| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 17/05/2016 : 19:56:14
Guy Clark, a King of the Texas Troubadours, Is Dead at 74
By BILL FRISKICS-WARRENMAY 17, 2016
©NY Times
Desperados Waiting For A Train...early live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFb1lGMvS3I
NASHVILLE Ñ Guy Clark, who along with Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker and others patented the rugged, imagistic brand of narrative-rich songwriting that became associated with the Texas troubadour movement of the 1970s and Õ80s, died on Tuesday at his home here. He was 74.
His death came after a long illness, including a 10-year struggle with lymphoma, said his manager, Keith Case.
Mr. ClarkÕs recordings never received much airplay on mainstream radio, but his treasury of songs, including ÒL.A. Freeway,Ó an FM radio favorite as recorded in 1973 by Mr. Walker, was as indelible as that of anyone working in the Americana idiom in the last decades of the 20th century.
ÒGuy is the kind of writer who is too strong to fade out,Ó the singer John Hiatt said of Mr. Clark in a 2013 interview in American Songwriter magazine. ÒHis songs will remain long after he does. They get in your heart and mind, and they become part of you.Ó
Mr. ClarkÕs songs have been recorded by scores of musicians, including progressive country singers like Ricky Skaggs, who had a No. 1 country hit with ÒHeartbrokeÓ in 1982, and Rodney Crowell, who in 1988 reached the top of the country charts with ÒSheÕs Crazy for LeavinÕ,Ó a song he wrote with Mr. Clark.
Vince Gill had a Top 10 country hit with Mr. ClarkÕs ÒOklahoma BorderlineÓ in 1985, and Kenny Chesney made Mr. ClarkÕs ÒHemingwayÕs WhiskeyÓ the title track of his 2010 album.
Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson and Brad Paisley, among others, also recorded Mr. ClarkÕs songs. Singer-songwriters like Steve Earle and Mr. Crowell looked to him as a mentor.
His songwriting evinced not just a keen eye for narrative detail but also an unerring ear for spoken vernacular and a wry, existentialist bent akin to that of Kris Kristofferson or John Prine.
In ÒDesperados Waiting for a Train,Ó one of a handful of originals now regarded as standards from his 1975 debut album, ÒOld No. 1,Ó Mr. Clark reminisced about a grandfatherly figure at whose feet he used to listen to stories as a boy. Writing through the eyes of childhood, Mr. Clark describes the old-timer in almost mythic terms as Òa drifter and a driller of oil wells, and an old-school man of the worldÓ who is confronting his mortality.
IÕd play the ÒRed River ValleyÓ
And heÕd sit in the kitchen and cry
And run his fingers through 70 years of living
And wonder, Lord, has every well I drilled gone dry?
We was friends, me and this old man
Like desperados waiting for a train
For the brooding title track of his 1995 album, ÒDublin Blues,Ó Mr. Clark used an unlikely juxtaposition of images to effect an arresting shift in perspective Ñ in this case, casting an old mountain folk song in a shimmering new light.
ÒI have seen the David, IÕve seen the Mona Lisa too,Ó he sings over a simple folk-blues melody. ÒAnd I have heard Doc Watson play ÔColumbus Stockade Blues.ÕÓ
Even his novelty songs, including paeans to down-home culinary delights like ÒTexas CookinÕÓ and ÒHomegrown Tomatoes,Ó were singular in their humor and tone.
ÒStuff that worksÓ is how Mr. Clark alluded to the rustic images and folk tunes that defined his body of work in his 1995 song bearing that title. ÒStuff thatÕs real, stuff you feel,Ó he sang in a gruff, half-spoken baritone, Òthe kind of stuff you reach for when you fall.Ó
Guy Charles Clark was born on Nov. 6, 1941, in Monahans, a small town in West Texas. His father, Ellis, was a lawyer, and his mother, Frances, worked for a time in his law office.
Mr. ClarkÕs grandmother, who ran a 13-room hotel, also played a major role in his upbringing. Some of her guests later appeared as characters in his songs; one was Jack Prigg, who became the old oil speculator in ÒDesperados Waiting for a Train.Ó
The Clarks moved to Rockport, on the Texas Gulf Coast, when Guy was 16. He joined the Peace Corps in 1963 and studied briefly at the University of Minnesota before opening a guitar repair shop in Houston in the mid-Õ60s. It was around that time that he began performing in clubs and formed lifelong friendships with Mr. Van Zandt and singer-songwriters like Mickey Newbury and Kay (later known as K. T.) Oslin.
Mr. ClarkÕs marriage to Susan Spaw ended in divorce. Their son, Travis, later played in his fatherÕs band. Mr. Clark moved to San Francisco in the late Õ60s, returned to Houston and then moved back out West, to Southern California, where he worked in the guitar factory of the Dopyera brothers, who patented the Dobro model resonator guitar.
