Meet Smitti Supab | Professional Musician, Jack-of-all-trades

We had the good fortune of connecting with Smitti Supab and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Smitti, what do you attribute your success to?
The most important factor behind my success? That’s a fun question to answer. It’d have to be:

The ability to continually redefine and refine what “success” means.

Right now, this very instant, I’m going to define “success” as being able to organize my thoughts and answer well enough to communicate what this ability is. We’ll see if I’m successful!

It may sound silly, but it’s very real. “Success” is such a loaded word, especially in the arts. Many people have such little understanding of it, many people project such different versions of it onto others, and it’s not easy to figure it all out 0r steadfastly carry on with your own idea. And if you set yourself up with an impossible idea of “success” for too long, then you may spend most of your life feeling like a failure.

17 years ago I thought “success” was the ability to play music full-time for a living, not having any other jobs to support myself, becoming a “professional musician”. So I saved up some money one year and quit my teaching job and figured out how to do that for a few years. Instead of resting on my laurels, I redefined “success” as playing in “better” bands or playing in my own band(s). Then I decided that it meant playing original music, and then being in a touring band, and then recording music, and then playing festival stages, and then playing with truly great musicians who toured or recorded or played live with my musical heroes.

In a funny twist, at some point I redefined “success” as the ability to play or make music while having another job to support myself, taking inspiration from the great Muddy Waters and the Neville Brothers and countless other musicians that I talked to or heard about through stories and by reading autobiographies.

I’ve been lucky enough to somehow achieve all of these goals and more. But it sure wasn’t easy, and it took a lot of work! I’ve had plenty of moments where “success” meant “hitting it big” or playing with a band that would do so, or getting signed to a record deal, but those moments came and went. I’ve been careful to avoid measuring success in likes and followers, or retweets and dollars.

At some point “success” changed from trying to be a great musician to trying to be a great person. That was a pretty pivotal moment in my life, and gave me a lot of permission to be myself without feeling guilty about lack of practicing.

Nowadays the broadest definition of “success” I can come up with is “meaningful living”, and because it’s such a dynamic and fulfilling endeavor, it hasn’t really gotten old. But it still takes many forms, daily and weekly, monthly and yearly. The ability to adapt and roll with the flow while still having something clear to work towards, or to be comfortable shameless and confident when changing that goal, is imperative!

Please tell us more about your art. We’d love to hear what sets you apart from others, what you are most proud of or excited about. How did you get to where you are today professionally. Was it easy? If not, how did you overcome the challenges? What are the lessons you’ve learned along the way. What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?
I’m most excited about my band, Captain Buckles. We’re putting the PUNK in FUNK! I mean, FUN in FUNK! I mean… ok, technically, there isn’t a “P” in FUNK, but we’re actually trying to do both anyway. And the band Parliament-Funkadelic is often called P-Funk, so there you go. And just like P-Funk, we’re trying to put the punk spirit and fun into a bunch of other music outside of funk, too, like rock and blues and rock n’ roll and RnB and soul and country and and and…

After five-plus years of experimenting with the idea of “letting gravity do its thing”, the band is finally coalescing into a vehicle for expressing ourselves seemingly without compromise or limits. We’re all seasoned professional musicians who have been living in New Orleans for many years–some of us born here–that are doing in this band what I’ve increasingly suspected was possible, that we can play music together for the pure joy of exploration and artistic creation, as free as possible from other agendas or self-aggrandizement. No ideas about trying to get signed, trying to become famous, trying to get rich, etc… How fun and liberating and challenging and unique is that! We take a lot of risks, we improvise a lot with solos and song structures and “set lists”, we hardly tell each other what to do. We kinda just cook for each other, hang out, get together and try to be ourselves and play and react and see what kind of magic happens. We’ve written over two hours of original material that we use as vehicles to experiment with and we’re constantly learning and writing and rewriting songs in this band and in other bands, so I’m pretty pumped on how much momentum we have. People are digging our shows more and more, just as we’re digging them more and more.

