Hailing from Evanston, Illinois, guitarist Pat Smith has played at some of Chicago's hottest blues clubs, and countless bar and restaurant gigs from coast to coast. He spent his formative years playing everything from folk and blues to disco and country.

Pat moved to Northern California in 1987 to find some folks to play jazz with. In California he founded the highly original Quartet Io, and perfected his technique with a string of Bay Area blues bands. In 1994 Pat founded the critically acclaimed Penguin Jazz Quartet. The Penguin's second CD, On Ice, went to #6 on Berkeley's KALX FM in 1998, and made KCCK's top 20 for 1999. The PJQ were also favorites at KCSM's Jazz on the Hill and at the Healdsburg Music Festival.

Pat began playing music as a child, and cites the Beatles and his guitar-playing scoutmaster as early inspirations. In junior high, Pat discovered his mother's record stash, which included the Howard Roberts classic "HR is a Dirty Guitar Player." "It's still a favorite," says Pat. "I also got into Lenny Breau around 1975 and his playing changed my life. I don't play like him, but he is always in my approach to the instrument."

Pat played in the jazz band at Coe College, and received his degree in music composition from Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. Pat's list of guitar teachers includes such notables as Guy Van Duser, Lenny Breau, Ron Eschete, Joe Diorio, and Ted Greene.

For the past 10 years, Pat has been a perennial figure at the jam nights as JJ's Blues Café in San Jose. With Brazilian singer Raquel Ramos, Pat is a co-founder of Nossa Bossa, a Brazilian jazz quintet garnering rave reviews throughout the San Francisco Bay area. He is currently producing CDs for Nossa Bossa and blues singer Laura Johnson, and is also working on a solo CD.

Pat plays a Gibson Chet Atkins model nylon string guitar with Nossa Bossa, and enthusiastically endorses THC pickups and Klein Electric Guitars.