This next artist has gotten a lot
of attention from me recently – I’ve bought four of his studio albums and a tribute
double album as well, all in the last couple of months.
Disc 655 is…. Somedays the Song Writes You
Artist: Guy Clark
Year of Release: 2009
What’s up with the Cover? Guy Clark himself,
looking like your favourite uncle over for a visit, and packing his guitar. I
don’t have an uncle that plays the guitar, but if I did I’d want him to be Guy
Clark.
How I Came To Know It: I’d had
some bad experiences with Guy Clark, but also some great ones. Recently I found
his excellent homepage where he streams every one of his records. This
let me go through all of his studio albums one after another. Of the fifteen or
so albums, I really liked six of them – and so I bought the four I was missing.
While Sheila originally liked Guy
Clark, being inundated with this much at once was a bit much for her, and she’s
a bit off him. Not me though – I’m enjoying soaking up all the new Guy Clark in
my collection. “Somedays the Song Writes You” is one of those.
How It Stacks Up: I have six Guy Clark albums, as well as a concert
album he did with Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle, and a tribute album of
other artists doing his songs.
It is
hard to stack them up, since I bought four of them all at once just a couple
months ago, and I have yet to grok them in their fullness. I gave all six
studio albums a quick listen again as part of determining where they stand up. “Somedays
the Song…” came came out 5th. I like it, but it isn’t as good as
four others.
Rating: 3 stars
Guy
Clark songs tend to be about two things. They are either character studies or
they’re about some object of some kind. “Somedays the Song Writes You” is a
relatively recent album for him, but it follows this same approach, mostly to
good effect.
“Stuff”
songs on the record are about guitars, whiskey, which I guess you’d expect
music to be about, but also coats. The songs are best when the stuff connects
to a character, like “Hemingway’s Whiskey”
which is less about Ernest Hemingway than it is about tapping into the writer’s
isolation and strength. The song does a good job of bringing both out.
Likewise
“The Coat” isn’t really about a coat,
it’s about getting so mad that you leave a fight and forget to take your coat
with you:
“There’s nothing left to take
back
There’s nothing to regret
The sooner I get movin’ the
sooner I get wet
There’s nothin’ left unsaid
nothing left undone
If I hadn’t left my coat I’d be
already gone.”
The
absence of the coat highlights the narrator’s equivocation. When the song ends on
a hopeful note with “think I’ll go back
and get my coat” leaving you to wonder if maybe the relationship can be
salvaged after all.
On “The Guitar” we’re treated to a ghostly
story about a pawn shop guitar that seems to be mystically connected to the
customer trying it out. Part metaphor about the calling to be a musician, and
part Twilight Zone episode, the song also highlights some very pretty playing
from Clark and collaborator and co-writer, Verlon Thompson.
On the
character front, my favourite song on the album is “Eamon,” the story of an old salt that has been working on the water
since he was fourteen. Old now, Eamon decides to walk inland to die in a place
where ‘he couldn’t smell the sea.”
The music has lilting roll to it, like the sea itself and I love that Clark has
managed to write a sea shanty about not being on the sea. For Eamon, land is the undiscovered country,
sending him off with a chorus of:
“Sing fare thee well
Calm seas or swell
Red evening sky
Home and dry.”
As the
saying goes, “red sky at night/sailor’s
delight” and while the song is about life’s end, Clark makes that end
peaceful and appropriate. We all should wish to be sent off so gently.
Not all
the songs are so perfect. Clark tackles the subject of “Hollywood” but clearly doesn’t get the pace and danger of the place
and it comes off like someone writing a song based on a travel book, not personal
experience. For a better song about the same place, go with Concrete Blonde’s “Back in Hollywood.” That’s how it’s done,
Guy.
Similarly,
“Wrong Side of the Tracks” tries to
be a bluesy song about poverty, but it is just a lesser tackling of a topic
Clark handles much better on “Homeless”
(from his superior release from 2002, “The Dark”).
The
album also has a cover of the Townes Van Zandt masterpiece “If I Needed You.” I like Clark’s
version, but he doesn’t do a lot different from Townes, and lacks a bit of the
desperate need in his voice that makes the song work.
Of all
the albums I purchased in my recent glut, “Somedays…” was the one on the bubble
for me. I bought it because some of the highpoints are pretty strong, and I
like its spirit, but it isn’t where I would start if I was trying to get
someone into Guy Clark.
Best tracks: Somedays You Write the Songs, The Guitar, Hemingway’s
Whiskey, The Coat, Eamon
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