Mr. ClarkÕs second wife, the former Susanna Talley, died of cancer in 2012. She was a painter (and occasional songwriter) whose rendering of the Pleiades constellation in the night sky graced the cover of Willie NelsonÕs 1978 album, ÒStardust.Ó
In 1971, the couple moved to Nashville, where Mr. Clark signed a publishing deal. They were married there the next year. A photograph of Ms. Clark appears on the cover of Mr. ClarkÕs album ÒMy Favorite Picture of You,Ó which won a Grammy for best folk album in 2014.
Mr. Clark released 13 albums. He was elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2004 and was the subject of ÒThis OneÕs for HimÓ (2011), a Grammy-nominated tribute album featuring contributions from admirers like Lyle Lovett and Mr. Prine.
In addition to his son and two grandchildren, Mr. Clark is survived by two sisters, Caroline Dugan and Jan Clark.
A laconic though riveting musical storyteller, Mr. Clark was adept at getting at the heart of an experience or an event.
ÒI really work hard at being true,Ó he told American Songwriter magazine. ÒAnd thatÕs where the uniqueness of the songs come out. I couldnÕt have made them up.Ó
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The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation.
I can't contrive a song. Ð GENE CLARK |
| 6 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 21/05/2016 : 15:09:49
A wonderful documentary of the brilliant and tragic life and music of Townes...for those who haven't seen it yet...watch samples here! Highly recommended!
Be Here To Love Me...clip
https://vimeo.com/26045005
Trailer
http://www.metacritic.com/movie/be-here-to-love-me-a-film-about-townes-van-zandt/trailers/1084655
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The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation.
I can't contrive a song. Ð GENE CLARK
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| BobbyFischer |
Posted - 20/05/2016 : 18:34:51
Havent heard so much of his music yet unfortunally but he is together with his wife Susanna Clark so interesting and funny storyteller on the Townes Van Zandt Doku. |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 18/05/2016 : 11:20:19
Guy's career started with his FIVE STAR album, "Ol' No !"...
and ended with 2013's FIVE STAR "My Favorite Picture Of You"...goin' out on a high note!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIftiMZPVsE
________________________________________________
The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation.
I can't contrive a song. Ð GENE CLARK |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 18/05/2016 : 10:48:47
Guy Clark and Jerry Jeff Walker on Letterman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buf6P0V45rg
Legendary
Essential Guy...Ol' No. 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfy6tjgS2UM&list=PLNSGbX4hylMDqJZpu_nONQAkLGZng5mAV
________________________________________________
The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation.
I can't contrive a song. Ð GENE CLARK |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 18/05/2016 : 10:45:44
'Guy Clark's songs were like Peckinpah movies Ð that powerful'
Friends and peers pay tribute to the late country star whose songs, which brought a literary gravitas to the genre, were covered by the best in the business
©The Guardian/Mark Guarino
Guy Clark, a songwriter who elevated American popular song by infusing it with literary depth, died in Nashville on Tuesday after suffering from cancer. He was 74.
Clark influenced not just younger generations for songs that had the storytelling gravity of a serious novelist, but he also raised the artistic stakes for his peers. A displaced Texan in Nashville, where he moved in 1971, Clark emerged as the center of a songwriting scene that included Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, Lyle Lovett, David Olney, Nanci Griffith and Billy Joe Shaver, among others. While he never became a household name like many of those he influenced, his impact on their work was profound.
ÒJust to be with him, to be in his presence, is a lesson first in humanity, but in art for sure. To be around Guy makes you want to be a better person, much less a better songwriter or painter or anything else. All that is just an extension of Guy,Ó Lovett told American Songwriter magazine in 2013.
Clark credited his early interest in writing to his childhood in Monahans, Texas, a small town on the stateÕs western edge where he was born on 6 November 1941. ÒWe read poetry at dinner because there were no TV sets. We were always exposed to good literature or prose or poetry,Ó he once told an interviewer. The isolation introduced him to characters, from oilmen to drifters, who would later show up in his songs. He later moved to Houston where he opened a guitar repair shop, which began his lifelong pursuit of building custom guitars. It was in Houston where Guy met Townes Van Zandt, his best friend and occasional collaborator. Both men became touchstones for a poetic writing style that was also conversational and down to earth.
ÒGuy and Townes Ð that was the level that everybody aspired to. I donÕt think anyone reached that level of writing that the two of them did. But if your heart was in the right place, you would aspire to that caliber of writing,Ó says Texas songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard, who first met Clark in the early 1970s.
Once Clark arrived in Nashville, amid a scene he often compared to Paris in the 1920s or the Beats in 1950s New York, he started writing some of his best-known songs: LA Freeway, Desperados Waiting for a Train, That Old Time Feeling, Oklahoma Borderline, Heartbroke, Texas 1947, She AinÕt Going Nowhere, among many others. His debut album for RCA records arrived in 1975, squarely in the middle of that decadeÕs singer-songwriter era that his work would not just represent but define.
