Texas` Greatest Living Songwriter Remains

NASHVILLEPORTRAITS.COM
38
★
TEXAS MUSIC
FALL 2011
TEXAS’ GREATEST LIVING SONGWRITER REMAINS STEADFAST ABOUT HIS ART.
F THIS THERE IS NO DOUBT:
Guy Clark is the voice of authenticity,
a songwriter’s songwriter, painstakingly
creating deceptively simple pearls of
wisdom and graceful chronicles —
detailed and evocative observations
of the life he’s witnessed — that never
approach hackneyed or trite. And at age
70, his brooding baritone is the voice of the fathers, of the mystics.
“He’s a holy man,” says Lyle Lovett, reflecting the collective
consensus of a younger generation of performers. “The Texas singersongwriters who are most revered, like Guy, are perceptive and poetic
— smart guys — but they also have a desire to write something of value
in and of itself ... a pursuit of trying to do your best regardless of the
implications. That’s the ethic I admire: to do something of human
value. Guy does that as well as anyone. I’m in awe of him.”
In iconic images of Clark — standing tall with his cragged features,
dark coat and long gray-black hair swept back over the collar — he looks
more like a dignified Southern statesman from a bygone era, his deep,
resonant voice that of an old-fashioned orator. His themes are noble,
though anything but aristocratic. He sings of carpenters, barmaids,
prostitutes, aging gunfighters, winos and immigrants, and as a collected
body of work, his catalog captures the Lone Star State as well as any book
Larry McMurtry probably ever wrote. No glitz, no glitter — just soul.
“He’s a real writer,” fellow songwriter and friend Terry Allen says.
“He makes a world with each song.” Jimmie Dale Gilmore marvels
at Clark’s “subtle depth of feeling” and his ability “to make everyday
occurrences profound.” Esquire magazine has termed him “the finest
songwriter in the history of Texas.”
Such adulation rests uncomfortably with Clark, who doesn’t
much see himself as the sage sagebrush balladeer he often finds himself
painted as. “I’m still learning,” he says, “and in some ways, I’m probably
not even as smart now as I was when I started out. The more I do this,
the harder it gets, and the less I know.”
Regardless, his place among the elite of American roots writers has
been affirmed many times over. He’s acquired a well-justified reputation
as a craftsman who possesses that rare combination of talents: a poetic
sensibility and fascination for language with a born storyteller’s gift for
compelling narrative and telling detail. His lyrics are honed to a fine
precision, at turns wily and dignified, conventional and unconventional,
and he can work just as contentedly in a variety of moods and subjects,
from the poignancy of “Randall Knife,” a beautifully oblique account of
his relationship with his father, to the deadpan humor of “Homegrown
Tomatoes.” From the mouth-watering wordplay of “Texas Cookin’”
to the powerful sense of place in “South Coast of Texas.” From songs
with good-naturedly rambling, talking-blues structures to ballads with
gorgeously developed, stately melodies.
And yet, what’s sometimes overlooked in praise of the art and the
craft is the voice — honest, unvarnished, wearied and blue, something
to hold fast to, believe in and trust. It has aged with time, giving the
songs a gritty understatement that makes their low-key charm all the
more affecting. “Most of the credit goes to his words,” Allen says. “But I
don’t think anyone can sing words like him.”
On that point, Clark might be inclined to agree. Asked if any
performances on the upcoming album, This One’s For Him: A Tribute to
Guy Clark, helped him better appreciate songs he’d written, he responds
with an indignant “No!” before adding, “No one sings my songs like I
do.” In truth, that’s precisely what This One’s for Him demonstrates.
Taking nothing away from the earnestness of the performances, a
listener is forgiven for seeking out the originals to hear the master at
work. The relationship of writer and words, in this case, cannot be any
more intimate.
And if there’s one thing Guy Clark is serious about, it’s his craft —
so much so that writers rarely approach him directly with a song — or
even, perhaps, an idea. “Guy’s the master,” Lovett says. “He’s strong,
determined, so conscientious about his work — there’s something sacred
about that. I could never go up to him and say, ‘Hey Guy, check out this
song.’ I couldn’t even bring myself to show him something I’m working
on.” Darrell Scott, who’s written a handful of songs with Clark over 20
years — including “Out in the Parking Lot” — says he’d never suggest
that the two write together. “I don’t want to push it,” Scott says. “He’s a
complicated man.” That may explain why so many of the performances
on the tribute record aim to replicate the originals — out of respect for
their elder.
Clark demands that respect — just in the way he carries himself.
He’s weathered and worn, mellowed and aged. His eyes fix and hold,
bore and burn. He rolls easy and cuts true and walks slow and laughs
loud. Sitting across from him in his Nashville workshop is equal parts
enlightening and intimidating. You’re afraid to take up too much of his
time, even as he graciously invites you to stay. When you’re gone, you
know he’ll take that blank sheet of paper that now sits between the two
of you and begin work on his next song. “It never ends,” he sighs. What
was it Ray Wylie Hubbard, who contributes to the tribute record, once
wrote? “There are those / Condemned by the gods to write.”
In fact, there’s no point asking Clark what the future holds, because
the answer is right there in front of you.
IN OFFERING OUR OWN tribute to Clark, we decided to celebrate his
70th birthday by ranking his top 70 songs — based on a vote of a dozen
Clark aficionados who each provided a list of their favorites. To enhance
the project, we invited singer-songwriters who’ve been influenced by
Clark to write about one of their favorites from Clark’s catalog.
Tom Buckley, Andrew Dansby, John T. Davis and Geoffrey Himes all
contributed to this project.
F A L L 2 011
TEXAS MUSIC
★
39
Guy Clark’s
70
GREATEST SONGS
1
Texas 1947
OLD NO. 1 1975
Born a month before Pearl Harbor,
Clark grew up in Monahans, a West
Texas oil town so small and so isolated that
the news of a brand new diesel train rumbling through town was enough to get the
domino players to lay down their tiles and
the farmers to drive in to the depot. “You’d
have thought that Jesus Christ hisself was
rollin’ down the line,” Clark sings. He captures the pell-mell momentum of this new
invention not with rockabilly guitar and
drums but with a breathless rush of words, the
verbs pulling the adjectives like a string of
box cars behind a bullet-shaped locomotive:
“Screamin’ straight through Texas like a mad
dog cyclone / Big and red and silver, she don’t
make no smoke.” When this song appeared
on Old No. 1, it was followed by another
railroad number set in post-war Monahans,
“Desperados Waiting for the Train.”
