“Well, I just want to interject this,” Clark tells me. Harris and was herself a talented songwriter. corners of modern American life with equal says. “You’ve used that word twice, and I find It is impossible to think of Clark’s work (Her composer credits include “I’ll Be Your precision. “El Coyote” is an account of a that word a little offensive when it’s applied to without the work ethic that informs it. For one San Antone Rose,” a 1975 hit for country border crossing effected by means of cash songwriting. I really think it’s poetry and it’s thing, only a man with serious resolve could singer Dottsy, and “Easy From Now On,” and a smuggler’s semi. “Rain in Durango” art. I let it get stuck on me when one of those have made it through his past few years. written with Carlene Carter and recorded takes an amused look at a modern-day hippie small record companies that puts out all the by Emmylou Harris and later Miranda who travels very lightly around the festival — what’s their name?” n Guy Clark’s songs, poetry never Lambert.) You can see her grinning with circuit. Written with Camp, it employs a I fumble around in my memory, and finally precludes psychological penetration. Clark on the back of his 1976 Texas Cookin’ Newgrass style appropriate to the song’s I get it: “Rounder.” But his work has achieved poetic album, where she looks like a woman who subject matter. “Right, Rounder had bought some masters density over his 40-year career as knows her own mind, and your mind too. “I’ve gone to festivals all my life, and you of my three Warner Bros. albums and wanted singer, songwriter, painter, teacher, Written with Gordie Sampson, “My see these little hippie chicks out there noodle- to put it out, and I said, ‘That’s fine, put it out, performer and guitar maker. Favorite Picture of You” is about love that dancin’ in the mosh pit, snakin’ around, whatever you wanna do,’ ” Clark explains IClark has brought his sure touch to bear on burns hot — Susanna’s angry gaze contrasts probably eating mushrooms,” says Camp, in his Texas-to-Tennessee half-drawl. “And everything he’s essayed, and it’s his ability with the “winter squall” Clark and Sampson who brings finesse and creative insanity the cover came out with Craftsman as the to create the illusion of equanimity amidst introduce into their narrative. With a spare to My Favorite Picture of You. He’s been title of the album. And it rubbed me wrong turmoil that comes through in My Favorite arrangement featuring Bryn Davies’ cello, working with Clark for 20 years, even though right then. My life was crazy, and everything Picture of You. the song develops like a Polaroid. The music their first meeting was inauspicious. was goin’ on, and I said, ‘Yeah, shit, I don’t Clark describes the mid-’90s period that and words match perfectly, in songwriting “I used to work at this vegetarian care,’ and the more it stuck, the more I grew saw the release of Craftsman as a turbulent so evocative and exact that it captures a restaurant in Nashville, and I was like a host offended by applying that to the art and time. More demanding, though, have been moment, and a love, for the ages in just the there,” Camp recalls, laughing. “I seated Guy at his table one day, and it was like, ‘Man, Guy It’s Clark’s abIlIty to Create the IllusIon of equanImIty amIdst turmoIl that Comes through In my favorIte PICture of you. the poetry of writing songs. At least, my the past five years. After breaking his leg single word “click.” Clark, he wants red beans and rice.’ ” Signed approach.” in 2008, the songwriter got back on his feet Clark has always been a minimalist with a to a major label in 1992, Camp began writing The moment passes, and I explain that my to play a series of live performances with a canny sense of what stuff works where. My with Clark, and he’s contributed songs and use of the word “craft” was misguided — group featuring his longtime collaborator and Favorite Picture was written and recorded licks to recent Clark albums such as 2006’s what I meant was “technique.” But the point friend Verlon Thompson. Since 2011, Clark with a variety of virtuoso instrumentalists Workbench Songs and the 2009 Somedays the sticks, and if there’s one thing that should stay has had knee replacements and an arterial and accomplished tunesmiths, including Song Writes You. with any listener who sits down with a great bypass. As he says, “It’s been a rough two Shawn Camp, Jedd Hughes and Ray The list of songwriters influenced by Clark Clark song such as “Dublin Blues” or “Broken