Waiting for Smith is London-born, Amsterdam based singer-songwriter Harry Lloyd. Formerly a ski instructor in the French Alps, Lloyd had an epiphany after a severe accident, that if he could walk again, he’d dedicate his life to music. After recuperating and learning to play the guitar in bed, he formed Waiting for Smith, named after his original drummer Smith, who always failed to show up. Lloyd opens up about how a severe accident led him to music...
Where did the name Waiting for Smith come from?
Smith was the first drummer that basically never showed up! That's really where it started – as a joke. I was waiting around for him to show and then I thought, ‘There’s something slightly poetic about this’. I like the philosophical feeling too, but also the fact that it's not taking itself too seriously. That is something I like to do with music – to have both those things: something to think about with the lyrics, but then to give a little bit of hope or a little bit of humour.
Tell us about how your new EP, Trying Not To Try, came together? What was the inspiration behind this record?
Everyone is pretending to be normal. But we all try to figure out these parts of ourselves, and that's what I'm really fascinated about – about mental health. The whole EP is about that subject: trying not to try.
It's a term that's always stuck with me and it came about in a song I did a long time ago called Long Life. That was a song that I wrote to myself in bed five or six years ago, when I had a big accident and it meant that I was in bed for a year.
I wrote this song to myself, which was my way of saying, ‘Hey, it's all gonna be fine’. The concept of ‘trying not to try’ came into my mind, then I kind of discovered it years later with this new EP – it just seems to sum up everything in life.
The minute we let go and we stop trying, things start to arise and arrive. But the minute we try too hard, we push too hard, we want too much, we desire too much – we have missed the point.
That's what I'm really fascinated by – that balance of how you can put effort into something and care and passion, but at the same time, let go of the outcome. It’s something that I'm curious about and hoping other people resonate with.