ÒLA Freeway and Desperados Ð they were like [Sam] Peckinpah movies, they were that powerful. Then he had this ability too to write these incredible love songs that were just so simple in what they said. And turn around and write Dublin Blues that would make you cry,Ó Hubbard says. ÒThe first time you would hear those songs, you couldnÕt believe how well-crafted they were, but also so emotional.Ó
The alchemy of songwriters in Nashville at that time created a scene that was Òmuch more rebellious than anything else that was going on in the 70sÓ, says Jon Langford of the Mekons. ÒIt was this very weird, redneck-beatnik, anti-establishment thing. While Waylon [Jennings] and Willie [Nelson] had already had their success, these guys were much heavier. It was like they were sailing closer to the f#cking wind.Ó
While Clark hesitated to talk of songwriting as a craft, others appreciated his songs for their minimalist touch. Colin Gilmore, an Austin, Texas, songwriter, recalls hearing Clark songs throughout his childhood but says that, because his work is so understated, it took much later for them to sink in.
ÒI wonder if his songs are easy to overlook if you are moving at the wrong pace. If you are in too much of a hurry, you might pass them by,Ó he says. ÒThe fact that he understates things so often Ð thatÕs the magic of his songs. He didnÕt ever seem desperate for an immediate hook. He has amazing hooks but they are very natural.Ó
Songwriter James McMurtry, who met Clark nearly 30 years ago, says that his songs had a Òrural Texas perspectiveÓ that no longer exists: ÒHe saw some of the things that I didnÕt quite see. I missed the steam trains, but by the time I came around it was all diesel.Ó
Details like that made his songs sound true; but his delivery helped too. ÒWhat I like about Guy and John Prine and Kris Kristofferson and people like that was their lyrics were phrased so well. You can sing them or you can talk them with equal effect because every syllable falls into a pocket,Ó McMurtry says.
For younger songwriters, ClarkÕs reputation was as a songwriter with integrity and a cool disposition.
ÒHe was the rare songwriter whose strength comes from equal parts personality and craftsmanship. I drank the Texas Kool-aid of his legend long before I ever saw him in Memphis rolling a cigarette with his left hand while fingerpicking with his right,Ó said NashvilleÕs Cory Branan. ÒBut that romantic aspect of the man somehow never overwhelmed the craft.Ó
Clark later recorded for Warner Bros, Sugar Hill, Asylum Records and Dualtone. He was nominated for a Grammy several times but finally won one in 2013 for best folk album.
The real validation may not have been in his record sales, but in the list of artists who covered his songs over the years: Johnny Cash, Ricky Skaggs, Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill, Brad Paisley, Lyle Lovett, Alan Jackson, John Prine, George Strait, Bobby Bare, Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Chesney, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, John Denver, Steve Earle, Tammy Wynette, Jerry Jeff Walker, Waylon Jennings, Ron Sexsmith, Shawn Colvin, Patty Loveless, The Everly Brothers, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and many others. This OneÕs For Him, a two-disc tribute collection of his songs, was released in 2013.
Despite going through treatment for cancer, among other health issues, Clark continued to write up until his death, often mentoring and collaborating with many up-and-coming songwriters who sought him out. That included Melissa Greener of Nashville who started writing with Clark a few years ago. She said that during those sessions at ClarkÕs house, Clark pushed her to subtract as much as she could so that the song could Òreveal its true essenceÓ.
ÒHe was a man of his word, an honest man, a no bulls#t kind of guy,Ó she says. ÒHe was a really good friend to me. It really felt like if you were friends with Guy, if felt like he was on your side.Ó
GuyÕs wife Susanna Clark, an accomplished visual artist and songwriter, died in 2012. Earlier this year his health deteriorated and he entered a nursing home. He is survived by his son Travis and daughter-in-law Krista McMurtry Clark and sisters Caroline Clark Dugan and Jan Clark.
Until the very end, Clark displayed the work ethic and continued creativity of many other artists of his generation who didnÕt consider fame the ultimate barometer of success. Instead, the writing represented the journey itself. ÒI really work hard at being true,Ó he told an interviewer. ÒAnd thatÕs where the uniqueness of the songs come out. I couldnÕt have made them up.Ó
________________________________________________
The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation.
I can't contrive a song. Ð GENE CLARK |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 18/05/2016 : 10:41:34
Guy Clark & Emmylou Harris : Black Diamond Strings
From Ist Series Transatlantic Sessions, a song Guy wrote about Rodney Crowells father.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og7dMS-nyqA
Dublin Blues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sx8lqm2Lw0
________________________________________________
The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation.
I can't contrive a song. Ð GENE CLARK |
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