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Dreaming Up a Kitchen

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Guy Clark at Sisters Folk Festival, 1996.

Stuff that works

Stuff that holds up

The kind of stuff you don’t hang on the wall

Stuff that’s real

Stuff you feel

The kind of stuff you reach for when you fall

— Guy Clark

*

“When I finished, he just looked at me and said, ‘Good work’ . That’s what Guy said when he dug a song. Those are the words every songwriter I know lives for, would kill for. It was one of those times I was grateful for how hard I’ve been on myself. It was validation.”

— Jack Ingram in Texas Monthly

*

For the past two years — ever since he died at the high-mileage age of 74 — every gig we play, my music partner Mike Biggers and I kick off with a Guy Clark song. Sometimes two or three. It’s our way of honoring a songwriter we both revere — and they’re just damned fine songs to play. No matter how many times we run “Dublin Blues” or “Stuff That Works” or “L.A. Freeway,” we’ll never tire of them. They’re songs you fall in love with all over again every time you touch them.

I’ve been thinking about Guy Clark a lot lately, mostly because his protege Steve Earle is coming out on March 29 with a CD tribute to his teacher, titled simply Guy. But I have other reasons, too. Guy Clark was 100-proof. Texas tough, but with the sensibilities of a poet. A drinker and a smoker of weed with the blue collar work ethic of a custom furniture maker. As Steve Earle noted recently:

“…Guy was disciplined. He worked every day and pretty much did until he died. He painted and built guitars. For Guy it was about being an artist and doing work. The things artists do are called disciplines for a reason, because nobody tells you when to punch the clock when you’re making art. Guy showed me how he laid a song out on the page and taught me I needed an eraser. My belief in craft comes directly from Guy. I’ll turn a song over and over again until I max it out. If you come up with a really complicated rhyme scheme in the first verse, you have to duplicate it on the second verse. For Guy, it was not acceptable to slough it off. He taught me songwriting as literature.”

I guess you could say that what Craig and I are about here at Running Iron Report is celebrating “stuff that works.” Stuff that holds up. The kind of stuff you don’t hang on the wall. And for us, too, it’s about being an artist and doing work. It’s so easy to get sucked into investing time and energy in stuff that doesn’t work — it’s inspiring to be reminded that what we create is what lasts, and that the act of creation itself matters.

*

Guy Clark could be orn’ry — and that’s another thing to admire about him. He did not suffer fools and bullshit. He knew exactly who and what he was, and you could fucking well take it or leave it. That’s the only way for a man to walk in the world.

I was fortunate to spend a few hours with Guy when he came to the Sisters Folk Festival in 1996 and in 2000. I drank enough that first time I shouldn’t remember any of it, but I remember every second. Him and my brother and a couple of other folks talking songs and stories and eating pickled garlic and smoking cigarettes, Guy  demanding that we listen to the poetry of a Townes Van Zandt lyric and growling, “play something you wrote!”

Guy Clark was a hardcase and a poet. Photo by another great artist — Jim McGuire.

Thing that strikes me about Guy Clark was that he was fully committed — for good and ill. He didn’t half-ass his songs or his hand-built guitars, or his opinions. And he didn’t half-ass his alcohol-soaked and tobacco-cured way of life, either. He was all-in till the day he died. Like I said: 100 proof. There’s not enough of that kind around anymore. Maybe that’s why it got kinda dusty in my living room the other day when I came home and found my 20-year-old daughter Ceili cranking up a Youtube of Steve Earle’s version of Guy’s classic “L.A. Freeway.” Hit me right in the feels as they say — because both of those hardcore troubadours deserve to live forever, and the way that happens is 20-year-old college kids play their songs when they’re the only ones in the room.

*

Pour a glass of Hemingway’s Whiskey and light one up and dream yourself up a kitchen where you can sit awhile with Guy Clark. Then get back to the workbench and make something. Some stuff that works.

 

I’d play the Red River Valley
And he’d sit out in the kitchen and cry
And run his fingers through 70 years of livin’
And wonder, “Lord, has every well I’ve drilled run dry?”

