Guy Clark

"Guy Clarke" redirects here. For other uses, see Guy Clarke (disambiguation).

Guy Clark
Clark at the 2009 Newport Folk Festival
Background information
Birth name	Guy Clark
Born	(1941-11-06) November 6, 1941 Monahans, Texas, USA
Genres	Country, Texas country, outlaw country, folk
Occupation(s)	Musician, singer-songwriter, producer
Instrument(s)	Guitar, vocals
Years active	1970s–present
Labels	RCA, Warner, Sugar Hill, Elektra, Dualtone
Website	guyclark.com

Guy Clark (born November 6, 1941) is an American Texas country and folk singer, musician, songwriter, recording artist, and performer. He has released more than twenty albums, and his songs have been recorded by other artists including Ricky Skaggs, Steve Wariner, and Rodney Crowell.

Biography

Born in Monahans, Texas, on November 6, 1941, Clark grew up in a home where the gift of a pocketknife was a rite of passage and poetry was read aloud. At age 16 he moved to Rockport, on the Texas Gulf Coast. Instructed by his father's law partner, he learned to play on a $12 Mexican guitar and the first songs he learned were mostly in Spanish.

Moving to Houston, Clark began his career during the "folk scare" of the 1960s. Fascinated by Texas blues legends like Mance Lipscomb and Lightnin' Hopkins and steeped in the cultural sauce piquante of his border state, he played traditional folk tunes on the same Austin-Houston club circuit as Townes Van Zandt and Jerry Jeff Walker. "It was pretty 'Bob Dylan' in the beginning," Clark said. "Nobody was really writing." Eventually, Clark would draw on these roots to firebrand his own fiddle-friendly and bluesy folk music, see it embraced as country and emerge as a songwriting icon for connoisseurs of the art.

Moving to San Francisco in the late 1960s, as social unrest was erupting through racial and generational fissures, Clark worked briefly in a guitar shop, returned to Houston for a short time, and then moved to the Los Angeles area, where he found work building guitars in the Dopyera Brothers' Dobro factory and signed a publishing agreement with RCA's Sunbury Music before pulling up stakes and relocating to Nashville in 1971.

The following year, country-folk singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker, then newly ensconced in Austin, released an eponymous album featuring the Clark composition "L.A. Freeway," which became an FM radio hit. In 1973, Walker released Viva! Terlingua, recorded live in a Texas dance hall and including Clark's ballad "Desperados Waiting for a Train." As much as any others, these two Clark songs may arguably be said to have set the tone for a musical revolution that was first known as progressive country. By 1975, many of the revolutionaries would be defined as the Outlaws. Like the Bakersfield sound of the 1960s, the new sounds were a reaction to the formulaic rigidity and paternalism of Nashville's record producers and label executives.

In this alternative musical world of the late 1960s, inspired by the storytelling poems of Robert Frost and Stephen Vincent Benet, Clark began to write what he knew "with a pencil and a big eraser." "L. A. Freeway," for example, blueprints his fish-out-of-water experience in Los Angeles. "Desperados Waiting for a Train" is based on his memory of an oilfield worker who was a resident of his grandmother's hotel. Like almost all his songs, then and now, these two early masterpieces are expressions of personal memory and experience, further characterized by words that have a melody all their own.

Clark's move to Music City, one of three cities where Sunbury had offices and where his pal Mickey Newbury would make him welcome, proved fortuitous. Clark and his wife, Susanna, would become the axis for a groundbreaking fraternity of singer-songwriters for whom Nashville felt like "Paris in the '20s." Among them were Newbury, Van Zandt, Rodney Crowell, Billy Joe Shaver, Steve Earle, Dave Loggins and David Allen Coe. Bonded by their egalitarianism, the troupe's favored sidewalk cafe was the Clark's dining room table, where they gathered frequently for "guitar pulls" and show-and-tell song swapping sessions, and where they celebrated their successes and facetiously threatened to kill whoever had presented the best new song. Susanna Clark, a talented painter, tossed her brushes aside for awhile, joined the invasion and began writing hit songs herself.