2
3
Desperados Waiting
for a Train
OLD NO. 1 1975
When I got out of high school and
into college, I started running with a group
of misfits who liked to party and talk about
Ginsberg, Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Ken Kesey
and eastern philosophy, jazz, T Monk, Tom
Waits, Buddha — there was the idea that
if we took enough road trips, turned over
enough rocks, hung out with enough dopesmoking hippies, we could be chroniclers
of the bizarre, eccentric underbelly of
the American spirit just like Hunter S.
Thompson and create our own myths along
the way. It wasn’t until I heard Guy Clark’s
Old No. 1 that I made the discovery that
all of the above characteristics can often be
found in the people you know best — the
ones you grow up around. In “Desperados
Waiting for a Train,” Clark’s main character,
“a drifter and a driller of oil wells,” is just
as wild and western as Thompson and
Kerouac; the difference is that you know
that guy or someone a lot like him if you
grow up in Texas ... a place where the myths
and legends of guys like him permeate the
landscape from east to west, north to south.
Guys like him made Texas what it is. When
Guy writes with precision and economy
about “old men with beer guts and dominoes
lying about their lives while they played,”
I realize I know these men well: they’re in
every beer joint I ever went into as a kid with
my dad ... pretty much every family reunion.
There’s a ton of poetry in those old buggers,
and they’re pretty much right at my front
door. — ADAM CARROLL
Dublin Blues
DUBLIN BLUES 1995
This song has always hit close to home because in the old days, the Chili
Parlor that Guy sings about was next to the folk club in Austin, so that
became the place where Guy, Townes, Jerry Jeff and the rest of us would go. I
have great memories of being in that place. I was actually living in Lubbock at
the time, so the Parlor had that mystical quality to it. In “Dublin Blues,” Guy
brings almost the whole world into one song — on the steps in Italy, in Dublin, in
Austin. With each part of the song, he brings you to another place — that’s the
magic of it ... he crosses borders and boundaries, and that experience of hearing
someone speak of the one he loves who’s far away brings us all a deeper sadness
somehow. A song like this can give you a wound like a knife. Guy boils it down to
where you can’t get away from it. The character in the song is pining for his lost
love; in reality, I think we were all pining for the Chili Parlor. I can remember Guy
sitting in there; sometimes we’d pass the guitar around. Sitting face to face with
Guy Clark is a mighty experience that will change you forever. — JOE ELY
40
★
TEXAS MUSIC
FALL 2011
4
Randall Knife
5
She Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
BETTER DAYS 1983
Behind just a dozen plain-spoken
yet arresting couplets lies a
novel’s worth of truth about the relationship
between fathers and sons and how that
dynamic evolved from one generation to the
next. The deep mystery of this unspoken,
untaught bond can be seen in the father’s
knife, pristine and unquestionably strong
in the eyes of a young boy, but destined for
the ineluctable separation of fathers and
sons. Broken by the careless inexperience
of youth then tucked away forever, the knife
is withheld. There was no language for a
World War II-era father to express the love
and approval that an adolescent son (or a
thoughtful young man who came of age in
the ’60s) yearns for. Only in death, with
the knife now recovered, is the father-son
connection restored, however mysterious
and imperfect. — SLAID CLEAVES
OLD NO. 1 1975
I believe there are only a handful
of perfectly written songs, and
this is one of them. Everyone has the one
person who gives them a glimpse of the other
side, the first taste of something real. Guy
Clark was mine. I was new to everything, it
seemed — writing, playing and, apparently,
even thinking. I still remember the first time
I heard this song, the first time I played it —
practicing it over and over until I got it just
right, feeling so much for this girl, who may
as well have been in the mirror. She’s sad but
hopeful; fragile yet tough; downhearted but
uplifted — and she’s sitting on the roadside
with her thumb in the air, just trying to get
out of town. “She had a way of her own / like
a prisoner has a way with a file.” Guy has
a way with words, a way of his own, that
I’m forever thankful for. This song proves
there are no rules — all you need to do is say
something true and real. People feel that. —
JAMIE WILSON, THE TRISHAS
6
The Dark
THE DARK 2002
It’s difficult to explain just how
much this song has inspired me.
But I’ll try. Because of a single
line, “It’s so dark you can smell the moon,” I
made a loop of “The Dark” on my computer.
I then put my mix — of just this song — on
Five Essential
Albums
OLD NO. 1 1975
As much a short story
collection as an album,
Clark’s debut feels
informed and infused by
generations’ worth of oral
tradition. Beards stained
by tobacco, pennies flattened by a train: Those
are the sorts of details that provide the visual
pop in these stories populated by noble nobodies whose little lives are made epic when told
in Clark’s crackling voice. He can turn a phrase
(“She ain’t goin’ nowhere, she’s just leavin’”),
and he can condense decades into a few verses
(“Desperados Waiting for a Train”). With sticky
choruses, the album’s plenty hooky too. One of
the most fully realized debut albums ever made.
Some of these songs have become standards for
other singers, but they still bear Clark’s brand. It
transcends the overly fussy production.
THE DARK 2002
oir, Clark built “Black Diamond Strings” around
their financially poor but spiritually rich (albeit
complex) lives. Of J.W. Crowell, Clark wrote,
“He played at the Ice House on Telephone Road
/ He played in the yard just to lighten his load,”
turning Crowell into another one of his minor
heroes. “The Cape” is light by comparison — but
a nice touch of mid-album sweetness.
TEXAS
COOKIN’
1976
Perhaps a little
underappreciated
among
Clark’s
albums due to
excessive production and the fact
that it followed Old No. 1, which is an unenviable task for any recording. (Just ask Willis Alan
Ramsey about following a perfect debut.) “Texas
Cookin’” is the rare food song that appears to be
about food rather than sex (turns out sometimes
okra is just okra). “The Ballad of Laverne and
Captain Flint” stuffs a novel into three verses
and a chorus about love, fishing and voodoo.
