Ruby Jane

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"...but the weekend's MVP award belonged to Ruby Jane. The 15-year-old hurricane sat in with Blues Traveler on Friday ("Mulling It Over") and Saturday's breakout Local Natives ("Who Knows Who Cares"), then bowled over the BMI stage on Sunday with the fiery Western swing and Americana boogie from her new EP, Feels Like Home, following an introduction by her trailer park neighbor and original Love Connection host Chuck Woolery..."
OCTOBER 15, 2010 - Austin Chronicle

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South by Say What?
South by Southwest has a long tail. Two weeks after the Festival we're still sorting through the aftermath.

"Ruby, get up here. This is your time to shine!"

That's what Lady Gaga told Ruby Jane at rehearsal for her Stubb's performance. The local fiddle phenom had been called just days earlier and asked to back up the dance diva on a country-fried version of "Bad Romance."

"It was a little different from other sideman gigs," observes Ruby, who's played second fiddle to other huge artists like Willie Nelson. "Usually they want you in the background, but Lady Gaga had me stand in front doing fiddle licks throughout the whole song." March 28, 2014 - Austin Chronicle

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By Steve Rogers and Kristin Mamrack
Dispatch Staff


If the annual Pilgrimage Tour of Homes in
Columbus is supposed to start slow and build to a big finale - this year including the annual ball and a huge air show - don't tell Ruby Jane Smith.

Monday night, the musical prodigy - at age 11, she's already an accomplished, poised singer and songwriter who is mastering multiple instruments - rocked a near-capacity crowd of some 1,000 people in Rent Auditorium during
the annual musical to kick off the Pilgrimage.

And the news is spreading fast. A CBS News crew here to do a spot on Smith may expand its coverage after just two days in town.

“I was really impressed by her,” said, Amy Birnbaum, a producer with CBS News.

“The concert was great fun and she's really talented, has a great gift,” Birnbaum said of the concert, which almost filled the auditorium in Whitfield Hall on the campus of
Mississippi University for Women.

“It looks like a really beautiful town,” she added of Columbus, noting the crew, unfortunately, hasn't had much time for sight-
seeing and will be leaving today. “I wish I could see more of it.”

Birnbaum said the program will air “in a few weeks,” but the network hasn't yet decided whether the young entertainer and her friends
- the network is getting together with them before leaving today - will air on the network's morning program or evening news.

Nancy Carpenter, director of Columbus Historic Foundation which coordinates the annual Pilgrimage, was beaming over what many
described as one of the largest crowds in several years for the musical kickoff.

“I was so tickled,” Carpenter said after the show. “Everyone really seemed to enjoy it and seemed to be having fun.

“I think it got everyone really excited and that's what it's all about,” Carpenter added of the crowd, which often got caught
up in Smith's hand-clapping, toe-tapping mixture of country, folk and blues, played through her award-winning fiddle skills as
well as the guitar and other string
instruments.

Smith was accompanied by the Larry Wallace Band.

Visitors shared the excitement.

“She's unbelievable. We'd heard about her and decided to drive over but she's more than we expected. Makes us want to come back for more now that we've seen
everything going on,” said John Chambers, who drove to Monday night's show from Tuscaloosa, Ala., with his wife Norma.

“We've been to these before but tonight was energizing. You'd never know she was just 11. If this is just the start, we want to see what else you've got,” added Sue Harris
of Starkville who has never done the Pilgrimage although she's lived in the area for six years.

“We love old homes and friends had told us about your Pilgrimage and invited us down. We haven't seen any homes yet but tonight was a treat, just a very special treat.
It's got us very excited,” said Kim and Fred Adams from Indianapolis, Ind.

By Monday afternoon, visitors had been in from 12 states, according to Carpenter.

Tickets and information on the Pilgrimage are available at the Tennessee Williams Welcome Center on Main Street in downtown
Columbus, by calling (800) 920-3533 or visiting www.historic-columbus.org

In addition to homes tours, other events today include the kickoff of the City Blocks tour from 5-6:30 p.m. on downtown streets, a musical presentation at 6:30 p.m. from the Jazz Caberet at Mississippi
School for Mathematics and Science in the Trotter Convention Center courtyard and the first candlelight tour at historic Temple Heights. Also featured on the candlelight tour is Lincoln Home. - Commercial Dispatch

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Visit http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/
13/eveningnews/main1498224.shtml to watch the video!