I’m ready to ride this vibe ’til the wheels fall off. A bunch of bands I love did at least the music part of it for a few years. The Band. The Allman Brothers. The Meters. The Neville Brothers, to name a few. They lived together, spent tons of time together, fought with each other, worked their butts off, said “yes” to each other. However influenced by their individual egos and agendas, they achieved some great sounds, vibes, and wrote some great songs! Bands–not just groups of people getting together in order to cash in on a trend or two, or solely live a rock star dream. There’s too much to unpack and analyze–tons of books and documentaries have been made about these bands and more–but they’ve generally served as role models for Captain Buckles in various ways.

Outside of Captain Buckles, I’m very grateful and continually excited about being a full-time musician here, playing upright or electric bass with some of New Orleans’ greats, however sung or unsung. I’m uncertain that name-dropping will be very useful here. Most of my gigs nowadays are New Orleans traditional jazz gigs on upright bass, which is great because there’s so much history, improvisation, room for growth, and a groove in it that’s applicable to many other styles of music which I like to play. Historically, it did precede a lot of later music styles, so it makes sense. I sometimes do substitute gigs on electric bass for other styles, including blues, funk, soul, r&b, pop, country, folk, and rock, but much less than I used to. Then I get to bring all that experience back into the band.

It’s an amazing privilege and honor to be able to do this for a living, and it takes enormous amounts of growth, effort, gratitude and perspective to combat stagnation and entitlement. To be able to travel regularly and still have people think of me as a bassist to call when I return is awesome, but having practiced and soaked up enough good stuff in New Orleans to have something to offer on the gig is a dream come true. Having venues agree to book my own projects has been a boon. Being able to travel to other cities inside or outside the USA, alone or with my band, to play music and get paid has been insanely liberating. Luckily for me, I’ve been on an addicted-to-musical-growth kick this past year, practicing alone with my instrument a lot lately… so these opportunities will take on more meaningfulness.

There’s quite a few jokes about bass players not having to practice because there’s such a high demand for them and they get so many gigs anyway. I’ve definitely been guilty in the past!

Being a bass player that learns the music and shows up on time with a positive attitude and dedication to groove has been a tremendous asset to finding work over the years, Being Asian-American may have helped me be more noticeable since we’re such a minority already, and even more-so in the professional American popular music scene anywhere outside of Asia. Having no historical background or cultural claim to this music has given me the freedom to explore all of it as a wide-eyed (and wide-eared) outsider, free of many kinds of hangups or certain types of pride that I’ve found the scene often rife with. Picking up the bass for the first time rather late in life, at the age of 24, is also a unique experience.

But whether or not it was easy getting here is debatable. What’s less debatable and more important is how difficult it was to define what “getting here” meant, and where “here” was. In the fifteen years that I’ve been playing music professionally, and at times hell-bent at discovering what that could mean, my ideas about success have transformed so many times and often so drastically that I’m amazed I’m still doing it at all. Although fifteen years is a drop in the bucket compared to lots of professional musicians I know, I’ve come to some pretty solid conclusions in the past four years that have really rocked my world, and contribute immensely to the feeling of success.

For me, music at its best is art. Life at its best is full of art. And the best art is full of living, and life! Whether it’s a great song, piece of writing, picture, movie, perfectly-timed quip in a conversation, cooked dish, great decision… it takes living and life to spawn the stuff I like, stuff that people can relate to and be drawn towards. Maybe I’m opening a can of worms here. I remember reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and being so bored by the author’s discussion of what “quality” is that I quit reading it at the age of 19 and haven’t picked it up since. I probably wasn’t ready to understand it, having lived so little and been so clueless about cooking, reading, singing, teaching, playing music, health, fitness, romance, mechanics, conversation, and a gazillion other things that I love to practice nowadays. I believe that everything matters. From your intention, to your practice, to your thoughts and conversation and how you see yourself, it all matters. It’s all part of life, and if you dedicate some of your time to getting paid to do art, or if you want to be a professional artist, your art is going to reflect these things, your idea of success, and more.

