In, out and back into singing

After I Can't Take It, Ernie Smith recorded How About You and 20th Century Faces ("I remember coming from the country, going to the bus stop, saying good morning to everyone and they just looked at me," he recalled), but he did not hit until Ben' Down.

Although he had decided not to go back to accounting that day in Kingston before he recorded I Can't Take It and had duly left Reynolds, Ernie Smith had an on-and-off affair with singing. After leaving the bauxite company he was doing only music, "having a lot of fun and not making enough money to survive, having all the equipment on hock and not having enough money to pay for it".

There was a turning point when he found himself lying down in a house in Brown's Town, St Ann, the van broken down, just failed miserably in the pop and mento festival competition, still owing on the equipment and worrying about money to settle debts and fix the transportation.

Plus, there were internal problems with the band.

"It was grief. I just decided to walk away from that band, that van, the equipment. I spoke to every one of the people who I owed," he said. He followed through on his promise of repayment. "I paid every single one of them. It took a while, but I did it," Smith said.

He decided to go to art school, then on North Street in Kingston, but while he was there, persons from The Vikings band tracked him down. Their guitarist, Wallace Wilson, had broken his fingers in a traffic accident and they needed someone to fill in. So "I am going to art school and playing music at nights, making money from playing music and writing arrangements. It was slow (the arrangements), but I would struggle through. It is so powerful when you write something and then you hear a band play it".

another role

The Vikings decided to keep Smith on even when Wilson came back, working with two guitarists. He found himself taking up another role as well, as if the lead singers could not come one night he would sing, "in a much higher key, of course".

Then, The Vikings broke up and Smith started selling insurance. However, one day he looked back at his life and "I realised that the one thing I was doing all my life was music. I decided from here on it was music. By that time I had my car, my guitar amplifier. I moved around and tried to do session work".

He ended up doing Ben' Down, which put him squarely on the vocalist path.

On April 23 this year, Smith performed in Barbados at the Vintage Reggae Festival and on June 5 will be performing at Cooyabah for a retreat, at which a country and western singer from Barbados will also perform, as well as Billy Joe Neil. The Dwight Pinkney Band will play.

Ernie Smith's most recent album is Country Mile.

- Mel Cooke