JAN (DEDON) SMITH
Jan is the songwriter of a number of signature Charmer & Smithfield Fair songs, including Wealthy Man, God Never Sleeps, Flowers In Her Hair, and Holly Hey,
Holly Ho! As a composer, she has also contributed instrumentals such as Jewel Found and Snow Child for solo piano, as well as instrumentals such as March of Time and Swept Away. She is most often inspired
by people and events in her travels. A lifelong love of literature (two of her three degrees are in literature and one in library sciences) led her to study Shakespeare in London and to remain fascinated
with books of all sorts. Stevenson Productions has recently published THE GREEN GROVE, a collection of children's stories with Scottish themes, and FROM THE ANNALS OF THE ANOINTED SEVEN, both co-authored
with Dudley-Brian. She has also served as editor for all books in the Stevenson Production book series.
Her childhood training in classical piano and love of baroque music brought her to the accordion, which she calls her 'acoustic synthesizer'. Having played accordion for twenty-five years, she has
developed a particularly melodic style which enhances the group's arrangements with many and varied textures. As a singer, she has sung everything from opera choruses to rock bands, church choirs to
all-female folk groups, even recording country music for a fellow songwriter. (Photographs left to right by Wayne Vincent - 1983; Jim Zietz - 1989; and T.J. Shuflin - 2009)
INSTRUMENTS: As the group's second guitarist, Jan uses a 2000 Westerly Guild M-20 guitar, set-up and maintained by Holger Notzel at Riverfront Music in Baton
Rouge. Her primary instrumental role is on the accordion and she currently performs and records with a Monterrey 48. In the studio and live, she prefers
acoustic pianos to synthezisers.
Smithfield
Fair Bios
