Darden Smith – Western Skies

A performance of songs, stories, and photographs to get lost and find the way home through the landscape and mythologies of Texas and the American West.

Amid a series of solo road trips through West Texas in 2020 and 2021, musician Darden Smith found himself writing songs at the wheel and taking Polaroid pictures of the stark, and beautiful terrain. Inspired by the spirit of the landscape, he scribbled his observations in a notebook and found new life in old lyrics. Between words, music, and images, the western skies came vividly to life.

This new stage production is an immersive journey through a world both real and imagined, a place of mystery and mythology, possibility, and longing. Smith’s stories, songs, and photographs are steeped in isolation, though rarely lonely. They are timeless, yet acutely aware of the hours and minutes whizzing by like mileposts on the highway.