Darden Smith is a Texas-based musician and artist whose career of over thirty-five years continues to evolve and grow. He has released seventeen critically acclaimed albums and toured extensively in both the US and Europe. Among his other diverse projects, Smith has composed a symphony, scored three full-length dance theater works, produced a documentary for BBC2 Radio and written music for film and TV. His visual art is in both private and corporate collections as well as the Library of Congress. He is the cofounder and former creative director of both SongwritingWith:Soldiers and Frontline Songs, which bring collaborative songwriting to veteran and healthcare communities. The Habit of Noticing: Using Creativity to Make a Life (and a Living), a collection of his writings, photos and drawings, was published in 2018. His latest work, Western Skies (2022), is a sprawling multimedia collection comprising photography, lyrics and essays, an album of new music, a separate spoken word album (Western Skies—The Essays), videos, a suite of lithographs, and a theater performance piece that brings together the music, writings, and images.