We were friends, me and this old man

Like desperados waitin’ for a train
Like desperados waitin’ for a train

He’s a drifter and a driller of oil wells
And an old school man of the world
He let me drive his car
When he’s too drunk to

And he’d wink and give me money for the girls
And our lives were like some old western movie

Like desperados waitin’ for a train
Like desperados waitin’ for a train

From the time that I could walk he’d take me with him
To a bar called the Green Frog Cafe
There were old men with beer guts and dominos
Lying ’bout their lives while they played

And I was just a kid
They all called me Sidekick

Like desperados waitin’ for a train
Like desperados waitin’ for a train

One day I looked up and he was pushin’ 80
And there’s brown tobacco stains all down his chin
To me he’s one of the heroes of this country
So why’s he all dressed up like them old men?

Drinkin’ beer and playin’ Moon and Forty-two

Like desperados waitin’ for a train
Like desperados waitin’ for a train

A day before he died, I went to see him
I was grown and he was almost gone
So we just closed our eyes and dreamed us up a kitchen
And sang another verse to that old song
“Come on, Jack, that son of a bitch is comin’ !”

Like desperados waitin’ for a train
Like desperados waitin’ for a train

Like desperados waitin’ for a train
Like desperados waitin’ for a train

A bunch of desperados gathered for Guy’s last birthday. And they dreamed them up a kitchen and sang another verse of that old song.

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Jim Cornelius

Jim Cornelius

Born in the suburbs of Los Angeles, Jim Cornelius grew up dreaming of distant frontiers, of mountain men, long hunters, African explorers. His older brother gave him a tattered copy of Allan W. Eckert’s The Frontiersmen, a biography of Simon Kenton, and the twig was bent. Graduated from...

Comments

  2. John Cornelius says

    Jim might not remember the after-show party in 96, but it was rather epic. A couple of young ladies in an adjoining room knocked to complain about the noise level (it was late). Guy, being the charmer that he is, simply persuaded them to join us, which they did. Problem solved. Jim brought in his guitar and Guy strummed it a bit. I believe that Guy then said “Son, you should burn this thing.” Jim, being less of a charmer than Guy, told him “Well, you have to have strong hands to play it.” Guy was a rather tall, big man, so you can imagine how that comment went over.

    Fond old memories…

    Thanks for the reminder.

    Reply

  7. Saddle Tramp says

    “Thing that strikes me about Guy Clark was that he was fully committed — for good and ill. He didn’t half-ass his songs or his hand-built guitars, or his opinions.”

    The above led me to this while going over the newly arrived (Tuesday) Paradise of Bachelors treatment of Terry Allen in this just released PEDAL STEAL + FOUR CORNERS. I have been soaking it up along with Tom Russell’s great new one and now here comes Steve Earle with Guy. I will be up to my ears in stuff that works for weeks.
    I would not attempt to describe it (Terry Allen) other then maybe if Sam Shepard and The Coen Brothers took over a West Texas Honky Tonk with no holds barred. He also does straight ahead West Texas high and lonesome as good as any. AMARILLO HIGHWAY hits in all directions for a good entry point if you don’t already know of him. Here’s an apt description of his work ethic:

    “There’s a couplet from Dugout [a piece loosely based on Allen’s father, who played baseball, and his mother, a barrelhouse piano player] that goes: “That’s the only way the game is played / With heart and for blood.” That could describe the way you approach art.”

    — Regarding Terry Allen from a
    Texas Monthly interview 

    Yeah, that’s what you get from that West Texas wind and dust. Guy Clark, Terry Allen and territory for so many others…

    Reply

  8. Saddle Tramp says

    A little more on Terry Allen. I think there is enough West Texas to share with Guy. Guy owns his own corner indisputably and it’s a big territory. The following is a matter of timing and to whomever may take an interest. Listening to the DUGOUT piece is worth the purchase alone. It romps through the Civil War, baseball and historical mentions with wordplay choices like none other. Stuff that works. Guy owns those words. Always brings back my West Texas days.

