Rambling Man

Oak View musician Fred Schmitt tells some of his tales from the road

BY LISA SNIDER

It is my second sit-down with singer/songwriter Fred Schmitt of Oak View, and he has again arrived to the interview with his acoustic guitar. Almost every question is answered with a song he wrote, along with an engaging story. As he strums away, I feel like I should be in a pick-up truck on a dirt road on a cloudy day. I notice his guitar is worn down to bare wood and wonder aloud if he takes it everywhere. 

He nods and offers a shy smile. “It’s easier to focus when I have the guitar.”

The tuft of gray peeking out from his jet black curls doesn’t exactly make him a contender for American Idol, but the soulful sounds coming out of his mouth and picked from his well-worn guitar will certainly make him the next great American story. I watch and listen in amazement, knowing this prolific musical genius without a recording contract will be whisked off to Nashville any second.

BEFORE THE MUSIC

Schmitt grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, one of 12 children born to religious and musical parents. At age 7, he found his father dead on the floor of a massive heart attack. “His coffee was still warm,” Schmitt says. At 13, he started playing his brother’s Gibson at church and in his basement for the neighbors.  Soon he was writing poetry and music.

“Man, it was brutal,” he recalls of his first attempts to write. “It took me 30 years to get good at writing songs.”

His first .45 was “Red Rubber Ball,” an AM pop song written by Paul Simon in the ’60s. Schmitt told his mother, “I can do better than this!” He shakes his head and recalls one of his first poems, written for an older girl he was madly in love with.  She laughed at him for using the word “melancholy.”  It hurt him so much he hasn’t been able to use it since. 

The day after high school graduation, with $36 in his pocket, he hitched a ride to his first gig of an eight-week tour. “I played wherever they let me,” he says. Among his first “professional gigs” was at a Shakey’s Pizza, where he played so hard he got blood all over his guitar.

“Oh, they loved me there!” he says.

RAMBLING MAN

After 18 years on the road, traveling over a million miles across 46 states, the road stories evolved from digging graves for a few bucks and shooting rabbits when he got hungry to getting noticed by the likes of Arlo Guthrie, Norman Blake, Bill Monroe, Mackenzie Phillips and the late Townes Van Zandt, who chugged Snapple and vodka in the back of a van while co-writing a song with Schmitt. Van Zandt’s former manager, Harold Eggers, now manages Schmitt.

With his catalog of 200 songs, Schmitt’s story has become a case study of how someone with so much talent and original material can live in obscurity for so long. Asked to pin-point his style, he rattles off every genre, but in today’s musical climate, he would be labeled “alternative country.”

Unlike the many talented singer-songwriters who became victims of their own genius, writing tales of woe and ending up dead by their own hand through drugs, alcohol or suicide, Schmitt, far from playing the role of a tragic figure, is a refreshing contrast, offering up music that has a tenderness and sweetness, with a bit of an edge.

“My songs are about hope,” he says, “and have interesting perspectives on survival.” 

This despite the haunting memory of his father’s death, and hitting rock bottom with “no money, no jobs and no gigs” while his moneyed ex-wife tried to take the RV he was living in and refused to let him see his kids. He said it was then, in early 2000, that he was “anointed” and the songs really started pouring out of him. Adversity led him to strive for greatness when he could have easily let it go the other way. 

His songwriting process is intriguing. Once he woke up and had an entire song ready to lay down. Until he was able to harness the process, he would try to keep sleeping, “hoping it would go away.”

Soon he “found the switch,” and can write a song in minutes when it strikes him. There are exceptions, such as “306 Lorraine Motel,” which took him a month to write after seeing a documentary about Martin Luther King.  “I’m so emotional, man, things just hit me. I’d get up at all hours.  Everything affects me so deeply.  I’ll even cry sometimes.”

Looking ahead with confidence, he says, “I’ve done it backwards and now I’m going to get discovered.” _VM

Listen to part of Fred Schmitt’s interview and samplings of his songs, and find out where he is playing next at www.RadioOjai.com.