Jeff, nicknamed “Smitty,” has been a presence in the Bowling Green music community since he came to town in 1973 to study Electronics. Growing up in Vienna, Austria, Smitty took piano lessons and witnessed the emergence of artists like Led Zeppelin, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix.Once in Bowling Green, Smitty played with groups that focused on emulating the sounds of progressive Rock and Jazz groups. After incorporating the sounds of Folk and Country music into his repertoire, Smitty describes his band as “this weird eclectic group of people playing music that we wrote, then some bizarre Yes medley and, then go to Hank Williams.”
“I thought about Nashville but even back then Bowling Green had kinda a music reputation…because there were all kinds of concerts at Diddle back then, which just kinda had that reputation that somehow seeped into my suburban, adolescent brain. And, I mean, at that point, I started to get pretty serious about practicing, and playing and realizing that I had some talent that other people didn’t. So that kind of encouraged me.”