He grew up in New Orleans, and lived briefly in Paris where he and his twin sister Mary Catherine attended French public school.

Two years later, Smither graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in New Orleans and went on to attend the University of the Americas in Mexico City planning to study Latin-American anthropology like his father.

In 1964, Smither flew to New York City two days prior to boarding the SS United States for the five-day transatlantic voyage to Paris for his Junior Year Abroad program, which his father helped administer for Tulane.

[5] Smither followed this advice, and arrived at Club 47 in Harvard Square several weeks later and found von Schmidt performing.

[1] Following this early success, Smither's recording and songwriting career had a long fallow period while he struggled personally.

In 1979, he was featured in Eric von Schmidt and Jim Rooney's book, Baby Let Me Follow You Down,[9] and the next year in the UK's Melody Maker magazine.

In 1984, Smither's belated third album, It Ain't Easy was released on Adelphi Records,[1] which the Boston Phoenix acoustic music critic Jon Herman called "the naked and sophisticated blues album that Eric von Schmidt, Rolf Cahn, Spider John Koerner, and other white revivalists groped for more than 20 years ago, at the dawn of the folk revival."

Two years later, he was invited to compose music for a documentary on Southern folk artists and met Southern folk artist Mose T. In 1993, Smither recorded and released his fifth album, Happier Blue (Flying Fish),[1] which earned Smither a National American Independent Record Distributors NAIRD award.

The next year, he released his seventh album, Small Revelations (Hightone), and filmed an instructional guitar video for Happy Traum's Homespun Tapes in Woodstock, New York.

HighTone reissued Another Way to Find You and Happier Blue and Jorma Kaukonen invited Smither to teach at his Fur Peace Ranch in Ohio.

The following year, songwriter Peter Case invited Smither to be part of a Mississippi John Hurt tribute record for which he contributed the opening track, "Frankie and Albert".

"[citation needed] On February 8, 2011, Smither was profiled in The New York Times "Frequent Flier" column,[13] entitled, "The Drawbacks of a Modest Celebrity," in which he recounts anecdotes from his four decades as a traveling musician.

Smither followed these fan-projects with Hundred Dollar Valentine (2012), a studio record rated with five stars by the magazine MOJO.

With longtime producer David "Goody" Goodrich at the helm, this collection sported the unmistakable sound Smither has made his trademark: fingerpicked acoustic guitar and evocative sonic textures meshed with spare, brilliant songs, delivered in a bone-wise, hard-won voice.

American Songwriter magazine published Smither's blog about making his first record of all original material in his four-decade career.

To commemorate his career to-date, on September 30, 2014, Signature Sounds released an all-star tribute record (Link of Chain: A Songwriters' Tribute to Chris Smither) including a list of artists offering their takes on some Smither favorites including Josh Ritter, Bonnie Raitt, Loudon Wainwright III, Dave Alvin, Peter Case, Tim O'Brien and Patty Larkin.

[4] Keys to Tetuan by Israeli novelist Moshe Benarroch uses a line from Smither's song "I Am The Ride" on the opening page.