Little Girl, Big Musical Talent
Meet Ruby Jane Smith, An 11-Year-Old Country Music Prodigy
Columbus, Miss., April 13, 2006

(CBS) The next big thing in country music barely fills out her cowboy boots. Meet Ruby Jane Smith, an 11-year-old prodigy from Mississippi.

How old was she when she started fiddling?

"I was 2 years old," Smith says.

Ruby Jane demanded to listen to her mother's bluegrass CDs as a baby, CBS News correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi reports.

"I said, 'Mama, that's the kind of music I want to play,'" Smith says.

And she played … and played … and played.

"Fiddle, guitar, mandolin, banjo, just started the Dobro (a mechanically amplified wooden guitar), drums, piano, spoons, harmonica — and I sing," Smith says.

"I just couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing for a 7-year-old kid at that time," says Jim Brock, Smith's music teacher.

Brock — a Grand Ole Opry great — took Ruby under his wing as soon as he saw her perform. Today, she leads him on stage. The two are so in tune, he calls her the granddaughter he never had.

If it surprises you to hear an 11-year-old play this kind of music, listen to Ruby Jane. She seems to have a soul seasoned well beyond her years.

"I love writing songs. My mama thinks one I wrote is kind of a Hank Williams sorta love song thing," Smith says.

A love song by an 11-year-old?

"It's not a love song," Smith says.

Her song is called "Smoke In My Eyes." And the lyrics startled her biggest fan — her mother.

"I called up your house and your girlfriend said she's gonna be your spouse," Smith sings.

"I'm like, 'you're 11!'" her mother, Jobelle Smith, says.

Watching her, that's easy to forget.

"You'd think that I birthed her on stage. She's meant to be there; she loves it so much," Jobelle Smith says.

And while Ruby Jane is happy to just hang out, what this kid really wants to do is play.

- CBS

Up and coming meets Big & Rich (6/21)


Thursday, June 21, 2007 12:10 PM CDT

When she's not playing handbells at St. Paul's Episcopal Church on the odd Sunday morning or inspiring some toe-tapping at 4-County Electric Power Association's annual meeting, Columbus' Ruby Jane Smith and her fiddle turn up some pretty neat adventures.

The latest, on the heels of a repeat appearance at the Grand Ole Opry April 27 with Mike Snider's stellar string band, had the 12-year-old fiddler on stage with one of contemporary country music's most outlandish duos - Big & Rich.

The June 10 gig was in front of a crowd nearly 60,000 strong at the Country Music Association's annual CMA Music Festival in Nashville. The fact that clips of that performance may show up in a two-hour festival special airing on ABC July 23 is just icing on the tasty fiddle-shaped cake.

Former rocker Kenny Alphin (Big) and former Lonestar vocalist John Rich (Rich) aren't just outside the box. They kicked out the box walls, emerging from the infamous MuzikMafia, that informal group of Nashville-style singers, songwriters and musicians who passionately banded in support in 2001. (Mafia, in this case, stands for Musically Artistic Friends In Alliance.)

They championed genre-blending. Witness B&R's latest “country” album, “Between Raising Hell and Amazing Grace.” Neo-soul singer John Legend and Haitian hip-hopper Wyclef Jean guest, and a blow-out cover of AC/DC's bombastic “You Shook Me All Night Long” is getting a lot of talk.

In the hop-skip-and-jump since 2004's debut album, Big & Rich have become a front-row force, even if some country music purists are still gritting their teeth. Both are active songwriters. Rich penned, among others, Faith Hill's No. 1 “Mississippi Girl,” and Big Kenny wrote Tim McGraw's No. 1 “Last Dollar (Fly Away).”

As for Ruby Jane, having the two influential offbeat cowboys in her circle of friends certainly can't hurt. The major label heavyweights seem high on artist development. “We've been beneficiaries of artists bigger than us giving us breaks,” Rich said in a recent AP/ABC News article, referring to McGraw's leg-up in '04 when he booked the pair on a 75-city tour. “In turn, we try to pass that along.”

