Caroline Smith Every week, Caroline Smith receives a recipe in the mail.
It’s true, she likes to cook. She likes to sew and keep a clean house in the Twin Cities. And like the strong, powerful woman who sends the recipes every week, Smith doesn’t balk at her love of domesticity.
“You can be a stay-at-home mom, you can be a single parent and still play a huge, important role in feminism,” she says from her songwriting office space overlooking the St. Paul Saints stadium.
It’s her grandmother who Smith says keeps her grounded, funny and cynical, who stays connected through a teaspoon of vanilla extract here and a pinch of salt there.
With her shift away from folk and toward R&B, all the while existing under the umbrella of pop, Smith stresses groundedness in her music, too. Her roots, she admits, are more Destiny’s Child and Justin Timberlake than they are Jenny Lewis and Feist, the indie pop singer-songwriters she emulated on her first few albums.
Now that she’s added syncopation and slow-jam on Half About Being a Woman, her most-recent release, Smith and her band are full of gusto, she says, no matter if the venue is Minneapolis’ First Avenue, with a 1,500-person capacity, or a small library.
Or if it’s a festival stage in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We can shake on that.
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