The album’s quiet gem is a crooked ode to commitment, “Anyhow I Love You,” its words nearly
skipping along through a combination of perfect
and banal (“I wouldn’t trade a tree for the way I
feel about you in the mornin’”) and something
more complex and persuasive (“So when you feel
like runnin’ for the back door ... don’t”).
BOATS TO BUILD
1992
In 1988 Clark
released Old Friends,
his first album in six
years and the least
compelling record
in his discography.
Rather than remain adrift, he went back to
shore and built a better vessel over the next few
years. Boats to Build was full of the usual breadth
of tones and moods: smart, funny, insightful,
sad and playful. “Baton Rouge” opens it with
pluck, a sing-songy tune with a great chorus and
a search for alligator shoes. The surreal masterpiece “Picasso’s Mandolin” showed Clark wasn’t
afraid of a goofy rhyme: “He was born in Spain
and died in France / He was not scared of baggy
pants.” “I Don’t Love You Much Do I” was a
lovely and heartfelt duet with Emmylou Harris.
And he turned out another perfect character
sketch based on two legendary figures — one
from music, one from the rodeo in “Ramblin’
Jack and Mahan” — which afforded Clark the
opportunity to use the verb “cowboyed.”
Leave it to Clark —
who is capable of sentimentality though he
uses it carefully — to
write a dead dog song
(“Queenie’s
Song”)
based more on vengeance than wistfulness.
Nearly 30 years into his recording career he turns
out another album stacked with strong songs.
Opener “Mud” is funny and clever and earthy,
both playful (“You got to get it between your
toes”) and existential (“We’re all just slogging
through the mud”). The title track is surreal and
vivid, building slowly toward release where the
titular subject is so great that the wind gets lost,
that you can smell the moon, that the sky’s on
fire and then a moment of clarity: “How dark is
it? So dark you can see Fort Worth from here.”
DUBLIN
BLUES
1995
Notable not just for the
definitive a cappella
reading of his father
tribute, “The Randall
Knife.” The title track
spills forth with longing
and alienation in equal
measure. Sixteen years before Rodney Crowell
committed his parents story to print with a memF A L L 2 011
TEXAS MUSIC
★
41
my iPod. And then — I went running. As
fall gave way to winter, this song was my
companion as I ran in circles around my
neighborhood. Perhaps I was running circles
in my own mind, too. No matter, the music
put me at ease. It made me think, too. The
artistry of where the words fell fascinated
me. I’d ask myself, “Where’s the rhyme, the
timing, the song structure?” You know, the
A and B section lingo best suited for airplay
but often less suited for soul-play. There
were no logical answers, because what I
had on loop had a heartbeat all its own —
a touch of poetic grace sung with enough
gravel to make me feel like Guy somehow
knew that I go to church every night on my
back porch: alone. Not for the sake of being
moody. But for the sake of smelling the moon
and giving thanks. And to remind myself
that no matter how dark it might get, it’s
always gonna be “So dark you can see Fort
Worth from here.” — TERRI HENDRIX
7
L.A. Freeway
OLD NO. 1 1975
At the end of 1969, Clark and
his new wife, Susanna, moved to
Southern California. “We were living in this
garage apartment in Long Beach,” Clark says.
“We woke up one morning to the sound of
the landlord chopping down this beautiful
grapefruit tree, and my first reaction was,
‘Pack up all the dishes.’ It sounded like a line
in a song, so I wrote it down. I was playing in
a little string band, and one night we were
driving back from a gig in Mission Beach
at four in the morning, and I was dozing
off. I lifted my head up in this old Cadillac,
looked out the window and said, ‘If I can just
get off of this L.A. freeway without getting
killed or caught.’ As soon as I said it, I borrowed Susanna’s eyebrow pencil from her
purse and wrote the line down on a burger
wrapper. If I hadn’t, I might not have that
song today. It was a year later, when we’d
moved to Nashville, that I was cleaning out
my wallet and found that scrap of paper. I
put it together with ‘Pack up all the dishes’
and this guitar lick I had, and it all became
‘L.A. Freeway.’” The song was made famous
by Jerry Jeff Walker on his 1977 album, Man
Must Carry On.
8
42
★
Homegrown Tomatoes
BETTER DAYS 1983
In addition to his other achieve-
TEXAS MUSIC
FALL 2011
ments, Clark may well be our best-singing
food critic. In songs like “Texas Cookin’,”
“Instant Coffee Blues” and “Homegrown
Tomatoes,” he illuminates the experience
of eating. This song is the best of the bunch,
as funny as it is true: “Only two things that
money can’t buy / And that’s true love and
homegrown tomatoes.” When first recorded
on Better Days, the Cherry Bombs (Rodney
Crowell, Vince Gill, Tony Brown, Emory
Gordy and Larrie Londin) provided the clipclop Texas hop, and Bob Wills’ old fiddler,
Johnny Gimble, added a nimble swing solo.
“If I’s to change this life I lead,” Clark warbled, “I’d be Johnny Tomato Seed.” Perfect.
9
Boats to Build
BOATS TO BUILD 1992
Townes was a poet; Guy is a
master craftsman. He takes words
and fits them together like no one else. He
measures twice and cuts once. He also
works in wood. He builds songs, and he
builds guitars. He knows how the grain
affects the sound. He knows the feel of the
vibrations. He knows the difference between
good and great. I’ve played guitars Guy has
built, and they sound like him. A well-worn
sound, like the vibrations in old wood. The
sound of the earth. — GURF MORLIX
10
Texas Cookin’
TEXAS COOKIN’ 1976
When I first heard Guy,
I was a teenager in New
Mexico beginning to write my own songs and
apprenticing as a luthier. He became a role
model. This song in particular represents
what is so beloved about our culture — it
brings folks together like a good meal. It’s
down-home, good-times, your-friends-areyour-family music. With a gospel chorus,
from the earth to the table, it’s as hard not to
sing along with as it would be not to join in
the feast he’s singing about. — ANA EGGE
I’ve always wanted to write a song about
food, my second-most favorite subject, but I
always get bogged down with today’s menus
that seem so sober. Arugula goat cheese
salads, trout with a reduced fennel orange
sauce or chocolate ice cream infused with
bacon and mint don’t make for a very sexy
song or night on the town. In this song,
Guy transports us to 1976 Austin, mixing
food and sex with seeming ease and topping
it off with a dollop of fun. Here’s the menu
at Guy’s favorite place (taped to the side
of the beer cooler, no doubt): BBQ, Chile,
Armadillo Pie, Pan Dulce, Sausage (w/
ranch-style beans), Enchiladas (make
mine greezy), Chicken-Fried Steak (w/
white gravy), Fried Okra, Lone Star Beer.
