earth.

Meanwhile, in Middle Tennessee, Jedi Smo found himself contemplating his existence as he replayed the events of his life. It was impossible for him to think of these things without considering their relationship in the context of his family history.

Listening through the 10 years of music he’s recorded often brings clarity but today it just made him ponder more.

The son of a pastor and a hard-working housewife. Grandson to WWII veterans turned truck driver and (for lack of a better term) sharecropper. His grandmothers were both strong women who held the family together.

The only one that lived long enough to meet young Joshua was his maternal grandmother. She passed when he was 13. His paternal grandfather died after his 18-wheeler lost control and flew off the I-440 overpass in Nashville. His maternal grandfather and both grandmothers were taken by health complications.

Coming from a long history of addictive behaviors (such as alcoholism), causes him to be more critical of his own behaviors. He also worries for his 3 children and strives to do everything possible to teach them moderation as well as self-discipline in all aspects of life.

After being raised in the decade of excess, Marlboro cowboys, and sexy beer commercials, Smo knows he’s not perfect. Considering his family history, he realizes that hundreds of years of struggle and sacrifice have brought him here. Hundreds of years of capitalism, industrialization, urban development, and warfare provide the rhythms to the soundtrack of his life.

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