Irish singer, songwriter, and harmonica player Paddy Smith has spent decades earning his reputation as one of Ireland’s most compelling blues storytellers, and Could Have Found Grace, his new album released via Tribeca Records, plays like the record that reputation was building toward. Recorded at Hellfire Studios in Dublin with producer Ivan Jackman, the eight-track set follows Let These Blues In (2013) and The Devil’s Backyard (2023), and it finds Smith mining his own hard-lived history for material rather than borrowing someone else’s.
That history is close to the surface throughout. Smith has said the album grew out of looking back on his own wilder, harder-drinking years, and the regret and clarity of hindsight run through the record’s best songs. “One Dollar Bill” finds him at the bar at six in the morning, while “Still Standing Tall” turns defiant, with Smith brushing off the names he has been called and choosing to keep living life on his own terms. “You Don’t Know Me” digs even further, suggesting that whatever the world thinks it knows about his hurt and his shame, there is a great deal more still hidden beneath it.
Much of the album’s chemistry traces back to a fast, instinctive writing process. Smith worked through the songs with guitarist Danny Tobin over what he has described as three intense days at Hellfire Studios, calling the sessions organic and unforced as the pair let the material lead them rather than the other way around. That trust shows: nothing here feels labored or overworked, and the band Smith assembled around those sessions gives the songs plenty of room to breathe. Tobin’s guitar work anchors the record and gets a showcase of its own on the brief instrumental “Stratoligy,” while James Delaney’s keys, Aongus Ralston’s bass, and Jason Duffy’s drums round out a rhythm section built from serious pedigree, the kind of players who know how to serve a song instead of stepping on it.
The record’s lone cover, Elmore James’ “Shake Your Money Maker,” is a smart choice and a fitting nod to the tradition Smith has spent his career carrying forward, and it slots naturally alongside his own writing rather than standing apart from it. The album closes on its title track, a sweet, swinging number in which Smith admits that for all his traveling and all his seemingly peaceful nights, he still wakes in tears, still searching for a peace that has eluded him. It is a quietly devastating way to end a record that spends its whole runtime chasing exactly that kind of grace.
At just under thirty minutes, Could Have Found Grace never overstays its welcome, and that restraint is part of its strength. Smith and his band trust the songs to do the work, and the songs are more than capable of carrying that weight. It is a record built on hard experience and honest reckoning, delivered by a veteran musician who still sounds hungry to say something true, and it stands as some of the most fully realized work of Smith’s career.
Stream Could Have Found Grace by Paddy Smith here:
https://found.ee/paddysmith_couldhavefoundgrace
The official website for Paddy Smith may be found at https://www.paddysmith.net