Don’t get any better than that! — MICHAEL
FRACASSO
11
Step Inside This House
UNRECORDED
One of Clark’s greatest songs,
he never recorded it himself.
If his grateful protégé, Lyle Lovett, hadn’t
made this 1971 composition the title track of
his 1998 album, we might never have heard
it. We might never have heard the slow, sinuous melody as it unspools over Jerry Douglas’
dobro and Sam Bush’s mandolin. We might
never have heard the five verses, each one
a vivid description of a treasured possession,
even if they are nothing but an amateur
painting, a hand-me-down book, a broken
piece of glass, a beat-up guitar and a funny
yellow vest. We might never have heard how
these specific, physical things — “couldn’t be
more than $10 worth” —reveal the singer’s
personality more than any airy abstractions
ever could.
12
Let Him Roll
13
Stuff That Works
OLD NO. 1 1975
I bet I played “Let Him Roll”
1,000 times when Old No.1
came out. Wore the needle flat. And every
single time I listened, that wino came alive
— he worked in bars and on freighters, and
his love transcended death. He pined 17
years “right in line,” then he died. It was
a bleak pauper’s funeral — “the welfare
people provided the priest” — but there she
was, “black veil covering her silver hair,”
crying — the whore he called heaven. It
can’t be done better. — SAM BAKER
DUBLIN BLUES 1995
This song always exemplified
the strongest element of Guy’s
writing to me: his ability to strip the message
down to its simplest, most naked, most
elementary, exposed and rawest of bones.
Guy’s poetry isn’t in the lacy bows or frilly
cuffs adorning the subject matter; it’s in the
skeleton itself. And that ability to say what
you need to say, beautifully, in a vulnerable,
direct and undisguised way has come to define
what makes a “Texas songwriter” different
from other songwriters. That, and the sense
you get that if you were to smirk at those
exposed feelings, you’d get your teeth kicked
in. It’s sensitivity with thick leather boots. —
DANNY SCHMIDT
In 1995 I was newly divorced, had a new kid
and had just released my first record. The label
had me running myself ragged touring and
doing interviews. On one of my rare nights off
at the end of ‘95, I saw Guy standing alone in a
tiny bar in Houston called Live Bait. I couldn’t
believe no one recognized him, but, lo and
behold, there he was, wearing his blue denim
work shirt and his beat-to-shit Tony Lama
boots. I mustered the courage to walk up to him
and say, “Hi Mr. Clark, your song ‘Stuff that
Works’ has really helped me hold it together
this past year.” He said, “My name is Guy, not
Mr., and if you buy me a whiskey on the rocks,
I’ll tell you all about it.” I hung onto every word
he said like he was Shakespeare — hell, he was
to me and still is. This is my favorite Guy song
for one simple reason: it’s a constant reminder
to keep it simple, honest and to never apologize
for being yourself. — JESSE DAYTON
14
Better Days
15
Magdalene
BETTER DAYS 1983
Years after writing this song, Clark
remained haunted by a single
line: “On a ray of sunshine, she goes dancing
out the door.” The tale, which depicts a female
protagonist at a crossroads, was noble, but those
11 words weren’t. “I always thought that was
about the hokiest shit I’d ever heard,” Clark says,
“but I couldn’t figure out anything to change it
to, so I recorded it like that.” Then, while visiting
Australia, Clark found himself in conversation
with a woman who worked at a center for battered
women that used “Better Days” as a theme song
of sorts. She admitted that the line was “a little
too cutesy pie.” So Clark changed it — that very
night. His revision — “She has no fear of flying,
and now she’s out the door” — had integrity, he
believed, so much so that he’s done it that way
ever since. “It’s like having a whole new song,”
he says.
WORKBENCH SONGS 2006
So much of what I love about
Guy is his ability to paint
pictures with melody and chord changes. In
“Magdalene,” before any lyrics are heard, you
can tell it’s a border-town song. It’s got that feel
F A L L 2 011
TEXAS MUSIC
★
43
that is unmistakably Guy — he has this
way of being so romantic and still being a
total dude about it. I love that. It’s such a
romantic idea, this man saying, “I don’t
know what’s going to happen, but take a
leap of faith and escape the country with
me — I have to get out of here, and I want
you with me.” I guess she decides to go,
because the last line is, “Don’t forget your
passport, Magdalene.” I hope she goes. —
BRYN DAVIES
This song is a little beauty. I like the use
of the word “move,” as in “move with me,
Magdalene.” It’s better than “come with
me” or “leave with me.” It means a lot
more. And her name. We’re told that Jesus
loved his Magdalene more than all others.
I don’t know if Guy was tapping into that
or not, but it stirs the subconscious in some
way, and sort of seals the deal. — KEVIN
WELCH
16
The Cape
DUBLIN BLUES 1995
This is the tale of an eightyear-old kid jumping off the
roof with a Superman cape in the form of a
flour sack tied ’round his neck. It’s a sharply
sketched story and it leads, as so many Clark
songs do, to a memorable aphorism: “He’s
one of those who knows that life is just a leap
of faith / Spread your arms and hold your
breath, and always trust your cape.” Clark cowrote the song with his wife, Susanna. “She
only writes when she feels like it,” he says,
“and we’ve written only a handful together.