Not long after she played the last note at the 4-County do last Thursday, young Smith headed north. Far north - to Wisconsin and Minnesota, opening for the Hackensaw Boys and playing festivals. Just ahead on her dizzying itinerary are fiddle camps and the 36th annual Fiddlers' Jamboree and National Fiddlers Championship July 6-7 in Smithville, Tenn.

Armed with pre-teen energy, mom Jobelle at her side, and a big RV on the open road, Ruby Jane is on the move. Not even she can know where the miles will take her.

To learn more about this young Columbus musician, visit www.mississipppifiddler.com. - Commercial Dispatch

http://www.austinwomanmagazine.com/Articles/2009/09_SEP/32_awtw.html - Austin Woman Magazine

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Columbus fiddle player to appear on ABC TV program

By Irene Miller
imiller@cdispatch.com

Wednesday, July 11, 2007 11:59 AM CDT

Ruby Jane Smith, a 13 year old musician of ten instruments from Columbus, is having a star-studded summer.

After a surprise phone call from ABC, Smith attended the County Music Awards Festival in Nashville last month.

Smith, her fiddle and pianist from Brooklyn, were chosen to warm up with the country group Big & Rich during their sound check before the show.

“We thought we were only going to jam with them and then we got there and they invited us to play with them on stage,” Smith told the Dispatch in a phone interview Tuesday morning. “It was very exciting. I couldn't believe.”

The disbelief didn't end there.
*

“We had our own chauffer,” Smith said. “We had our own stylists.”

After an introduction by the band, the lucky musicians took the stage.

“They called our names and we went up there and played ‘Radio' in front of 60,000 people in a stadium in Nashville,” remembered Smith. “It was like this rush. The band was loud and the crowd was screaming.”

That adrenaline rush may be reoccurring in the near future.

“Big and Rich told me they were going to call me sometime soon and we're gonna play together somewhere,” stated Smith. “I absolutely love them, they're really great people.”

In addition to playing with her favorite band, Smith met other country stars, including Gretchen Wilson, Miranda Lambert and Taylor Swift.

“I met Brad Paisely and got to hang out with him,” mentioned Smith. “He was just sweet and very friendly.”

All the country music stars and Smith's performance can be seen during ABC's “CMA Music Festival: Country's Night To Rock,” which airs Monday, July 23. - Commercial Dispatch Online

By Carmen K. Sisson | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

COLUMBUS, MISS. – Ruby Jane Smith is perched on a shaggy floor pillow in the middle of her sky-blue bedroom, suede-booted feet crossed, head tilted, and brows furrowed as she tries to remember the night she forgot what city she was in during a performance. It's understandable if the past three years seem a blur. Between winning her first fiddle competition after only six lessons, taking the Mississippi State Fiddler title, and performing at the Grand Ole Opry, life's kind of busy these days.
Particularly when you're only 11 and there's a disco birthday party to plan and Lemony Snicket to read.

Yet if Ruby Jane's schedule seems unusually crowded for someone who still has stuffed animals, it's because she is something of a child prodigy - perhaps the South's next great bluegrass musician.

"She's born with it - all it's got to do is come out," says Opry legend Jim Brock, who has been training her. "At the rate she's going, she's going to be a top-notch musician."

Last night, Ruby Jane enthralled a hometown audience with a performance at the Rosenzweig Arts Center here. Clogs beating out a steady rhythm, flowered skirt whirling, she blazed through a few of the nine instruments she plays - fiddle, mandolin, guitar, harmonica, banjo, Dobro, piano, drums, and spoons - singing bluegrass favorites written long before she was born.

Almost every performance results in invitations for others, adding to her crowded schedule. Monday and Tuesday nights are dance lessons, Wednesdays are the handbell choir at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Thursdays are violin lessons with Mr. Brock, and Sundays are the church youth group.

Tonight, she's home - for a change. It's a rarity she and her mother plan to celebrate by snuggling in bed with cartons of greasy Chinese food and a movie. For all her accomplishments, Ruby Jane is still very much a preteen, from the turquoise feather boa and butterfly party lights draping her mirror to the Johnny Depp and Napoleon Dynamite posters covering her wall.
Poised and polite, with a megawatt gap-toothed grin, she neglects to mention the slew of regional awards she's won or the CBS Evening News interview earlier this year, when Bob Schieffer called her "the next big news in country music."

