Rising Stars: Meet Denny Smith of The Great Affairs

Today we’d like to introduce you to Denny Smith.

Hi Denny, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
I guess the “music thing” runs in my blood, the farthest back I can trace it being my Great-Grandparents’ family band in the 1930s. They’d travel around the Midwest, with all the kids in tow, doing radio shows. All I have are photos, but I’ve always wished I could track down some actual audio from one of the appearances.

My Grandma Turbett, who was part of the act, gave me my first guitar and also gave birth to my Uncle Dave, whose cover band was the first live music I ever got to witness in person. Their version of Survivor’s “Eye of The Tiger”, and his doing the low “oom-pa-pa-oom-pa-pa-mow-mow” parts on The Oak Ridge Boys’ “Elvira” are forever etched into my memory. He also had a basement with a tiny stage in one corner, a bar, walls covered in mirrors, and a shag carpet, that always smelled of incense….and don’t get me started on the velvet painting in the living room. Something about every bit of that fascinated me.

It was years before I got a real, electric guitar though. I had to endure the “piano lessons phase” first, and then wait for my parents to get a divorce because my dad would’ve chucked that $100 Les Paul copy my mom finally bought me into a wood-chipper within a week of my first lesson. He didn’t have the patience for me playing the opening, 2-note riff of KISS’s “Detroit Rock City” for hours on end she did. I mean, I wasn’t a “natural”. I had to work on the basics.

I probably jumped the gun on getting into a band, but I was eager to make things happen, so I played in a succession of fly-by-night groups in high school, most of them never getting out of the garage, but one or two that did manage to score a paying gig at a party, or church function. They were terrible, and I’m thankful this all took place before everyone had hi-def cameras in their pocket, so most any document of these engagements is likely lost, instead of drifting around the internet in perpetuity.

Eventually, I met some guys with actual ambition, and what we may have all lacked in technical ability, we made up for in enthusiasm and work ethic. I started to get a handle on songwriting and realized that was what I wanted to be doing, above all else. Eventually, I and a handful of that crew made our way to Nashville, but we just weren’t ready to compete with what the city had to offer, so I headed back to Illinois, joined a Power Pop band called Loveshine, where I got a crash course in what REAL songwriting was, opened up a record store(that I still own today, 25 years later), and applied myself to learning how to record and engineer all these ideas I had swimming around in my head.

Somehow, a few of these recordings I had been tinkering with in my little home studio in East Peoria, IL got me drafted into a band in Los Angeles called Best Of Seven, and in pretty short order we found ourselves signing with a big management company, fielding publishing offers (that I now kind of wish I’d taken), and doing showcases for pretty much every major label on the block, at a time when that was still the way to go for a Modern Rock band. We got close, REALLY close, and truthfully may have torpedoed the whole thing ourselves, but whatever the case, after a couple of years bouncing back & forth, it had run its course, and we called it a day.

Less than a year later I landed back in Nashville, playing guitar in a band called Bombshell Crush, that once again started attracting the right kind of attention, before promptly imploding. By now I was a little more seasoned than the kid who hoofed it home the last time, so I simply dusted myself off, picked up the pieces, and decided I’d just sing the stuff myself from now on so that as long as I showed up, the show could still go on. Learning how to front a band overnight didn’t sound like a cakewalk, but it was far more appealing than being at the mercy of collective dysfunction on a semi-annual basis.

Since then, I’ve released 2 LPs with fORMER, a couple of solo albums, and The Great Affairs; my going concern for the past decade or so, is about to release our 8th full-length, called ‘Sleepwalker’ on October 13th. I started this thing in 2009, and we’ve been traipsing around the country ever since, doing records in our free time, several of them.

The band currently consists of myself on vocals & guitar, Corey “Rizzo” Rozzoni, on lead guitar, Matt Andersen on bass, and Kenny Wright on vocals & drums. Our trusty steed, Jean-Claude Damme Van is the true star in most of our adventures, and if that 1997 Ford Econoline could talk, I’d probably be turning this over to him.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Smooth? No. I jogged through the mountains of Colorado, in the dark, in January, after running out of gas, en route to a gig in California. I’ve looked into my side mirror, and seen the trailer attached to our van is sideways behind us, and about to pull us down an icy embankment, on a drive back from Alabama. I’ve fallen asleep at the wheel and driven up a barricade on the interstate in Arkansas at 5 AM, and had warped rotors nearly cause our brakes to fail while descending a 6% grade in Monteagle, TN…..and those are just ACTUAL road struggles.