Engineers that get her on a mic are always
amazed by her voice — such a beautiful
voice.” The song has also been recorded by
Jerry Jeff Walker and Asleep at the Wheel.
17
That Old Time Feeling
OLD NO. 1 1975
If you want to make the point
that songwriting is as much
a fine art as theater, ballet, short story,
cinema or poetry, begin with this song. Guy
says this is the first song he wrote that he
kept. It’s a movie, a song, a painting, classic
American theater and photojournalism of
mid-20th century — parts Edward Hopper,
Walker Evans, “Our Town,” “Death of a
Salesman” and parlor music ... a song that
will get all over you when you sing it or hear
it. It has a life, space and time all its own.
44
★
TEXAS MUSIC
FALL 2011
Like a great painting you stand in front of
and feel as if you’ve entered its domain, the
listener/singer brushes up against all that’s
missing in the souls of these characters. You
wear it like a coat and still shiver; you’re
moved and stirred. Master writing ... how
the first word of the song is “and” — like
the story was already in progress before it
started (because it was in progress) ... how
the word “old” is in every line, but you don’t
catch that the word is there even though
you feel the feeling of old is there. The first
song he wrote that he kept — imagine what
he’s thrown away. — DARRELL SCOTT
18
Heartbroke
SOUTH COAST OF TEXAS 1981
When Clark’s protégé, Rodney
Crowell, agreed to produce his
mentor’s 1981 breakthrough album, Crowell
rounded up his former bandmates in Emmylou
Harris’ Hot Band for the session. He even
invited his replacement in that band, Ricky
Skaggs, to add fiddle and vocal harmony to
the catchiest song Clark ever wrote. “Anyone
who could play like that was a hero to us,”
Clark says. “We all loved traditional bluegrass,
and we wanted to use those instruments
with our lyrics.” The band created a snappy
country shuffle whose bouncy, happy sound
seems to contradict the title. But the tune
isn’t a description of heartbreak so much as
an antidote for it. Skaggs was so impressed by
the song that he recorded it and turned it into
a No. 1 country single. Crowell and George
Strait have also recorded the song.
19
Magnolia Wind
THE DARK 2002
I was at an after-party outside
of Houston the night I first
heard Guy sing live. He’d just completed,
but hadn’t yet released, his album The
Dark, and he treated a dozen or so of us to
an unplugged performance of some of his
new tunes. I remember being floored by
this beautiful waltz. It’s one of those songs
that feels like it’s been there forever and was
just waiting for someone to write it down.
The sentiment is heartbreaking, the melody
timeless, and every word belongs right where
it’s placed. That’s what’s always personified
Guy to me: he’s a poet and craftsman who
doesn’t sacrifice one for the other. There’s
no doubt what he’s singing about — and no
way to write it any better. — HAYES CARLL
20
South Coast of Texas
SOUTH
COAST
OF
TEXAS
1981
At the end of the 1940s,
Clark’s family moved from West Texas to the
Gulf Coast town of Rockport. In the summers
during high school, and for a little while after,
Clark worked as a carpenter’s helper in the
shipyards. There he helped build the sturdy,
80-foot shrimp boats that plied the Gulf of
Mexico. These were work boats, not pleasure
boats, and the teenage helper learned not
only the use of wood tools but also the value
of functional objects and the hard work that
goes into making them. “I learned that doing
good stuff doesn’t necessarily mean having a
law degree,” Clark says. “That there’s a certain nobility in craftsmanship.”
21
Like a Coat From the
Cold
OLD NO. 1 1975
This song was my first
experience with Guy Clark. I actually cried
the first time I heard it; I listened to it just
now and did the same. The song has all
my favorite elements: rawness, simplicity,
vulnerability, gentleness, acceptance and,
of course, love — that element of being so
incredibly imperfect yet still able to love and
be loved. I’m a sucker for the romance. So is
Guy Clark, I suspect. — CARRIE ELKIN
I was 3 when Jerry Jeff Walker released
Ridin’ High. My big brothers later
introduced me to the album that I treasured
throughout my high school years and
beyond. “Like A Coat From the Cold” was
my favorite track: “I found comfort and
courage in bottles of whiskey / I have flown
like a bird from each cage that confined me
/ But the lady beside me is the one I have
chosen / To walk through my life like a coat
from the cold.” Now on the back side of 30,
I’m a Texas singer-songwriter brought to my
knees more than ever by the lyrics of this
song, as they parallel my life and career.
— ROBYN LUDWICK
25
Cold Dog Soup
COLD DOG SOUP 1999
This is one of those songs you
love as a musician. It puts a
reassuring spin on the sad fact that there’s
no money in songwriting by reminding
us that it’s our very hunger that fuels our
poetry. And there’s a certain truth in that.
And more truth in the fact that we need to
hear it, whether it’s true or not. “Fool my
belly till the day I die . . .” True that. —
DANNY SCHMIDT
26
22
Last Gunfighter Ballad
TEXAS COOKIN’ 1976
I first heard “Last Gunfighter Ballad” during an all-night guitar
pull at Jim McGuire’s photography studio in Nashville. It was 1975
or maybe early ’76, I think, and Jerry Jeff Walker was in town, and Dick Feller
was there and maybe Dave Loggins and I know for a fact Dickie Betts and Bonnie
Bramlett were there because they rode to McGuire’s from the Exit/In in the backseat
of my ’68 VW. We’d all been passing the guitar around (among other things), trying
out our new songs on each other, and then it was Guy’s turn, and it was like that
scene in “Don’t Look Back” when Dylan unleashes “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”
on Donovan and company in a London hotel room. We were all stunned and humbled
and honored to be witnesses to the moment when the best of us left the rest of us
in the dust. It was a perfect story song, meticulously constructed on an ingenious
premise: a desperado surviving the last days of the Wild West and living into the
twentieth century only to be knocked down by a car as he’s crossing a street —
a victim of progress, at once violent and mundane. There was an instant when I
wanted to quit. Just give it up and hitchhike my ass back to Texas and get a job — but
it didn’t last long. In the months that followed, I wrote “Ben McCullogh and “Tom
Ame’s Prayer.” — STEVE EARLE
23
Anyhow I Love You
this lilt to its rhythm that’s infectious and
pushes through for a couple lines before
breaking with all this wonderful space. And
while the sentiment is sweet, it’s anything
but cliché. In fact, what I love most about
it is that it’s a positive, reassuring love
song built on negative image after negative
image. It’s not a generic pop love song full
of “I’ll be there for you”s and “I’ll stand by
you”s. And it’s not yet another song from
the perspective of someone who believed her
lover’s promises only to be let down. It’s a
song where the singer gets to say, “I know
you don’t trust me now, but just wait.”
