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THE DARKER SIDE OF NASHVILLE
Peter Culshaw - London (U.K.) Telegraph (Filed: 01/15//2004)
On my first trip to Nashville a couple of years ago, I was failing to
make much sense of the place and fell back on a technique that I've
often found produces results in unfamiliar places - ask the musicians
themselves whom they most respect.
One name came up more than anyone else's. Guy Clark, it became
obvious, was a city legend, a songwriters' songwriter. Singer Rodney
Crowell, whose recent album The Houston Kid I loved, further intrigued
me one evening by saying: "If you want to check out the darker side of
Nashville, talk to Guy Clark."
At least 50 artists have covered Clark's songs, from Lyle Lovett and
Rita Coolidge to the Everly Brothers and Ricky Scaggs, who had a
country number one with his song Heartbroke. Rodney Crowell had
another with She's Crazy For Leavin'. Clark's friend, the late Johnny
Cash, covered five of his songs, notably Texas 1947.
For Emmylou Harris, Clark, who comes to Britain next week, is a "true
poet and a great American writer". Esquire magazine called him "the
finest songwriter in the history of Texas". (Clark was born in West
Texas in 1941.)
But from Clark's first album Old No 1 (1975), now considered a
classic, it's his own performances of his songs that the Nashville
insiders rave about. Solo albums with highly crafted songs trickle out
every two or three years, none of them troubling the charts. "The
record companies don't seem to know what to do with me. And I don't
want to be a star, anyway," he says.
I turned up at Clark's house at 11 in the morning, and he offered me a
drink from an already open bottle of bourbon. It seemed churlish to
refuse. We went downstairs to his studio and he showed me his
collection of guitars - "flamenco negros, with rosewood back and
sides", which he makes himself.
He said he didn't really consider himself a country artist but was
just as influenced by bluegrass, Mexican music and the blues, as well
as poets such as Dylan Thomas.
He played me demos of some folksy but gritty new songs he was working
on, most of which are now released on his latest album, The Dark.
Several seemed to be wistful songs about women of a certain age, such
as Arizona Star, who was a "pre-Madonna primadonna", "shinin' like a
diamond, she had tombstones in her eyes".
Another, whose dancing days are over, still has "a couple of two-steps
she ain't shown no one" and "loves to ride horses in three-quarter
time". A tender song, Magnolia Wind, includes the lines: "I'd rather
not hear pretty music again, if I can't hear your fiddle on a magnolia
wind."
One song on each of Clark's albums is by the songwriter many consider
to be Clark's only Texan peer, Townes Van Zandt, who died in 1997. "He
was," says Clark, "my best friend for 30 years, my sounding board for
all my songs."
Clark says that he had been troubled by writer's block. One way out
was to co-write, and most of the songs on his new album are
collaborations. In fact, he said, why bother with doing an interview -
how about writing a song together? He asked me if I'd been anywhere
interesting lately, and I mentioned a trip to the edge of the Sahara
on the Mauritanian border, where I'd spent some time with some Muslim
mystics. This would be the subject of the song, he announced.
We came up with the first few lines (you have to imagine Clark's deep
Southern voice, marinated by decades of liquor): "So I found myself in
Africa/Under the desert skies/And I heard a voice calling the
faithful" The scene was set, but then Clark came up with a line that I
thought had a touch of genius and made the song darker: "But I did not
hear my name."
We imagined a lead character, clad in designer clothes - "Got my shoes
handmade in Milan" - but again Clark added a telling detail, "They got
holes in 'em", which suggested this character unravelling in a strange
environment.
A few chords, a chorus and six hours later, we had a song, with the
attention to detail Clark puts into crafting his guitars. And it still
wasn't entirely finished. Exhausting business, this songwriting,
especially as the bourbon was all gone, so I made it back to my hotel
and slept for about 12 hours.
Clark hasn't performed here for several years, but, when I heard he
was coming to London, I gave him a call this week. He was in a ski
resort in Utah; he'd just done a gig, was fine, and was just "keeping
on keeping on".
As soon as he had 12 new songs, he'd put out a new album. The problem,
he said, was that "the more I do this, the harder it gets and the less
I know".
He did suggest I drop in sometime, and we could try another song or
two. Just say the word, Guy, and I'll be on that plane.
The Darker Side of Nashville
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