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Home , Bryn Davies (musician), Carlene Carter, Dublin Blues, Gordie Sampson, Guy Clark, Hayes Carll

“Well, I just want to interject this,” Clark tells me. Harris and was herself a talented . 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 and recorded takes an amused look at a modern-day hippie small record companies that puts out all the by and later Miranda who travels very lightly around the festival — what’s their name?” n ’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 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 , “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 ClarkI 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 ’ 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 . 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 , Jedd Hughes and Ray The list of influenced by Clark Clark song such as “” 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 , (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 is everywhere in Clark’s with Camp, “Cornmeal Waltz,” sports a record), and . 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 that day — no instrumentalist who is also a fine performer Academy of ’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 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, , 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.” 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. Nashville sold genial mirages, but controlled cadences — remains his. “My Clark and the other songwriters sometimes songwriting is pretty much what it is, and skirted sentimentality in the classic folkie usually, if I’ve been co-writing with someone manner as they turned folk-country-pop into and someone leaves, I heavily edit those elegies for the irretrievable past. Clark’s songs to suit my sensibilities,” he says. genius was to give this romantic quest the “They’re my songs by the time they get on bones to walk, ridding it of flab without the record.” losing the dramatic backdrop that seethes in On his most recent work, Clark works his songs. within severe stylistic parameters — the Clark had come to Nashville in November performances are mostly drumless and 1971, just as he had turned 30. Born on Nov. almost all acoustic. But there’s nothing 6, 1941 in Monahans, Texas, Clark grew up constrained about his new music, though it in a literature-loving household. “We never clearly passes the rigorous tests Clark gives had a record player around the house, but we himself. Oklahoma-born songwriter and were encouraged in the arts from day one,” guitarist Verlon Thompson is another long- he says. “My mother was kind of theatrical — time Clark associate who has learned from she would always be puttin’ on little readings Clark’s example, having played with him on and plays. After dinner, we’d sit around and stage and produced him in the studio. read poetry out of a book.” “He doesn’t approach the studio a lot Clark’s father’s law partner — a woman differently than his live show,” Thompson named Lola Bonner — was among the group says. “He goes in, he sits down, he performs of doctors and lawyers whom the young Clark the song, and everyone plays along until he’s heard playing folk music, and these informal happy with his performance. He’s been pretty song sessions inspired Clark to become a consistent about not trying to add too much to performer. The family had moved from the songs, you know. If it doesn’t really lend Monahans in West Texas to Rockport, not something, it doesn’t end up on the record.” far from the Gulf Coast. Clark’s father had For Rodney Crowell, the Texas-born returned from World War II and had decided songwriter who hung out with Clark in to go to law school in . Nashville in the ’70s, as Van Zandt and Clark “He got a law degree and passed the helped reinvent Nashville songwriting bar with the highest grade in the state,” along literary lines that would have Clark says of his father. “He was one of been unthinkable a decade earlier, Clark those brilliant guys, and he practiced law synthesizes folk and country. in Houston for six months, and then, I “Lookin’ for that definition of what makes remember, we drove all around Texas and he a Guy Clark song, you gotta start with that really liked the hill country, but he couldn’t folk tradition,” Crowell says. “It’s where the find the right situation.” clarity of your language is very important. Clark’s father settled in Rockport, where At the same time, reality had been shattered he took over the practice of a lawyer who by Dylan’s apocalyptic imagery. Artists are was ready to retire. At this stage, the family constantly reassembling, and I think Guy just moved back and forth between Monahans reassembled all the images that were floating and Rockport. As Clark remembers, “We in a very concise, literary way.” spent the winters on the Gulf Coast and the As Crowell says, Clark came from the folk summers in Monahans, and I mean, it was tradition, but he was also a singer-songwriter. hot. Out there, it’s flat, but in the distance If part of what makes Nashville songwriting there’s always a mountainscape, and it’s high unique is its ability to ride the folk-country- and dry.” pop cusp, Clark and company had one foot After graduating from high school, Clark uneasily in pop and the other foot stuck in a went to college in Kingsville at Texas A&I, bucket marked Tradition. The pull of country where he played basketball and majored music and the old ways — the old-time feeling in physics. “It was way too ambitious,” he he parsed in one of his greatest ’70s songs says. “I couldn’t do well academically and — was strong, and it led him to mastermind play basketball and feed my growing guitar his revolution in song-obsessed Music City, habit.” where determining the difference between Clark began playing Texas folk clubs, craft and art has always been difficult. performing a standard folkie repertoire circa 1960. “We liked ‘Tom Dooley’ and Woody he Nashville songwriters’ Guthrie,” Clark says. “I don’t even think Bob scene that James Szalapski’s Dylan was in our repertoire at the time. We 1981 film Heartworn learned ‘Black Land Farmer’ — what a great Highways documents song. And ’s ‘Miller’s Cave.’ ” features Clark in 1975 and He wasn’t writing songs during this period, early 1976, after the release of he says, and he continued to hone his skills TOld No. 1. The sequences with Steve Young, in clubs in Houston, where he had moved to Clark and Van Zandt catch them as they attend the University of Houston. He had attempt to deal with the reality of Southern already met Van Zandt around 1964 (“I think heritage. Young’s rueful song about those old he had written two or three songs, >> pg. 18 but we just became great friends”), gotten Ballad of Laverne and Captain Flint” is like married and divorced, and had worked as an a Nashville-ized version of Manfred Mann’s art director for a television station before he Earth Band’s recasting of a Dylan song — moved to San Francisco late in the decade. only here it’s Clark himself and a band of local Returning to Houston, he got an art-director session players doing the reconfiguring. job with the local CBS affiliate. As his career developed, Clark garnered “I did it really well, but what finally got to renditions of his songs by such hitmakers me was the fact that TV waits on no man,” as , and Kenny says Clark. “The pace is incessant, and if you Chesney. Perhaps the greatest of all the don’t have your shit ready, TV keeps tickin’.” country versions of his songs is Gary Having already met the Oklahoma-born Stewart’s 1977 take on “Broken Hearted Susanna Talley, Clark decided to go to Los People,” in which Stewart’s tortured vibrato Angeles to pursue his songwriting career. “If gives Clark’s barroom lament an edge of I didn’t do something about it, it was gonna desperation missing in the original. be too late,” he says. “Susanna said, ‘Man, Clark’s recorded output is consistent, why don’t you get the fuck out of here and even though there are moments on such go do what you wanna do?’ I had 100 percent later records as Dublin Blues where the support, and she was painting.” production becomes obtrusive. Still, Dublin Working at the Dopyera Brothers’ guitar Blues contains “Hangin’ Your Life on the factory in Long Beach, Clark hustled. “I Wall,” a song he wrote with Thompson about would make an appointment, jump in the old losing your grip on things. Listen to this, VW bus, and drive through the smog into L.A. and other of Clark’s finest songs, and you But all I had was a guitar — I didn’t have any may come away musing upon the precise tapes,” Clark says. “One day the publisher relationship between seemingly uninflected that I had been seeing called me and said, music and seemingly straightforward words ‘Look, the president of the company is comin’ as you immerse yourself in the deep pool in tomorrow’ — this was RCA’s publishing of his art. His knife cuts different ways on company — ‘and why don’t you come down different days. and play him some songs?’ ” Clark passed the audition. He came with lark’s recent records have Susanna to Nashville in 1971. The only people their gentle, gnomic side. But he knew in town were and the collaboration with Rodney Townes Van Zandt. He and Susanna were Crowell that closes out My married the following year, on Newbury’s Favorite Picture of You is a houseboat, and Clark lived in East Nashville portrait of a nasty human being for a while before renting a log cabin on Old Cwho has delusions of artistry and grandeur, Hickory Lake. all fueled by alcohol and self-pity. Featuring The first Clark cuts were by Harold Lee, a chromatic blues guitar lick, the song shows who did a talking blues about a con man titled aspiring artists how not to be an artist. It’s very “The Old Mother’s Locket Trick,” and by The easy: Do nothing. Everly Brothers, who recorded “A Nickel for Crowell says “I’ll Show Me” is about “the audacity of vanity,” which sums it up nicely. The result, however, is Clark at For Clark his most compelling. As Crowell says, creating music “Guy is a great song actor. He can write a wonderful song, but hasn’t been his delivery of it is very well-acted.” Even so, for Clark, about assuming who will forever be associated with a persona. Texas and the Texan genius for self- invention, creating the Fiddler” in 1972. The same year, Jerry music hasn’t been about assuming a persona. Jeff Walker turned “L.A. Freeway” into a “It’s easy to invent yourself in Texas,” minor hit single. Clark says. “After the Civil War, there were But it was Clark’s Old No. 1 that established all these signs on old log cabins that said, him as a post-Outlaw Nashville songwriter. ‘Gone to Texas.’ I just tried to be what I was, In the year of such singer-songwriter and I don’t think I invented a persona any monuments as Joni Mitchell’s The Hissing more than anyone else does. Certainly not as of Summer Lawns, Clark’s debut added the much as .” playing of Nashville studio players to his What about going back to Texas? snapshots of Texas myth and reality. The “I like Texas — if I ever break even, I’m artistry of Old No. 1 sneaks up on you, from goin’ back,” he says, a little ruefully. “At the built-in pause that Clark uses in “L.A. this point, I don’t have the energy to move Freeway” — an objective correlative to the back to Texas. I could do it. I don’t know if song’s push-and-pull narrative — to the way it’s money or energy. But if I ever break “Rita Ballou” works off Clark’s repetition even, I’m moving back. I’m still in the red of the word “fool” in different contexts. with publishers, and I don’t like that, the Meanwhile, “That Old Time Feeling” is psychological thing of, I just want to earn chilling — a song for winter days with old cats every penny I get, and I’m workin’ on it, but and steam hissing from radiators. I’m not there. That’s something I feel strongly Clark followed up Old No. 1 with 1976’s about: I promise you you’re not gonna lose Texas Cookin’, which may be his funkiest, money on me, unless I die or something.” easiest album. The clavinet-driven “The Email [email protected].