Every great blues record is only as strong as the players standing behind the man out front, and on Could Have Found Grace, Irish singer, songwriter, and harmonica player Paddy Smith surrounded himself with a lineup built for exactly the kind of raw, unvarnished sound he set out to make.
The album, arriving August 4 on Tribeca Records, was tracked over three intense days at Hellfire Studios in Dublin, produced by Ivan Jackman, with the songs shaped in close collaboration with guitarist Danny Tobin. “The process was completely organic, nothing felt forced,” Smith has said of the sessions. “We trusted the songs to lead us, and in that raw, instinctive flow the album began to take shape.”
That instinct extended to the personnel. Backing Smith across the record’s eight tracks is a lineup of Irish music veterans that reads like a who’s-who of the scene’s touring and session ranks, including bassist Aongus Ralston (The Waterboys), guitarist Jason Duffy (The Corrs), and keyboardist James Delaney, a longtime collaborator of Van Morrison. It’s the kind of pedigree that doesn’t just support a song — it deepens it, giving Smith’s stories of hardship, resilience, and redemption a foundation as lived-in as the voice singing them.
A veteran of the Irish music scene in his own right, Smith is no newcomer chasing a trend. Where others bend toward the current sound, he holds the line for a rawer, older strain of blues and rock, and Could Have Found Grace — which follows his 2013 release Let Those Blues In and 2023’s The Devil’s Backyard — stands as proof that Ireland still produces artists who carry the weight of that tradition forward.
Smith’s ties to New York run just as deep as his ties to the genre. His band for stateside performances — bassist and vocalist Lincoln Schleifer, guitarist and vocalist Chris Carter, and drummer Anthony Lewis — backed him on his earlier Live in New York recording and has continued to join him for New York dates since, giving Smith a road-tested unit on both sides of the Atlantic.
With Could Have Found Grace now out via Tribeca Records, the band behind it — in the studio and on the road — gives Paddy Smith’s return exactly what a comeback of this kind needs: players who can match the honesty of the songs.
Paddy Smith holds the standard for blues and rock in Ireland — and he didn’t do it alone.
Could Have Found Grace is streaming worldwide now via Tribeca Records at found.ee/paddysmith_couldhavefoundgrace-1.