The Smarts

2012 SNL: Here we go again!

jeff — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 20:04:55 +0000

Around here, SNL means Sample Night Live. First show of the new year is tonight. Find us house-banding-it the first Wednesday of every month (except February) at the Minnesota History Theater in St. Paul. Tonight, in honor of a recently departed colleague, we’re going all jazz-standards. Next time we may crank it up and rock out, or dip back into our obscure topical tunes from years past. You never know! See you there.

Who took this? It's nice.

Wet and Wild

jeff — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:23:27 +0000

Oh, Mother Nature. You opened up the heavens 10 minutes before our most awesome show of the year, dumped buckets of water on our fans and friends, and scared away those who might have discovered us. But we were not deterred, and rocked the mostly empty, wet benches like Wembley Stadium.

Smarts rock Lake Harriet in a rainstorm.

Thanks to an intrepid fan for the photo.

(UPDATE: Hey, I’m disabling comments for this post, because GUESS WHAT, it was a magnet for spam. Go figure.)

Open-air Smarts

jeff — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 17:02:53 +0000

Out biggest, fattest, awesomest summer gig is right around the corner: Friday, June 10, at the Lake Harriet bandshell. This gig is hard to get. We are lucky, lucky boys.

Keep your fingers crossed for great weather! Here are a couple shots from last year’s show. Looks like fun, eh?

May 4: Sample Night Live

jeff — Sun, 01 May 2011 19:52:38 +0000

All four Smarts are back in May for Sample Night Live! And we’re psyched to be applying our house-bandiness to back Aaron Keith Stewart on a couple tunes (he’s the guy on the right):

We’ve never met him, and we won’t have a chance to rehearse until just before the show, but I’m sure we’ll knock it out of the park for him.

Next SNL: April 6

jeff — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:31:39 +0000

Next Sample Night Live is coming up! We’ll have some new tunes for you, and a guest drummer making things generally interesting and spontaneous all-around. And we might even be wearing suits again, since we think it helps juice CD sales.

In honor of the fact that Mo will not be with us, here is an awesome picture of him:

March 2: Sample Night Live!

jeff — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 07:16:19 +0000

Join us, won’t you, for the kick-off of the 2011 Sample Night Live season, at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul.

(We’ll be wearing suits again!)

Good lord. What happened to our web site?

thesmartsband.admin — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 17:50:07 +0000

From the looks of things, you might think The Smarts either disbanded or hired a third-grader cut-rate to design our web site. Neither of those is true.

We are simply in transition, web-wise. And we are eminently contactable by emailing info (at) thesmartsband.com or joining us on Facebook.