In typical Ruby Jane fashion, words tumbling faster than her tongue can shape the syllables, she recites a litany of musicians she admires. Not surprisingly, Brock - who's spent the past 50 years playing with some of the biggest names in bluegrass - figures prominently on that list. Since taking her on three years ago, he's become not only her mentor, but a surrogate grandfather.

Their meeting was a combination of hard work and serendipity. Her mother, JoBelle Smith, took her to see bluegrass musician Rhonda Vincent in concert. Before the performance, Ruby Jane went backstage to meet Ms. Vincent. The girl was carrying her fiddle, as she always does. Vincent dashed through a rendition of "Boil Them Cabbage Down" and asked Ruby Jane to play it. She did - so well that Vincent asked her to perform it onstage.

"I was sweating because she'd never played that song before," Ms. Smith recalls. "I was looking at her like, 'You can run if you want to,' but Ruby Jane got up there with a big old grin and played the fire out of that song."

Brock was in the audience. "I couldn't believe I hadn't heard about her," he says.
Four days later, Ruby Jane's mother called and asked him to teach her. "I'd taught in the past, but not in years," says Brock. "My house is small; I've got no studio. It's just a lot of trouble."

He agreed to meet her at the Columbus Senior Center where he was performing. By the time she finished playing for the silver-haired crowd, Brock was scheduling her first lesson. "I went home and told my wife, 'I've got this little girl coming over,' and she said, 'I thought we said we weren't going to do this,' " he remembers, chuckling softly. "I said, 'Well, I'm going to teach this one.' " Within a month, he stopped charging her for the lessons.

Since then, the young chanteuse has become beloved at the senior center. Ruby Jane says she has friends of all ages, from 2 to 82.

"They just love her and want to talk to her for hours," teases her mother, as Ruby Jane blushes. "At Wal-Mart especially, they're like, 'There's my Ruby Jane!' "


Her mother credits her social ease with home schooling, which she says removed the limitations of generational constructs. An artist and photographer herself, Smith proudly admits that neither of them are conformists. From the moment she was pregnant, she tried to fill Ruby Jane's head with as many good things as she could, reading and playing classical music for her while she was still in the womb. She wasn't daunted either when Ruby Jane's father disappeared in her third trimester. She simply moved in with her parents and made her only child's life as rich as possible.

"I thought literature and art and music and poetry were so important," she says. "I didn't know what she was going to do. I just knew it was better than sitting her in front of Barney."

When she began showing an interest in violins at age 2, her mother convinced a local teacher of the Suzuki method to teach her, even though the training usually doesn't begin until age 3. Smith studied right alongside her - until Ruby Jane turned 5 and her skills surpassed her mother's. When she become fascinated with bluegrass at 8, her mother put aside her qualms and spent six months searching the state for anyone who could lead her down this new path.
While Ruby Jane loved classical music, it didn't speak to her soul the way this wild, joyful slice of Americana did. It was raw and expressive, deeply emotional, and inherently fluid.

"I can't predict and say I'm doing any of this right," Smith says of her parenting. "I just step out and do what seems right at the moment."
***
Mother and daughter are at a crossroads again. Record companies are beginning to pursue her, offering contracts and advice. But at the heart of it all, Ruby Jane - reader of the Chronicles of Narnia, unabashed lover of chicken fingers and riding four-wheelers with her friends - is still young, too young for what's being offered.

"I'm not selling her," Smith says, taking a batch of cookies from the oven. "I'm not putting that kind of pressure on her. It will come, just not yet."

With cheerful aplomb, Ruby Jane says she doesn't mind waiting. She's writing songs, exploring jazz, studying Latin and Greek, and - oh, yeah, trying to read all of Shakespeare's plays "for the challenge." Every spare moment is given to practice, from 10 minutes to six hours a day. "I don't really have downtime," she says, without a trace of ego or regret. "I'm always trying to accomplish something or get something going."

Taking a moment to recite her favorite poem from memory, Rudyard Kipling's "If," Ruby Jane pauses to reflect on the poet's admonition to treat triumph and disaster equally and dream without making dreams your master.
"Every show there's something to improve on, but it's not all about hitting the notes right," she says. "I'd sit and play for hours."
Indeed, her favorite word is "encore," and it's a good thing, too - a lot of people predict that the little girl from Mississippi is about to learn a new word: fame.

- Christian Science Monitor