In Best of Seven, we did one or two showcases where I think our management thought we had it in the bag, and when the deal failed to materialize, or maybe wasn’t the offer they were expecting (we’ll never know), the sense that the wind was going out of their sails for us; when we knew they had Nickelback and Saliva going Gold & Platinum to celebrate and apply themselves to, was pretty heartbreaking, I’ll be honest. Seeing that go down the drain was hard to come back from, especially as it was an opportunity, I had never expected to even have in the first place.

Of course, since then, all along the way have been plenty of little victories, but almost as many kicks in the teeth. It’s just the way this business works, I think. Signing bad deals (because most of them are bad, let’s face it), getting ripped off, dealing with trolls, critics, and of course the inevitable gigs where it ALL goes wrong on stage (you can almost set your watch by these).

The worst thing for me was probably when I started to notice I was losing some of my vocal range, and my voice would break in odd spots – notes that had never previously given me any trouble. Eventually, one night I lost it altogether; somewhere in South Carolina, and our drummer had to cover for me. We even talked the venue’s manager into singing a KISS song on the fly, just to pad our set, and possibly to win some points when it came to getting paid.

I ended up struggling with this for the better part of a year before I eventually saw an ENT, who referred me to the Vanderbilt Voice Clinic, where a scope determined I had developed polyps on my vocal cords. They recommended rest, to see if things might heal on their own, but ultimately surgery was required to resolve the issue. In the end, we were sidelined for several months, before and after the procedure, when I had to do both Physical and Voice Therapy for a while. The upside? – It all happened just as COVID was about to shut everything down anyway, and having never learned to sing properly, starting from scratch ended up being a blessing for me as a vocalist, as it finally gave me a chance to correct all the bad habits that had gotten me to this point in the first place.

So, you win some, you lose some, and on & on it goes. I never expect anything to come easy, and just being able to still do this, at a level where I can be proud of the output, makes all the near-knockouts worth it.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I think I’m…well, I kind of HOPE I’m known for writing catchy Pop-Rock tunes because that’s all I’ve ever really aspired to do. When I was younger, I wanted to be a hotshot guitarist, but I watch YouTube now, and there are 12-yr. olds playing like Yngwie J. Malmsteen on there all day long, so I’m glad I abandoned my dreams of being a “shredder”, and concentrated on plucking words & melodies out of the ether instead.

A DJ in Indiana once called me a “Kirkland Tom Petty”. I’m pretty sure he meant it as a compliment, but even if he didn’t, I’ll take being a discount Tom Petty any day. Somebody has to carry that torch, even if it’s a budget edition.

I’m proud of almost all of my work, even the early stuff, as ridiculous as some of the lyrics may have been, and as poorly executed as my performances were, because people still seem to remember the hooks. I did a 20th Anniversary reunion show with my first real band, 10 years ago now, in 2013, and there was a whole room of people at this festival, singing along to songs that never even got a proper release, or that had ever been recorded at all in some cases. The fact that those choruses were still lodged in their brains blew my mind.

I’ve never been a particularly accomplished singer, but I have this thing that I do, it’s mine, and I’m fine with that. The world has plenty of worthy contestants for talent shows, with perfect pitch, and 5-octave ranges. I’m content to be a “vocal stylist”, as they say. I’d much rather be identifiable than technically impressive.

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I like the diversity. I love the dining options. I hate the traffic.

Being from the Midwest, I’ve found the people here to be a lot friendlier, and more neighborly. When you’re making the kind of racket in your house that we do, you need understanding neighbors. I forgive the gas-powered leaf blower, if you forgive the occasional band rehearsal that goes to 10 PM.

Contact Info:

• Website: thegreataffairs.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/thegreataffairs
• Facebook: facebook.com/thegreataffairs
• Twitter: twitter.com/thegreataffairs
• Youtube: youtube.com/thegreataffairs

Image Credits
Joshua Ketchmark, Tommy Krantz, and Eric W. Miller