​A few questions for Caroline Smith

HPR asked popular Minneapolis-based artist Caroline Smith a series of questions and we saved the best answers for our readers.

Smith, a native of Detroit Lakes, Minn., performs in Fargo at least once or twice a year. She’ll return this Thursday, May 7 and this time is bringing along an opener, Ashley Dubose, also a Twin Cities-based pop/R&B singer-songwriter.

High Plains Reader: You’re a big city musician with small town roots. In what ways are you still in touch with those roots?

Caroline Smith: The older I get the more and more grateful I feel for growing up in a small town. Minneapolis is so saturated with amazing artists and amazing musicians, and I didn’t have that in Detroit lakes. I actually didn’t know any people that were (gigging) musicians, period. I knew one other kid in my high school that played guitar sometimes during lunch period. That was it. That was as far as my community of artists went.

But I appreciate that because it really allowed me to become an individual and to kind of harness my own voice instead of being influenced by the people around me. I think sometimes if I would have grown up in Minneapolis I would have been really intimidated and discouraged by other talent that was happened around me and that I might not have really been an individual. I might be a conglomeration of all the artists around me growing up.

HPR: I’ve always wondered this: What were you going for with your music video for “Magazine”? It’s super cute and fun. It’s also super weird.

I really wanted to put women in their underwear in a non-sexual way. That was the whole plan. And then I really wanted to see how ridiculous it looks when you try to sexualize a man. I think it’s funny that they are covered in milk because I am little surly about the fact women are getting covered in liquid things in music videos, and I’m like, well, here we get covered in milk because it comes from woman (laughs).

But I really wanted to showcase what a woman is to a woman, not what a women is to a man. And all those ladies in the music video are really close friends of mine and like dancing in their underwear or maybe in their underwear with a shirt on; and it’s like something that generally happens when there is no men in the room at our parties. And it’s not sexual at all and nobody’s comparing themselves to the other person. And I think we have a really special, extraordinary group of girlfriends that they’re just kind of just in tune with their confidence and their bodies. But I really thought it was important to showcase that to women that maybe don’t have that. And I think it’s fun to watch it because they’re all my best girl friends and we’re all wasted in the music video (laughs).

HPR: When you first started recording music, it had a more indie-folk vibe. Now your music has a distinct R&B, pop and soul sound. Was there a distinct turning point for you that led to this?

CS: There wasn’t like a one “aha” light bulb moment … I had a bunch of old songs for The Good Night Sleeps (Smith’s band) record that didn’t ever come out, and we were going to start working on them and recording them and I just wasn’t feeling it, I just wasn’t happy. I was totally lost and the songs weren’t inspiring me.

And then we ended up covering this Aretha Franklin song and it was a song that I grew up listening to and just loved a lot. And I felt for like three minutes in my set I was actually being myself. I was actually drawing on influences that I grew up with and I just wanted to play that song over and over again. I played it in every set. And my band was like you can’t just play this cover song all year. We have to switch it up. And I was like, “Fine, then I’ll write a song like it.” And then I wrote the song “Child of Moving On.” And when I wrote it, it just felt really genuine and felt it was good to get that out there. And then I was just kind of like “I think I’m just going to write songs like this. Honest pop songs that are evocative, I guess, of something.

And I just started writing all these new songs and progressively kind of settled into the idea that I was changing direction. I was going to bag the old songs. And I think it just was coinciding with what was going on in my life, which was just kind of growing into my own skin and feeling like I deserve to have this confidence that can get taken away from women when they are younger.

HPR: Part of the proceeds of one of your newer songs, “Let Em Say,” have been going to The Women’s Foundation of Minnesota. How did you come to this decision?

CS: I was doing these shows with one of my best friends, Lizzo, an artist here in Minneapolis, and for a long time I’ve been wanting to give back somehow to the women’s community and just really do something charitable … because when you are a musician and you make your career off of being an artist of any sort, especially as a female musician, you are especially just thinking about you all the time. You are thinking about your hair, your outfit, your artistry, your whatever. Literally you just think about you all the time. And I just got to the point where I was just really exhausted with that self-centeredness, and I just felt really imbalanced and I wanted to give back.

And so we were doing these shows together, me and Lizzo, and I was like, well, we should do something to promote it. We should just do a fun song that encapsulates who we are as friends, who we are as women and what we stand for. And then I said we should donate the proceeds to charity so I don’t feel like such an asshole all the time (laughs)… So it was a great way to give back and to also make a song with one of my best friends about confidence and giving confidence back to whomever. I want to say women but I think it resonated with men too, whoever you may be going through a tough time.