texas music fall · pdf file · 2011-12-07i’m in awe of him. ... know...

38 ★ TEXAS MUSIC FALL 2011

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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 singer-

songwriters 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 THIS THERE IS NO DOUBT:

TEXAS’ GREATEST LIVING SONGWRITER REMAINS STEADFAST ABOUT HIS ART.

FALL 2011 TEXAS MUSIC ★ 39

7070

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 rum-

bling 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 cap-

tures 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.”

Desperados Waiting for a TrainOLD 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 dope-

smoking 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

Randall KnifeBETTER 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

She Ain’t Goin’ NowhereOLD 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

The DarkTHE 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

Guy Clark’s

GREATEST SONGS

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Dublin BluesDUBLIN 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


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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 flat-

tened by a train: Those

are the sorts of details that provide the visual

pop in these stories populated by noble nobod-

ies 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

Leave it to Clark —

who is capable of sen-

timentality though he

uses it carefully — to

write a dead dog song

(“Queenie’s Song”)

based more on ven-

geance 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 mem-

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 produc-

tion and the fact

that it followed Old No. 1, which is an unenvi-

able 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 com-

mitment, “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 master-

piece “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.”



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

L.A. FreewayOLD 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 bor-

rowed 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.

Homegrown Tomatoes BETTER DAYS 1983

In addition to his other achieve-

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 clip-

clop Texas hop, and Bob Wills’ old fiddler,

Johnny Gimble, added a nimble swing solo.

“If I’s to change this life I lead,” Clark war-

bled, “I’d be Johnny Tomato Seed.” Perfect.

Boats to BuildBOATS 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

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-are-

your-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

Step Inside This HouseUNRECORDED

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, sinu-

ous 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.

Let Him RollOLD 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

Stuff That WorksDUBLIN 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

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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

Better DaysBETTER 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.

MagdaleneWORKBENCH 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

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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

The CapeDUBLIN BLUES 1995

This is the tale of an eight-

year-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 co-

wrote 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.

That Old Time FeelingOLD 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.

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

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.

Magnolia WindTHE 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

South Coast of TexasSOUTH 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 cer-

tain nobility in craftsmanship.”

Like a Coat From the ColdOLD 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

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Sis DraperCOLD DOG SOUP 1999

I like this song because it’s

a great depiction of musi-

cians … 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

LEIGH

Anyhow I Love YouTEXAS COOKIN’ 1976

The chorus of this song has

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.”

— BETTY SOO

Cold Dog SoupCOLD 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

Picasso’s MandolinBOATS 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, blue-

grass celebration of breaking artistic rules.

Rita BallouOLD 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

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

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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

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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.

HomelessTHE DARK 2002

Clark doesn’t pretend to

have an answer to the com-

plicated problem of the homeless, so he

provides multiple perspectives on the situa-

tion by allowing the identity of his narrator

to slip and slide from one persona to another

— from sympathetic one moment to insensi-

tive 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 circum-

stances we ourselves could end up on the

street with nowhere to go.

Funny BoneWORKBENCH 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

MudTHE 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.

Ramblin’ Jack and MahanBOATS 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.”

Old FriendsOLD 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.”

Out in the Parking LotWORKBENCH 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

Immigrant EyesOLD 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 har-

monies 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.

Arizona StarTHE 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

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Guy ClarkSongs and Stories

DUALTONE

The title of this live album is important, for Clark’s live shows are

nearly as memorable for the stories he tells between songs as for

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, mando-

linist 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 instru-

ment, 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 bass-

ist 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

VariousThis 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

Whiskey”), as well as Waylon Jennings, Jimmy Buffett, Alan

Jackson, George Strait and Johnny Cash.

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

this is certainly an enjoyable set. — JOHN T. DAVIS

invisible. That’s a writing technique I enjoy

a lot.”

New Cut RoadSOUTH COAST OF TEXAS

1981

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.

— MARK AMBROSE

Broken Hearted PeopleTEXAS COOKIN’ 1976

Even though he grew up

in Texas, Clark didn’t write many straight-

ahead honky-tonk numbers, but he did

write this one. This is your standard sce-

nario 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 live-

wire tenor of Gary Stewart on his immortal

1977 album, Your Place or Mine.

My Favorite Picture of YouUNRECORDED

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

CONTINUED ON PAGE 84


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Guy Clark’s Top 70

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 47

Christmas on the IsthmusUNRECORDED

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

Ballad of Laverne and Captain Flint


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

Virginia’s Real


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


Baton Rouge

BOATS TO BUILD 1992

Hemingway’s Whiskey

SOME DAYS THE SONG WRITES YOU

2009

Uncertain Texas

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

Don’t You Take it Too Bad

CRAFTSMAN 1981

You Are Everything

UNRECORDED

The Guitar


2009

Baby Took a Limo to Memphis

DUBLIN BLUES 1995

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Rose of Memphis

UNRECORDED

Tornado Time in Texas


All He Wants Is You


2009

Houston Kid

GUY CLARK 1978

Walkin’ Man


Queenie’s Song

THE DARK 2002

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Dale Watson

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 83 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 com-

forting 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.”


FROM TEXAS

WHO’S HAIR? (THE ANSWERS)

ILLUSTRATIONS BY DENISE M. FULTON

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