TEXAS COOKIN’ 1976
— BETTY SOO
Sis Draper
COLD DOG SOUP 1999
I like this song because it’s
a great depiction of musicians … particularly country musicians
talking in their own language. I like how
the protagonist is twitterpated by Sis and
her fiddling; all the boys get excited when
she comes through town — not just because
she’s a pretty girl but because she fiddles
them all under the table. — BRENNEN
PAULA KIRMAN
LEIGH
24
The chorus of this song has
Picasso’s Mandolin
BOATS TO BUILD 1992
If you’re going to record an
album with Sam Bush, as
Clark did on 1992’s Boats To Build, you
might as well write a song called “Picasso’s
Mandolin.” After all, Bush is the premier
cubist of the eight-string, and Clark has been
known to derange reality to get the effects he
wants. He does it again on this bouncy, bluegrass celebration of breaking artistic rules.
27
Rita Ballou
OLD NO. 1 1975
A recording of this song
belongs in any museum of
Western art and culture. “Rita Ballou” is
a pitch-perfect presentation of a dance on
a Texas summer Saturday night, one that
captures all the spectacle, good feeling and
ritual these occasions have provided rural
communities over the last 80 years — when
folks of all ages gather around for “the show”
after dark, under the lights and under the
big trees. The heroine of the drama is a
stunning and vivacious woman who charms
everyone with her nerve, looks and sheer
ability to move to a two-step with a line of
eager partners. Rita’s spirit and her force
of life is much bigger than any man’s will
ever be. She’s a strong, beautiful woman in
the community — someone for everybody
to write home about, dream about and
remember forever.
— OWEN TEMPLE
28
She’s Crazy for Leavin’
SOUTH COAST OF TEXAS
1981
This comic tale, co-written
with Rodney Crowell, tells of a cowboy
who crashes his pick-up into a telephone
pole while chasing his wife, who’s leaving
F A L L 2 011
TEXAS MUSIC
★
45
him. Crowell included the song on his 1988
album, Diamonds & Dirt, and his version
became a No. 1 country single. In the song,
the protagonist laments, “You can’t stop a
woman when she’s out of control,” but, as
with so many Clark songs, he’s also filled
with a stunned admiration for her nervy
independence.
29
Homeless
THE DARK 2002
Clark doesn’t pretend to
have an answer to the complicated problem of the homeless, so he
provides multiple perspectives on the situation by allowing the identity of his narrator
to slip and slide from one persona to another
— from sympathetic one moment to insensitive the next. Finally the singer is homeless
himself. We’ve all felt pity for someone
freezing on a heat grate, and we’ve also been
irritated by an overly aggressive panhandler.
Underneath both reactions is the fear that
through some unforeseen chain of circumstances we ourselves could end up on the
street with nowhere to go.
30
Funny Bone
WORKBENCH SONGS 2006
As a scrappy kid from
a middle class town in
Connecticut I wasn’t exposed to much real
country music — the closest I got was the
Eagles and John Denver. When I moved
to Texas, I was introduced to the writers
who’d influenced so many of my favorite
voices. “Funny Bone” is a linear and sad
story of a rodeo clown who gets his heart
broken by the girl who sells souvenirs. Clark
tells the story and somehow still manages to
be the story. I can’t do that yet — it’s a
maturity I long for in my own songwriting.
You see this mournful rodeo clown who can
no longer laugh, who loses the one person
who makes it all worth it. And you know
Guy has been that clown, and you suddenly
know you’re that clown, too. He narrates
as if he’s reading a bedtime story — “You
can hide your heart in a barrel for just so
long,” he says, like a father using a parable
to teach his child a lesson. The song fades
without fading and ends with one spoken
word: “Ouch.” He didn’t have to admit it
... but he did. — KACY CROWLEY
46
★
TEXAS MUSIC
FALL 2011
31
Mud
THE DARK 2002
Along with “Homegrown
Tomatoes” and “Stuff That Works,” “Mud”
is one of the best examples of Clark in his
guise as homespun philosopher, the Socrates
of the West Texas barroom. “All things come
to him who waits,” Clark sings, “yet he is lost
who hesitates.” There are no easy answers to
life or art, he implies; you just have to keep
working at it without being afraid to get “a
little mud on your shirt.” This song opened
Clark’s brilliant album, The Dark, which
offers a sustained meditation on mortality.
32
Ramblin’ Jack and
Mahan
BOATS TO BUILD 1992
Elliot Adnopoz grew up in
Brooklyn, but at 15 he joined the rodeo and
at 19 started traveling with Woody Guthrie
and calling himself Ramblin’ Jack Elliot.
Larry Mahan was World All-Around Rodeo
Champion a record-setting six times before he
recorded a country album. When Clark joined
them for a long night in Austin’s Driskill
Hotel — “cowboyed all to hell” as they
traded cracked aphorisms — Clark couldn’t
resist turning it into a song. Elliott later sang
a duet with Clark on “Hangin’ Your Life on
the Wall.” “When you hear a good song by
Townes or Dylan or Ramblin’ Jack Elliot,”
Clark says, “it makes you want to write a song
— not like them but as good as them.”
33
Old Friends
OLD FRIENDS 1988
In 2002, the Country Music
Hall of Fame hosted an
exhibit, Workshirts and Stardust: Paintings
by Guy and Susanna Clark. On display were
Susanna’s paintings that became the album
covers for Willie Nelson’s Stardust, Emmylou
Harris’ Quarter Moon In A Ten Cent Town,
Clark’s Old No. 1 and Nanci Griffith’s Dust
Bowl Symphony. There are also Guy’s portraits
of Rodney Crowell and himself; the latter
became the cover of his Old Friends album.