years — I’m startin’ to get tired of this shit.” Stephenson. The collaborations introduce comprises such country and Americana Hearted People,” it’s the way that his words But Clark’s biggest loss was the death a new level of complexity to his music, but performers as Camp, Thompson, Hughes, and music avoid overt displays of technique. last year of his wife, Susanna, to whom he Clark is such an astute self-editor that it’s Rodney Crowell, Lyle Lovett (whose In the bright early-summer afternoon, as had been married 40 years. The influence never obtrusive. For example, a song written “Waltzing Fool” Clark covers on the new I bring up topics that range from irrelevant of Susanna Clark is everywhere in Clark’s with Camp, “Cornmeal Waltz,” sports a record), Steve Earle and Hayes Carll. I hear to weighty — songwriting, the influence of world. Hanging in the house is her painting of chromatic melody that mirrors the tension Clark in the work of Old 97’s songwriter Rhett Texas bluesman Mance Lipscomb on his a blue shirt — the one featured on the cover of lurking beneath Clark’s painterly lyrics. Miller, while former Go-Betweens singer and work, chord transposition — Clark seems his 1975 debut, Old No. 1. “I was talkin’ to Guy about when I was songwriter Robert Forster namechecks Clark willing to talk shop. He doesn’t really throw In fact, it’s a photograph of Susanna that a kid, I used to work in these VFW and and Van Zandt at the end of his 1991 song, me when he bristles at “craft,” but it’s an gives My Favorite Picture of You its title. As American Legion Halls in Benton, Ark.,” “Dear Black Dream.” essential point about his work, and I’m Clark explains, Susanna was angry at him and remembers Camp, an Arkansas-born multi- Clark has been honored with this year’s happy to be corrected. He is unquestionably their friend Townes Van Zandt that day — no instrumentalist who is also a fine performer Academy of Country Music’s Poet Award, an artist, yet one who discusses his art in telling what antics they were perpetrating. and a superb post-rockabilly singer in his own and he’s been inducted into the Nashville concrete, unpretentious terms of tools and He expands on the story of that frozen right. “I was tellin’ him about this old man Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. Nominated for a work. The artist has the vision, while the moment, and the “Polaroid shot someone took who used to come in there right before the slew of Grammys himself, he’s the subject of craftsman gets the job done: maybe so. But on the spot,” in My Favorite Picture’s title dance every Friday night, and he had him a the 2011 Grammy-nominated full-length, This Clark’s most enduring music uses language in track. two-and-a-half pound bag of cornmeal that One’s for Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark. Yet for a double role: His words are pigmentation and “She never had to do anything but be an he’d scatter around on that old dance floor.” all the praise heaped upon his head, Clark is a points in a narrative, and that’s craftsmanship artist,” he says of Susanna, who painted While the title song may be the centerpiece master who lauds his followers. in the service of an artistic vision, just as he album covers for Willie Nelson and Emmylou of Clark’s new record, he examines various “A lot of these young guys who >> pg. 16 14 Nashville sceNe / July 25 – July 31, 2013 / nashvillescene.com come over here and write with me are just Alabama highways is illustrated by prosaic monster guitar players,” Clark says. “Gordie highway footage, while Clark sings “L.A. [Sampson] is a young writer here in town, Freeway,” a song about falling asleep in a car from Halifax, Nova Scotia, a really good and remembering how his friend “Skinny” guitar player and singer and writer. So we’ll Dennis Sanchez once performed the old songs sit and write something and they’ll play and in the old, comforting way. In fact, Heartworn sing it, and I’ll record a work tape of it and Highways is dedicated to Sanchez, who died then I have to go back and learn it. I would in March 1975. never think of that shit.” Heartworn Highways catches Nashville As My Favorite Picture of You songwriting as it evolves from genre demonstrates, Clark is an intelligent production into a malleable, hybrid form. collaborator. But the method — the gently For these songwriters, the sticking point was nudged narrative that reveals its point of the impossibility of returning to the past and view as it introduces details and moves in its ways.