Jo Smith

Like Chris Stapleton, Taylor Swift, George Strait, and K.T. Oslin, Jo Smith reaches deeply into listeners’ emotions by telling stories that sprawl across the landscape of the heart. Her soaring vocals deliver soulful grooves on songs such as “Old School Groove”—illustrating Smith’s ability to get inside a song, turn it inside out, and open it out to move listeners to recall the moments in their own lives when a song played as the soundtrack of their lives—and they turn tender and yearning, as on her latest single “Wyoming,” a heart-rending traditional country weeper that creates a spacious cinematic landscape of heartbreak. As Smith herself acknowledges, “In my songs I try to create moments where there’s no filter between me and my listeners.”