“If I get stuck writing a song,” Clark said at
the time, “I can put it aside and work on a
painting or a guitar. Then the next line in the
song might pop into my mind, and I can turn
around and write it down or put it on tape
immediately. That’s why I like writing songs
and making guitars in the same space.”
34
Out in the Parking
Lot
WORKBENCH SONGS 2006
This song is so understated
it doesn’t even read like a lyric — the kind
of deceptively simple lyric that’s incredibly
hard to pull off. Most songwriters would fall
into the trap of trying to inject some sense
of coolness to the narrator since it’s written
from first-person perspective. Guy doesn’t
even make the truck his: it’s “someone else’s
truck.” In the end it’s all about the details
and economy. When we were teenagers
Slaid Cleaves and I used to drive over to The
Norseman Lounge in Dover, N.H. The club
was in a bowling alley, so you could stand
in the lobby and watch the band through
the foyer glass. We were just kids soaking
it all in — we watched the band, the pretty
drunk girls, the tough guys blowing off steam
and that whole little world going on inside.
It was a Yankee version of this song, but it’s
the same song, and Guy gives you the whole
scene in about 25 lines. You see it just like
you’re there in the parking lot with him.
You can smell the gravel dust and taste the
Old Crow. It’s simple, real and beautiful. —
ROD PICOTT
35
Immigrant Eyes
OLD FRIENDS 1988
A young boy looks deep into
his grandfather’s eyes and
sees the day when the latter first arrived from
Europe with nothing in his pockets and just a
burning desire to get past the intake desk and
out into the streets of New York. This song
belongs almost as much to Emmylou Harris
as it does to Clark. She sang the ghostly harmonies that seemed to summon up old ghosts
on the first version on Old Friends, when she
sang the same harmonies on Together at the
Bluebird Café and sang the lead vocal on the
version for her box set, Songbird.
36
Arizona Star
THE DARK 2002
This bouncy, country-folk
tune depicts a real person, “a
prima donna pre-Madonna,” who hung out
on Nashville’s Elliston Place in the mid-’70s.
“It was impossible to miss her,” Clark says.
“She had this girlfriend who literally wore
purple tights like a 16th-century cavalier.
It’s an observation, not a relationship; it’s
painting a picture like being there but being
invisible. That’s a writing technique I enjoy
a lot.”
37
DUALTONE
SOUTH COAST OF TEXAS
The title of this live album is important, for Clark’s live shows are
1981
nearly as memorable for the stories he tells between songs as for
— MARK AMBROSE
Broken Hearted
People
TEXAS COOKIN’ 1976
Even though he grew up
in Texas, Clark didn’t write many straightahead honky-tonk numbers, but he did
write this one. This is your standard scenario of some guy medicating his broken
heart with whiskey on a barroom stool.
“Laughin’ just to keep from cryin’ ain’t no
way to grow old,” he sings with background
harmonies by his Nashville pals Emmylou
Harris and Rodney Crowell. The song was
also recorded by Steve Young, Jerry Wallace
and the Go-Betweens’ Robert Forster, but
the definitive treatment came from the livewire tenor of Gary Stewart on his immortal
1977 album, Your Place or Mine.
39
Songs and Stories
New Cut Road
This is a great fiddle tune
(with Ricky Skaggs) that tells a terrific
story with lines that stick to your bones like
a three-course meal. Like many of Guy’s
songs, it captures a moment in history.
It’s told through the dialogue of an 1800’s
Kentucky family moving to Texas — an
entire movie in nine verses with all the fat
nicely trimmed and properly chewed. It
broke the top 20 for Bobby Bare in 1983.
38
Guy Clark
the songs themselves. Sometimes, though, the story comes in the
middle of the song, as it does on “L.A. Freeway.” That’s one of
Clark’s best compositions, even in its original studio version, but
it ripens into an even finer wine when he tells the story of the final
straw that broke the camel’s back and prompted him to tell wife Susanna to “pack up the dishes” because
they were leaving Los Angeles for good.
This album was recorded at Nashville’s Belcourt Theatre with Clark, guitarist Verlon Thompson, mandolinist Shawn Camp, bassist Bryn Davies and percussionist Kenny Malone sitting in a semi-circle, just as they
do when they record in a studio, Clark explains. Thompson and Camp are two of Clark’s best co-writers, and
each gets a chance to sing two songs and tell a story of his own. There are 13 songs in all plus a bunch of
long stories and short jokes. It’s only fair to point out, however, that Clark’s baritone, never a strong instrument, is much diminished after his recent health problems. The phrasing is still impeccable but the vocal tone
is thinner and raspier than ever.
If you’re looking for the definitive Guy Clark live album, this probably isn’t it — and neither is his 1997
release, Keepers, which suffers from similar vocal troubles and doesn’t include the stories. Much better is Live
from Austin, TX, Clark’s Austin City Limits TV performance from 1989 that was released in 2007. Clark wasn’t
only in relaxed, good voice but was also joined by two string-band virtuosos: fiddler Stuart Duncan and bassist Edgar Meyer. Better yet is Together at the Bluebird Café, recorded at a songwriters-in-the-round show with
Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle at Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe in 1995. The three old friends from Houston
sat side by side in three chairs with acoustic guitars resting on their thighs. They told stories, cracked jokes
and swapped songs in the tiny club as they had so many times in their own living rooms. Because they were
trying to impress one another, they turned in some of the finest performances of their careers. — GEOFFREY
HIMES
Various
This One’s For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark
NEW WEST
Though he’s never been a household name, Clark has long
been a gold standard that country and Americana songwriters
aspire to. He couldn’t sell out an arena, but he’s written hits for
people who do, most recently Kenny Chesney (“Hemingway’s
My Favorite Picture
of You
Whiskey”), as well as Waylon Jennings, Jimmy Buffett, Alan
Jackson, George Strait and Johnny Cash.