    Excerpt from below regarding Terry Allen;

    “Raised in Lubbock, TX, the son of a pianist and a former professional baseball player who, during Allen’s childhood, ran a nightclub that hosted boxing and wrestling matches along with Ray Charles, Little Richard, and Elvis concerts. All of which is to say, this is a man who has lived a life, and seen his fair share of the world, especially the harsh, dry, desolate world that is West Texas.”

    There’s no doubting Terry Allen’s cv. Here’s a sample taken from Stranded:

    Terry Allen’s curriculum vitae is enough to make even the most accomplished of artists’ stop and take note. He’s received a Guggenheim Fellowship and multiple NEA grants, taught art at UC Berkeley, among other institutions, has works in the collections of the New York MoMA, the Met, the SF MoMA, publicly funded installations in San Francisco, Kansas City (the controversial sculpture entitled Modern Communication), and the list goes on. This is all before even mentioning what he’s perhaps best known for, his music career, which has spanned a dozen albums and 40+ years — kicked off by a 1965 performance on the legendary show Shindig! and most notably represented by his cult classic ’70s country singer-songwriter albums Juarez, and Lubbock (on everything). Raised in Lubbock, TX, the son of a pianist and a former professional baseball player who, during Allen’s childhood, ran a nightclub that hosted boxing and wrestling matches along with Ray Charles, Little Richard, and Elvis concerts. All of which is to say, this is a man who has lived a life, and seen his fair share of the world, especially the harsh, dry, desolate world that is West Texas.
    That experience is palpable in his 1985 piece Pedal Steel, a work commissioned by the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, a post-modern company based out of San Francisco. Combining original songs, field recordings, and narration — described aptly by Paradise of Bachelors as “country-concrète sound collage” — Pedal Steel is unlike anything else in Allen’s catalog; Navajo chants descend into pedal steel freak-outs, big rigs and crickets and thunder and a honky-tonk saxophone all underscore the haunting story, loosely based on the life of the Texas/New Mexico steel player, Wayne Gailey. Impeccably produced by Allen, this is arguably his finest work, and this set is the first ever vinyl release.
    Also included in this new Paradise of Bachelors set are 3 CDs collecting his Four Corners — a series of 4 radio plays by Allen and his wife, Jo Harvey Allen, an accomplished artist in her own right, originally broadcast on NPR in the late ’80s and early ’90s — and a full-color booklet featuring an essay on the work, images of Allen’s visual art, and the full scripts of all 5 pieces. A singular piece of work from an artist who embodies Americana in the fullest sense of the word; these are stories that transcend their populist origins, as Allen himself says in Pedal Steel, there’s “a lot of ghosts” here.

    Reply

  9. Saddle Tramp says

    Terry Allen also immortalized C.B. Stubblefield (Stubb’s BBQ) with a bronze statue of him at the remains of his original BBQ joint on Broadway in Lubbock. The memorial for Stubb was created from the foundational floor from what remained after the restaurant had been demolished. At the time I was there a few donation bricks were starting to fill in on the site. Guy and Susanna Clark’s brick was one of the first there. This was in the last of the 90’s or early 2000’s and I have slides of it archived away. I went to “ Hub City” a lot and all over the surrounding area. A surprising coincidence occurred when I attended the last (at the time) Route 66 Car Rendezvous in San Bernardino some years ago. This was because the city of SB was bankrupt and the only thing that made that one possible was the support of Stater Bros. Grocery. It later moved to Ontario and was revived again in SB (sort of). Yeah, it’s as convoluted as a Terry Allen road trip. Think Juarez. What made it equally important at this event was that Stubb’s BBQ, which is now in Austin, Texas had a food truck there on site serving up Texas Q for all. Stubb’s in San Bernardino was a real unexpected surprise. San Berdoo also makes several appearances in Terry Allen’s wild ass musical and narrated road trip adventures. Terry Allen was also very influential on Dave Alvin, not to mention countless others. When you get into Guy Clark’s world and those in his orbit it get’s real good, real interesting and real fast, even if you have to take a freeway or two to get there. Buckle up…

    Reply

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