Greetings and welcome! My name is Neil Dixon Smith, I’m a guitarist based in Chicago and this is a blog dedicated to me telling the story of my life in music via my recording career spanning 1996-2026.
Effectively this blog will be a companion to a 32-track compendium released in June 2026 of music featuring my guitar playing (and occasional singing and songwriting): Neil Dixon Smith Plays Guitar (and Sometimes Sings), Music 1996-2026: An Unsolicited Retrospective
It’s available for a $19 download on Bandcamp:
And it streams free as a playlist on YouTube:
Long story short: in May 2026 an old friend and former bandmate posted a memory on social media from our old band called Más Trueno which existed in Chicago in the late ‘00s/early 10’s. This was not that unusual of a thing as every once in a while over the years someone would post something and we would all briefly reminisce about how fun it was, but this time became something a little different.
Thinking of the general internet practice among sports fans of #RemeberingSomeDudes, I started to #RememberSomeJams, thinking of that band’s unique repertoire of originals, covers and tunes in-between (we loved taking canonical/historically great dance grooves and writing new songs on them). Next thing I know I’m rooting around my hard drive gathering all the recordings I had of this band and sharing a Dropbox “box set” with my former ‘mates of every demo and rehearsal recording in my collection. Stuff I doubt anyone had listened to in 15 years.
A running theme of this blog will be about how the end of bands and musical projects that were even meant to be short-lived can be sad, sour and bit chaotic. That was certainly the case for Más Trueno, as shortly after our biggest show to date at Chicago’s Lincoln Hall our lead singer and main creative force announced he was moving to New Orleans. There were no hard feelings and we all remain friends but it was still a bummer at the time, it was a unique and fun band. We dissolved.
Like sharks, musicians need to keep moving forward to keep alive. At those moments no one is thinking about posterity, no one is cataloging who has what, no one is thinking about whether this was a project that had value, everyone just moves on.
So it was just a tremendously wonderful surprise to go through and listen to every track (all 42 of them) and hear how great it all sounded. I’ve discovered that the one and probably only good thing about getting older as a musician is you can revisit old recordings finally free of the cloudings of muscle memory and social context and hear them as they actually are.
And as for Más Trueno, well, damn, what can I say, WE WERE GOOD. We agreed on 7 tracks that we thought were ready for prime time and sent them up to the streams. Existence. Of course, no one will stumble on them, we weren’t around long enough to have fans who would care, there will be no positive consequences. But, they now exist in the space where people can at least theoretically find them. Still feels good in its way.
I began to go through the archives of all my former music projects more systematically. Eleven different bands and/or studio projects over the last 30 years involving around 36 musicians, plus solo stuff, and dang if I didn’t find a lot to love.
I also realized that in the spring of 2026 a milestone had passed, the 30th anniversary of my first officially released recordings, a 3-song cassette from my Ann Arbor, MI band called Butterfly. It seemed a proper time to put it all together so I picked the strongest tracks from each project and created my own sort of box set,
Taken together I think it is an incredible body of work. From ecstatic psychedelic collective improvisations to disciplined recreations of genre, from pure abstract groove to tight songcraft, all with a grand spirit of fun and the pursuit of unity and all bearing the fruits of education from master musicians of Jamaica, Chile and the deep stacks of one of our great college radio stations.
It’s a two and a half hour ride, I hope you’ll dig in! Perfect for a long car ride or bike ride or a series of walks – this is music for and about movement and transformation. For me, this is now a “30 years in the making concept album”, chapters building on chapters, thru lines and returning motifs, with evolution, growth and character. And it largely kicks ass.
This music was all a labor of love. Only the three Butterfly tracks from the Sound System EP were recorded for a record label, everything else was self-produced and paid for by the musicians themselves. None of these were done by any sort of “commercial recording standard”. If a studio was involved we’d have just enough time to crash in for 1-2 takes of each tune using the instruments we had on hand. Most of these projects were effectively dead by the time the recordings were finished so there were no celebrations of their release. Most of these projects only performed live a handful of times, if at all.
Nonetheless, this collection holds a wealth of talent, a wealth of energy, a wealth of ideas, performed over remarkable circumstances. I think it all stands on its own but I think a listener coming in fresh would be greatly benefited and (I hope) entertained by the stories of how these came to be. So before it all goes down the memory hole, this Retropsective needed a blog.
This blog will take the reader/listener through my life as a musician. We’ll start with where I am now, and then work back from my music and sports-obsessed youth through each project in chronological order. I’m here to celebrate this material and everyone who made it happen.
Who is this blog for? If you are reading this you are likely an old friend of and I hope you find this grandly amusing and please feel free to embellish any memory or correct the record as needed. I hope that some of my music colleagues from along the way might pop in to do the same. A lot of this blog will be about my journey as a guitarist and my ever-evolving theories about music and it would please me to no end if any younger musicians stumble over here. I think I have a rather unique skill set as a musician that may be a bit outside of what is covered in formal musical education and may offer some fresh perspectives if not direct tribal outreach.
If you stick around long enough, though, one thing you’ll eventually learn (spoiler alert) is that at 49 I became an “old dad”. My daughter will turn 9 this year and she is likely decades from having any real interest in sussing out who her daddy is, and who knows what condition I’ll be in when that happens. So while I’m still feeling relatively sharp-of-mind it’s time to get this stuff down now for her.
The outline is set so you can follow along and see where we’re going. I’m hoping I’ll be posting new stuff every week or two.
While my focus will be on music making and the creative process, I will certainly not shy away from any juicy stories, especially as things occasionally touch upon the wider culture. So get ready: University sex scandals! NBA superstars! Labor radicals! Skate freaks! Cults! Ted Nugent’s money! The Chelsea Hotel! Jamming with a reggae demigod! Nail shops! Hanging with South American guitar legends! Notre Dame? White privilege and performing for the rich and powerful! And how I connect Taylor Swift to the noise underground on the Rock-n-Roll Family Tree.
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This project is dedicated to the memories of Audrey Simon and Alfonso Chacón.
And a special shout out to the Big Daddy, Carlton Dawes, none of this would have happened without him and I am eternally grateful for the opportunities he gave me.
Of course, none of this would’ve happened without the cast of musicians. Next round is on me. Thank you.
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