RIP Matt Smith.

My “Brother from another Mother” died yesterday.

Matt was the first person I had ever heard use the phrase “Brother from another Mother”.

It was back in the early 90s, and it perfectly described our relationship.

We played together on stage like this all over the world, we did business together, we ran Guitar courses together, we loved each other. I will miss him terribly.

The one other thing I know, is that I won’t be alone.

All over the world, this man had friends and colleagues that felt just as I did about him, he touched thousands of people’s lives with his big beautiful smile, his wonderful musicality and his gorgeous deep Baritone voice, and I know there are very many people out there that wept as hard as I did when I got the news last night.

We met sometime in the early nineties at a NAMM Show.

I was the International Demonstrator for Takamine guitars and Matt did the same for Ovation and Takamine in the States. Both guitar brands were distributed worldwide by Kaman inc.

Back then Kaman had an International Sales guy called Bill Davis. He was an old school, Sales by numbers man. He couldn’t care less about the product, just wanted to see the numbers move. He visited us in the UK and was very impressed with how we had pulled Takamine sales right back up by instigating a huge Dealer tour of the UK, literally top to bottom, side to side, hundreds of dealers on board, I would arrive self contained with PA, Guitars Mics etc and all they had to do was provide a room for a clinic. It worked great. Bill however still thought he could ‘kick it in the pants’ a little more, and began to tell me that even though I was terrific, there was a guy in the states called Matt Smith who was doing the same job and intimated that he was doing it even better than me. We later discovered he had said exactly the same to Matt about me, “He’s a real barn-burner that Steve Fairclough…” in an attempt I think to make us rivals in the hope we would shift more kit.

Eventually, I heard he was playing his first show at the Acoustic Café in the Hilton at NAMM. This was a big deal for Matt, and he had a lot of people wanting to come and see what all the fuss was about, this wonderful, funny warm man, who could play any kind of guitar in any tuning and write wonderful songs and sing them in his deep rich Baritone voice. Our mutual friend Andy Schlosser took me backstage to meet him, and I have to admit that though I knew I had no problem in meeting this supposed ‘rival’, I had a secret worry that maybe he did.

What happened next, is so absolutely telling of what kind of a man Matt was.

We approached each other like two cowboys in the wild west, and Matt just shouted “Steve!!!” and threw his arms around me in a big hug.

“Wanna come out and play a couple of tunes with me tonight?”

And that was it. Right then and there, we became fast friends.

I did indeed join him on stage that evening, and his words to the audience were beautiful.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, musicians think differently. I want you to welcome on stage not only someone I’ve never played with before, but someone I just met for the first time half an hour ago, but I already know how great he is and how great this is going to be…”

And it was.

Every time after that too.

All around the world we would meet and hang and play.

Matt stayed with my family and I when we were working the Bath International Guitar festival together, and over the next few years we ran our own courses and had our own adventures.

And laughs…

My god did we laugh. We ate, drank, got stoned together, but always laughter.

He was the best company in the world…

He eventually met Shonna, and she started to look after him properly, in a way that needed to happen, and he loved her for it.

He would buy me gifts that he knew I would love, hand blown bottlenecks from Hawaii and Books on Engineering and Production. He would just call on the phone randomly and say “I just wanted to tell you that I love you and I miss you…” and that would be that.

But I wasn’t alone.

I’m pretty sure that he had 1000 friends like me, and every one of them will be hurting the way I am right now, but just to have had him in my life makes the pain worthwhile.

So fly free my old friend, and please know how much you were loved…