In 1975, after using his big eraser on his first try at cutting an album, Clark made his recording debut on RCA Records with Old No. l, ten critically applauded originals built to last, including "L. A. Freeway," "Desperados Waiting for a Train," "Texas, l947," "Instant Coffee Blues," "Rita Ballou," "She Ain't Goin' Nowhere," "Let Him Roll," "A Nickel for the Fiddler," "That Old Time Feeling" and "Like a Coat From the Cold." On the cover, the songwriter is pictured with his wife's painting of his chambray "work shirt," customary attire emblematic of his values. During the next 20 years, Clark would continue to record albums that worked like a stun gun on other artists in search of new songs. The weaponry included Texas Cookin' (1976), Guy Clark (1978), The South Coast of Texas (1981), Better Days (1983), Old Friends (1989), Boats to Build (1992), Dublin Blues (1995), Keepers - a Live Recording (1997), Cold Dog Soup (1999) and The Dark (2002). The recordings include numerous collaborations with old and new friends such as Crowell, Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill, Albert Lee and Rosanne Cash.

Nashville legend Johnny Cash, who then had been topping the charts for 20 years, was among the first Nashville recording artists to embrace Guy Clark's music. His interpretation of "Texas, 1947" was a 1975 chart hit, followed in 1977 by Clark's "The Last Gunfighter Ballad." In 1987, Cash would also cover Clark's "Let Him Roll." In 1982, famed songsmith Bobby Bare made it to the country Top Twenty with Clark's "New Cut Road." That same year, bluegrass icon Ricky Skaggs escalated his mainstream trajectory with Clark's "Heartbroke," a No. 1 song that permanently established Clark's reputation as an ingenious songwriter. Among the many others who have gilded their careers with Guy Clark songs are Vince Gill, who took "Oklahoma Borderline" to the Top Ten in 1985; the Highwaymen, who introduced "Desperados Waiting for a Train" to a new generation that same year; and John Conlee, whose interpretation of "The Carpenter" rode into the Top Ten in 1987. Steve Wariner reached the Top Five with the Clark cover "Baby I'm Yours" in 1988, and the same year Asleep at the Wheel charted with his "Blowin' Like a Bandit." Crowell was Clark's co-writer on "She's Crazy for Leavin'," which in 1989 became the third of five straight No. 1 hits for Crowell. More recently Brad Paisley covered Clark's "Out in the Parking Lot" on his Time Well Wasted CD, and parrotheads are listening to Jimmy Buffett's interpretation of Clark's "Boats to Build."

Masterful and charismatic in live performance, Clark has built a devout U.S. and international following through years of touring prestigious clubs and concert halls. In 1990, Guy Clark was the catalyst for a series of Marlboro Music festival performances introducing the "guitar pull" to wider audiences. In various combinations of four singer-songwriters including Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, Joe Ely, John Prine and Mary Chapin Carpenter, Clark and his colleagues mesmerized SRO audiences with their humor, spontaneity, storytelling and songs. As a result, guitar pulls became a new tradition in clubs like New York's Bottom Line, and popular understanding of the depth and breadth of the music made in Music City has deepened. Clark, Ely, Hiatt and Lovett continue to perform as the Songwriter Tour, taking "guitar-pulls" to prestigious venues across the country.

Guy Clark remains a national treasure and folk icon, crafting masterful, poignant melodies and insightful lyrics. Tough, bare-boned and dryly sentimental, his beautiful songs reflect the man himself and display an old-fashioned masculinity that emphasizes honesty, integrity and carefully chosen words. His craggy, wistful story-songs, and plain-spoken delivery are also indicative of his persona. Inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Foundation's Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2004, Clark was honored with the Americana Music Association's Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting in 2005. The following year, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum named Guy Clark as its prestigious 2006 Artist-In-Residence. Workbench Songs (2006), released to universal critical acclaim and the delight of his worshipful fans, was nominated for the 2007 Grammy award as Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album.

Career

He is an accomplished luthier and often plays his own guitars. He achieved success as a songwriter with Jerry Jeff Walker’s recordings of "L.A. Freeway" and "Desperados Waiting For A Train". Artists such as Johnny Cash, David Allan Coe, Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs, Steve Wariner, Brad Paisley, Alan Jackson, Rodney Crowell and The Highwaymen have recorded Clark’s songs. Emmylou Harris has accompanied him on several recordings, particularly his own version of "Desperados Waiting For A Train" on his first album, Old No. 1, released in 1975. Clark is frequently referred to as "The Fifth Highwayman".