UNRECORDED
A few months ago when
Brennen Leigh and I were over at Guy’s
house, he said, “Got a new song — want
to hear it?” He proceeded to play us this
song he’d written about this crumpled up
old polaroid of Susanna that I always used
to see tacked up in his shop. It’s a true,
honest painting of real true love: “My
favorite picture of you is the one where
your wings are showing / Oh, and you
were so angry, it’s hard to believe we were
even lovers at all / The camera loves you,
and so do I.” It’s my opinion that this is his
greatest song. — NOEL MCKAY
So it’s perhaps past time that Clark’s friends, fans and peers
banded together to pay tribute to the man who penned the immortal lines, “There ain’t no money in poetry
/ That’s what sets the poet free / I’ve had all the freedom I can stand.”
This double disc collects a Murderer’s Row of Texas music and Americana artists, each offering a take
on one of Clark’s songs. The tunes range from the playful (“Homegrown Tomatoes,” “Texas Cookin’”) to
the anecdotal (“Let Him Roll,” “Texas 1947”) to the startlingly intimate (“My Favorite Picture of You,” “The
Randall Knife”).
Several fine performances stand out: John Prine’s and Emmylou Harris’ sand-and-silk duet on “Magnolia
Wind”; Suzy Boggus’ sardonic take on a one-night stand in “Instant Coffee Blues”; Rosie Flores’ sly, sexy
rendition of “Baby Took A Limo To Memphis”; and Jerry Jeff Walker’s tender rendition of a new, unrecorded
Clark song, “My Favorite Picture of You,” a fitting close to the set.
For the most part, the song arrangements are conventional, sounding much like Clark might have
rendered them himself. Which is fine as far as it goes, in keeping the focus on the stories. But one wonders
what such striking stylists as Shawn Colvin, James McMurtry, Terry Allen and Patty Griffin might have done
if left to their own devices.
Well, no matter. Clark’s songs are lustrous creations, perfectly capable of standing on their own, and
CONTINUED ON PAGE 84
this is certainly an enjoyable set. — JOHN T. DAVIS
F A L L 2 011
TEXAS MUSIC
★
47
Guy Clark’s Top 70
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 47
40
Christmas on the Isthmus
UNRECORDED
When Guy visited one July,
I’d just barely started a
Christmas song. I had kind of a tune and
sang him the lines:
It’s Xmas on the Isthmus of Panama
We’re listless this Christmas
No Santa Claus
Guy said, “Well, let’s get paper and
pencil,” which he usually says when he
gets serious about writing a song and not
combing his hair. So out comes the yellow
legal pad. Nearly immediately he wrote
down, quite brilliantly:
No wise men, no angels, no mistletoe
trucks
No reindeer, no shepherds
Then, reminded of holidays past, I added:
We’re shit out of luck
From then on the song was a religious
breeze, and we finished the most sacred
aspects of it in about 30 minutes. Later,
when I recorded it on my album Salivation,
Guy sang a fine angelic choral backup,
and Sugar Hill received numerous letters
from their most gospel-inspired supporters
saying they’d never buy another Sugar Hill
record again because the company had
obviously abandoned bluegrass for Satan.
Guy and I were both humbled and proud of
this, and to this day I sincerely believe the
tune is right up there with “Jingle Bells”
and “Rudolph” with his bright red ass. —
TERRY ALLEN
41
42
43
44
Ballad of Laverne and Captain Flint
TEXAS COOKIN’ 1976
Madonna w/ Child ca. 1969
BOATS TO BUILD 1992
Ain’t No Trouble to Me
COLD DOG SOUP 1999
All Through Throwing Good Love
After Bad
OLD FRIENDS 1988
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
Virginia’s Real
54
Hemingway’s Whiskey
55
56
57
58
59
Uncertain Texas
60
61
62
Don’t You Take it Too Bad
TEXAS COOKIN’ 1976
Worry B Gone
WORKBENCH SONGS 2006
I Don’t Love You Much Do I
BOATS TO BUILD 1992
Comfort and Crazy
GUY CLARK 1978
Blowing Like a Bandit
BETTER DAYS 1983
Dancin’ Days
THE DARK 2002
The Carpenter
BETTER DAYS 1983
Me I’m Feeling the Same
TEXAS COOKIN’ 1976
Baton Rouge
BOATS TO BUILD 1992
SOME DAYS THE SONG WRITES YOU
2009
BETTER DAYS 1983
Instant Coffee Blues
OLD NO. 1 1975
No Deal
BETTER DAYS 1983
Bang the Drum Slowly
UNRECORDED
A Nickel for the Fiddler
OLD NO. 1 1975
CRAFTSMAN 1981
You Are Everything
UNRECORDED
The Guitar
SOME DAYS THE SONG WRITES YOU
2009
63
84
★
TEXAS MUSIC
F A L L 2 011
Baby Took a Limo to Memphis
DUBLIN BLUES 1995
64
65
67
Rose of Memphis
Dale Watson
UNRECORDED
Tornado Time in Texas
WORKBENCH SONGS 2006
All He Wants Is You
SOME DAYS THE SONG WRITES YOU
2009
68
69
Houston Kid
70
Queenie’s Song
GUY CLARK 1978
Walkin’ Man
WORKBENCH SONGS 2006
THE DARK 2002
faces every day; there’s
something essentially optimistic about a lifestyle
that’s always looking to the future, the next show
and the next town. And there’s something comforting in the thought of Watson and his Lone
Stars out there, riding the highways and byways,
bringing their timeless brand of music to the
nation’s honky-tonks and roadhouses. It makes
you think back to an earlier time, when Ernest
Tubb and Ray Price and countless others were
out there making a living the same way.
Only now, Watson is doing it by bus. “I
remember when I was a teenager, seeing Conway
Twitty play,” Watson recalls. “I can still see the
dark stage and hear his voice: ‘Hello, darling.’
And then the spotlight came on him. After the
show I stood outside in the rain for two hours,
shivering, waiting for him to come out. I was
standing outside by his bus, and it was a 1975
Silver Eagle. I memorized every detail of that bus
standing there.”
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 83
10
FROM TEXAS
WHO’S HAIR?
(THE ANSWERS)
ILLUSTRATIONS BY DENISE M. FULTON
F A L L 2 011
TEXAS MUSIC
★
85