I’ve quit playing music full-time many times to supplement my income. To teach, serve cocktails, work in carpentry, do computer stuffs, maybe rarely more than part-time and only for years or months at a time–but it helped me a lot. Often I was feeling out of touch with the everyday person’s reality and those stints helped me get perspective on why I play music professionally, It’s really factored into my music and performance, and I play with an appreciation and gratitude that I never knew was possible.

There are many high-paying gigs that I’ve done and could’ve chased or chase now, but so far they aren’t the ones that fulfill me as much as the ones I’m doing for less. What if someone paid you a living wage to perform your least-favorite song every day, five times a day? Everyone has a price, and it’s up to us to decide what that is and helpful for us to decide why.

Here’s an idea: maybe if I put together a really great [insert something here] band, we could hit it big and make make tons of money and tour the world. I’ve thought like that before. But is that the kind of music that you want to focus on right now? Why? Who would it be with? Are those the people you want to be hanging out with? How well do you know them? How much money is enough for the first year? And the second? Which countries would you have to visit before you felt satisfied? What if your show is famous for setting guitars on fire, are you cool with doing that gimmick every night?

There are so many questions like these and more that I never knew about but are so important to answer. And there are so many more. Some people chase fame, but what do they want to become famous for? And a lot of musicians feel like they’re not legitimately “artists” unless they write their own music, or are famous for it. I felt that pressure before, and it really dampened my musical mojo at times. I’ve read tons of musician’s autobiographies, asked tons of people for advice, and have gone and continue to go outside of my comfort zone countless times.

Right now, I’m just super grateful for everything, including being pumped and stoked and focused and filled with energy to do what I’m doing. I’m mostly focused on getting that magic moment, that happens in music and so many aspects in life, the “gasm”–and getting it as much and as often as is humanly possible. You can’t force it. And it takes a lot! It takes a village and more, it takes holding space for others, it takes gravity, it takes being able to go with the flow, it takes improvisation, it takes being able to deliver the goods. All of this has required tremendous amounts of mindful practice and work, but it’s come more and more naturally over the years.

I think that most creative people are focused on what other people want. With the rise of the social media influencer and TikTok celebrities, it’s probably gotten so much more out of hand than before. I think we should focus on what we want to do, and figure out why, and decide whether to do them or not based on those reasons. Examine our intent. Then follow through and see what happens. It leads to interesting phenomena and “side effects”: I’m not focused on getting paid more, but it seems to be happening, maybe because what I’m focused on is having fun and being as real, brave, and human as possible. I’m not focused on “getting famous”, but I’m getting more exposure for maybe the same reasons. Personally I really gravitate towards people who seem to focus on or embody these things, and am often repelled by those who focus on fame and fortune. Maybe it isn’t just me!

In an increasingly technology-driven world, deciding what it means to be ourselves, finding our humanity, finding comfort in our own skin, seems more and more difficult to do. If we’re lucky enough to find that sweet spot, it still takes constant effort to maintain. I want the world to know that it’s possible–even for me, who used to be an aimless, clueless, insecure computer geek who grew up in Southern Californian middle-class suburbia. Maybe I’ll inspire people to face humanity, to be able to stare it down and let it wash over and overwhelm them in its ugliness, and still find beauty and kindness, to be grateful. Many people withdraw, and many retreat into the digital world–I know how guilty of that I’ve been in the past. But what I do and say now, how I present myself and the ideas and the music and with whom… all of it counts, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share and work to embody these ideas. Thanks for reading!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I recommend checking out the WWOZ Livewire online for acts playing in town. You may not recognize a lot of them, but it’s a pretty thorough list of music happening on any given night. Some local acts that I love and I think are worth checking out if they’re in town and not out touring are Jon Cleary, Soul Rebels, Dumpstaphunk, Tab Benoit to name a few.

