“Studebaker” is an instrumental by the guitarist Kenny Smith, born in Nine Mile, Indiana, in 1967, and it opened his first solo album, also called Studebaker, released by Sugar Hill in 1997 (SHCD 3869). Smith had played professionally with Claire Lynch’s Front Porch Stringband from 1993 and joined the Lonesome River Band in 1996, taking over the guitar chair from Tim Austin. The album was mostly instrumental, and its guests included his Lonesome River Band colleagues Sammy Shelor, Ronnie Bowman and Don Rigsby, his wife Amanda Smith, and Barry Bales and Adam Steffey of Alison Krauss’s Union Station.
Smith recorded the title tune as a quartet: his guitar with Steffey on mandolin, Shelor on banjo and Bales on bass. Reviewing the album on WVIA-FM in November 1997, George Graham called it one of the more upbeat pieces on a record of mostly easy-going tempos, with a “memorable melody line.” He also noted that the next track, the solo guitar piece “Me and My Farmall,” was “another tune named after an old piece of machinery.” Sugar Hill later included “Studebaker” on its 1999 sampler Sugar Hill Snapshots: Bluegrass Contenders.
