Maine percussionist W.F. Quinn Smith has built a reputation in the music business over the past 30 years for being able to play anything.
Besides mastering just about every kind of drum, he’s also used old pieces of metal, pipes, wooden boxes and wine glasses on sessions for Hollywood films or with major recording artists, like Daft Punk and Tracy Chapman.
Sometimes his makeshifts instruments include parts of his own body. Like when he recorded percussion for the score of the 2016 animated comedy “Storks,” starring the voices of Andy Samberg and Kelsey Grammar.
“He played his body. He made popping sounds on his cheeks and slapped his ribs,” said Los Angeles-based film composer Jeff Danna, who has worked with Smith for more than 25 years. “Most things I work on I try to get him, I’m always looking for ways to make the music different. He’s just such an unusual creative spirit.”
Smith, who uses the sole name Quinn professionally, grew up in Old Orchard Beach and moved back to Maine this year to be closer to his parents after about three decades working in Los Angeles. He’s now working out of a studio in the small town of Newfield, on the New Hampshire border.
The building, which was part of the former 19th Century Willowbrook Village museum complex that closed in 2016, also houses his hundreds of drums and found or invented instruments. He hopes someday to open the space as a museum and hold music workshops there as well.
“I have hundreds of drums and cobbled-together instruments that help me create this giant library of sound,” said Smith, 57. “Every composer has access to the same things. I try to come up with what nobody else has.”
W.F. Quinn Smith, known professionally as Quinn, taps on a piece of tin he bought at Home Depot. He has a large, eclectic collection of percussion instruments, some of which he created himself. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer
FROM WONDERLAND TO HOLLYWOOD
Smith’s relatives ran the Wonderland Arcade in Old Orchard Beach for about 100 years, until 2010. He worked there from a young age, tasked with things like giving out prizes, emptying coins from the games and cleaning out the Skee-Ball lanes. Smith’s parents, Richard and Edna Smith, were also musicians. His dad played guitar, and his mother played organ, including in church.
Smith started playing drums, and anything he could bang, around the age of 3. With other family members joining in, including his three siblings, the Smiths played together at home often. As a teen, he played in stage bands and marching bands at school and for local theater productions. He said there was “never a question” in his mind that he’d go to college for music. He ended up at the New England Conservatory in Boston, after graduating from Old Orchard Beach High School.
Smith had played with classical groups in Maine and, at first, focused on classical percussion. Then he began exploring jazz and found that satisfying as well. While in Boston, he worked at a drum shop and got to know a lot of other musicians, some of whom were playing professionally.
One of those musical acquaintances was working as a drum programmer, the person who programmed the sounds on electronic drum machines popular on Top 40 recordings in the 1980s. Smith decided to move to Los Angeles and seek work doing the same. He started writing letters to composers, usually after seeing their names on the credits of a TV show, and got work.
As he gained experience, he started getting hired for other percussion and drumming work, including for TV, films and musicians. Even then, more than 30 years ago, he was selling himself as someone who could bring a different sound to a recording. He carried a computer floppy disc of sounds he’d made on his growing collection of instruments, including Middle Eastern and African drums.
By the mid-’90s he was playing in bands, recording his own albums and doing film work, including scores for IMAX and international films. He’s also worked on music that has appeared on popular network TV shows, like NBC’s “Friends.”
Singer-songwriter Jaspr Byrnes remembers first being impressed with Smith’s creativity when she saw him perform at venues around Los Angeles. More than a decade later, when she was recording her own solo album – she’s also been a back-up vocalist for John Prine and others – her producer suggested Smith.
“He brought a whole car full of instruments. I don’t know how he fit that all in his car,” said Byrnes. “I think he hurt his back carrying it all into the session.”
Some of the drums at Smith’s Newfield studio. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer
THE BEAT GOES ON
Through the years, Smith has played on recordings or in concert with a wide range of musicians and groups, including India Arie (on songs like “Just Do You” and “Life I Know”), Phillip Bailey (of Earth, Wind & Fire), T Bone Burnett, Belinda Carlisle, Flea (of Red Hot Chili Peppers), Robbie Roberston, Dar Williams and Bruce Springsteen. He’s also recorded more than 20 of his own albums over the years.
His film and TV credits include the current Starz series “Gaslit,” starring Julia Roberts; “The Greatest Showman” (2017), starring Hugh Jackman; “The Town” (2010), starring Ben Affleck; “The Fighter” (2010), starring Christian Bale; and the live-action version of Disney’s “Lady and the Tramp” (2019).
One live performance highlight for Smith was when he played a campaign event for presidential hopeful John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee. He had toured with singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman, and Chapman was part of a show that included REM, John Fogerty and Bruce Springsteen, among others.
Springsteen was intrigued by some of Smith’s unusual instruments, including a shaker made out of a moth cocoon and some pebbles that he tied around his ankle. So when some of the musicians were called back on stage for an encore, Springsteen asked Smith to join them, with his shaker and a tambourine.
“At one point, Bruce turns his back to the audience and is just jamming with me. It was my Courteney Cox moment,” said Smith, referring to a 1980s Springsteen video where he dances onstage with Cox, giving the future “Friends” actress an early moment of fame.
Smith worked on several tracks, including “Give Life Back to Music,” “Touch” and “Motherboard,” on “Random Access Memories,” the 2013 album by eclectic French electronic duo Daft Punk, which won the Grammy award for album of the year. One of the instruments he played on that album was a “talking drum,” where he used strings to bend the pitch of the drum. He also worked with the duo on another album that has yet to be released.
“People always ask me if they wore their helmets,” said Smith, referring to the group’s stage outfits. “They were just the nicest people you’d want to meet. They were FaceTiming with their kids in Paris, with me and all my instruments.”
Working remotely in Maine, Smith is still in demand. Some engineers and composers he’s worked with say the surge in movies and TV shows being created for streaming services means there’s more competition among the creators of scores to come up with sounds that are different or original. That happens to be Smith’s specialty.
Musicians, engineers and composers who work with Smith said he’s not just known for his unusual instruments. He’s got pure drumming skills – including on standard rock or jazz drum kits – that match up with anyone’s.
“He’s got perfect timing, and this really unusual set of instruments. But it’s not just the instruments that set him a part, it’s the way he plays them,” said Brad Haehnel, a recording engineer who worked on the 2020 animated Pixar film “Onward” with Smith, among other projects. “Whenever someone wants something unusual, they get Quinn.”
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