Clark has been a mentor to such other singers as Steve Earle and Rodney Crowell. He organized Earle's first job as a writer in Nashville. In the 1970s, the Clarks' home in Nashville was an open house for songwriters and musicians and it features in the video Heartworn Highways, an evocation of the songwriter scene in Nashville at that time.

Numerous artists have charted with Clark-penned tunes. In 1982, Bobby Bare made it to the Country Top Twenty with Clark’s "New Cut Road". That same year, bluegrass leader Ricky Skaggs hit No. 1 with Clark’s "Heartbroke", a song that permanently established his reputation as an ingenious songwriter. Among the many others who have covered Clark's songs are Vince Gill, who took "Oklahoma Borderline" to the Top Ten in 1985; The Highwaymen, who introduced "Desperados Waiting For A Train" to a new generation that same year; and John Conlee, whose interpretation of “The Carpenter” rode into the Top Ten in 1987.

Steve Wariner took his cover of Clark's "Baby I’m Yours" to No. 1 in 1988; Asleep at the Wheel charted with Clark's "Blowin’ Like a Bandit" the same year. Crowell was Clark’s co-writer on "She’s Crazy for Leavin’", which in 1989 became the third of five straight #l hits for Crowell. Brad Paisley and Alan Jackson cover Clark’s "Out in the Parkin' Lot," co-written with Darrell Scott, on Paisley's Time Well Wasted CD. Jimmy Buffett has covered Clark’s "Boats to Build" and "Cinco de Mayo in Memphis". Clark credits Townes Van Zandt as being a major influence on his songwriting. They were best friends for many years until Van Zandt's death in 1997, and since then Clark has included one of Van Zandt's compositions on most of his albums. In 1995, he recorded a live album with Van Zandt and Steve Earle, Together at the Bluebird Cafe, which was released in October 2001. Other live material can be found on his album Keepers.

In 2006 Clark released Workbench Songs. The album was nominated for "Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album" at the Grammy Awards. He also toured with Lyle Lovett, Joe Ely, and John Hiatt in 2007.

In May 2008, Clark canceled four concerts after breaking his leg. After two months on crutches, he began to perform again on July 4 at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC where he appeared with Verlon Thompson. On June 20, 2009, Clark announced a new album entitled "Somedays the Song Writes You" which was released on September 22, 2009. It features originals along with a Townes Van Zandt song entitled "If I Needed You".

In December 2011 This One's For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark (a two-CD set) was released by Icehouse Music.

Family

Clark was married to songwriter and artist, Susanna Clark from 1972 through her death from cancer on June 27, 2012.

Discography

Albums

Year	Album	Peak chart positions					Label
		US Country	US	US Heat	US Indie	US Folk
1975	Old No. 1	41					RCA
1976	Texas Cookin'	48
1978	Guy Clark						Warner
1981	The South Coast of Texas
1982	Best of Guy Clark
1983	Better Days	48
	Guy Clark – Greatest Hits						RCA
1988	Old Friends						Sugar Hill
1992	Boats to Build						Asylum
1995	Dublin Blues
	Craftsman						Rounder/Philo
1997	Keepers						Sugar Hill
	The Essential Guy Clark						RCA
1999	Cold Dog Soup						Sugar Hill
2001	Together at the Bluebird Cafe (with Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle)						American Originals
2002	The Dark	46					Sugar Hill
2006	Workbench Songs	74		36			Dualtone
2007	Americana Master Series: Best of the Sugar Hill Years						Sugar Hill
	Live from Austin, TX						New West
	Hindsight 21-20: Anthology 1975-1995						Raven
2008	The Platinum Collection						Warner
2009	Somedays the Song Writes You	59		13	39		Dualtone
2011	Songs and Stories	29	146	2	18	6

Singles

Year	Single	US Country	Album
1979	"Fools for Each Other"	96	Guy Clark
1981	"The Partner Nobody Chose"	38	The South Coast of Texas
1983	"Homegrown Tomatoes"	42	Better Days

Filmography

• Heartworn Highways Documentary, Snapper/Catfish, 1981/2003, with Townes Van Zandt, David Allan Coe, and Steve Earle

External links

• Official website
• Guy Clark's “Someday The Song Writes You” review at CountryMusicPride.com
• Guy Clark and His Craft: The Turnstyled Junkpiled Interview
• Slipcue.Com profile
• Feature story and reviews of Guy Clark at Country Standard Time
• Guy Clark at AllMusic