But the city has awesome music full of non-touring bands. For New Orleans traditional jazz, the Mahogany Jazz Hall has had some killer players and hosts a great intimate cocktail bar atmosphere just about every night, with the late night set being a full band. Bacchanal has a nice casual jazz vibe in an outdoor wine bar setting. There are some killer old school cover bands on Bourbon St., at the Funky 544 or Fat Catz doing Motown and Earth, Wind, and Fire type stuff all the time. There’s a great classic rock cover band scene on Bourbon St. also, at the Bourbon Bandstand or Famous Door or Tropical Isle. Frenchmen St. has a lot of bands as well, mostly a mix of covers from blues to pop to jazz, but d.b.a and Snug Harbor are the ones that tend to lean on the more originals side of the spectrum. Tipitina’s and the Maple Leaf are iconic venues uptown, the former being a high capacity venue, that often book local touring bands. The Fillmore and the Saenger Theater and the Joy Theater host bigger touring acts mostly from out of town, but sometimes have local shows that slam.

I’m reluctant to list the less touristy places, of which I’m lucky enough to be privy to, where you can dance two-step or catch some amazing punk or heavy metal music or dance atop cars and construction vehicles or roller skate dance the night away, because most of these scenes wouldn’t have the same charm if they were filled with tourists. I’ll have to check in with them first.

There’s a bunch of good dining experiences in town, but I’m more experienced in the less fancy end of the spectrum. Toast is one of my favorites, Elizabeth’s is famous and good, Small Mart is great, all of them for brunch stuffs, and none of them at the $2 breakfast price point–I know of those places but I don’t know if I should recommend them. On the vegetarian side, 1000 Figs and The Green Room Kukhnya crush it! The Joint is still great barbecue that never disappoints if you’re not expecting Texas or Kansas City-level stuffs. Parkway is consistently great for poboys as everyone already knows but I’m not such a connoisseur so I haven’t explored that many poboy spots. Eat-well Food Mart does the most decent Vietnamese food for the downtown area but it’s a corner store, not a restaurant, and Tan Dinh on the Westbank crushes it but is further away. But if you’re over on the Westbank, do Panda King dim sum on the weekends during brunch hours! Back down in downtown, Dian Xin has pretty decent Chinese and Hong Kong style eats, and Budsi’s Thai restaurant kills it. N7 is an excellent fancy fusion place, and Superior Seafood Bar & Grill used to have a super affordable Happy Hour before their prices went up–still good oysters though. I’m afraid I’m not much help in the fine dining realm, of which there are a ton of in the city.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My goodness! I’m so truly grateful to so many people who I’ve met and many I’ve never met. Every one of them certainly deserves credit and recognition, and I would take a book to encompass them all and how. It’d include every single person that’s trusted me to support or lead them on the bandstand and off, every single person that’s provided a nugget or two of insight and/or wisdom through their actions or words, every single person that directly or indirectly gave me inspiration and love…

But for those whose recognition on here may be useful, I can think of a few:

Christopher Martin, musician and ESL teacher, my first musical soul brother, also my first inspiration to make and keep contact with good friends from all around the world.

Regi Brown, who sang with Ray Charles and Gladys Knight for years, my first friend with a direct connection to some of the most powerful music in the universe.

Michael Darby, New Orleans rock n’ roll legend (if you know, you know), my first friend and bandleader to make me feel directly connected to some of the most powerful music in the universe.

The city of New Orleans, where I’ve lived in for ten years, my first direct connection to the life conditions that had a large influence on some of the most powerful music in the universe.

My partner of many years, the first to show me that it’s possible to voice hard truth in an increasingly considerate way without sacrificing integrity or intent.

Website: https://www.SmittiSupab.com

Instagram: @SmittiSupab

Twitter: https://twitter.com/smittisupab

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SmittiSupab

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@smittimusic

Other: https://www.CaptainBucklesBand.com – Captain Buckles website @CaptainBucklesBand – Captain Buckles Instagram & Facebook handle

Image Credits
Doug Kosydar, Christine DuMouchel, Kaley Poim, Cordel Anderson, Stephen Anderson, @mila_photographie