G
ary Clark Jr. is a calm man in
a furious world. Kicking back on
a leather sofa in a dressing room in
the Revention Music Centre in
downtown Houston, Texas, he’s the
picture of zen: six-feet-something of effortless cool
in skinny jeans, slouchy beanie hat and defiantly
non-hipster beard. A beaker holding a couple of
fingers of Jameson’s whiskey sits on the table next
to him – blues medicine to help get him in the
mood for the show he’ll be playing in this
3,000-capacity venue in a couple of hours’ time.
But even someone as laid-back as Clark can
struggle to stay calm in these demented times. The
title track of his new album, This Land, is the most
raging song any rock musician has recorded in
a long time. In it, the usually placid Clark
takes aim at the racism and violence of
Trump-era America. Channelling the
radical insurgency of modern hip-hop, he
spits fury over a grinding guitar: ‘Nigga run,
nigga run, go back where you come from.’ It ends
with the livid refrain: ‘This land is mine.’
“I had a lot of questions, concerns,
comments as far as the climate of the
country,” he says. “All this stuff was happening in
the news when I was in the studio: people not
being allowed in the country; the KKK rally in
North Carolina where the lady got killed; police
killing young black and brown folks.”
He reaches for his Jameson’s and takes a sip.
“Basically, what it comes down to is being black in
America and growing up in the south of Texas. It’s
an angry song. I’m not asking for acceptance any
more. People were shackled to the bottom of
boats, traded and sold, whipped and tortured,
hanged for nothing. We built the farms and cotton
fields and tobacco fields. So right now we are here
through death and devastation, rape and pillage.
We’re here now regardless of what we look like
and where we come from. We are citizens. We
should all have the right to make a living and toprotect our family and not be bothered. That’s all
there is to it.”
Blues musicians in 2019 aren’t supposed to open
their albums with this kind of politically charged
invective-come-call-to-arms. But then This Land is
not a typical blues song, and the album it comes
from is not a typical blues album. Most of all, Gary
Clark Jr. is about as far from a typical blues
musician as it gets.
If you want to get rise out of Gary Clark Jr. – not
an epic Donald Trump-level rise, but an eye-
rolling, ‘not this again’ rise – you just have to
mention the term Saviour Of The Blues. That’s the
honour he found bestowed upon him – or, as he
sees it, was saddled with – after releasing his third
album, 2013’s Blak And Blu.“The saviour of the blues...” he says, trying to
not to sigh. “That’s like people standing in front of
the museum going: [throws arms wide across an
imaginary door] ‘No, don’t bulldoze it.’ Look,
there’s blues everywhere, it’s not going anywhere.
It’s just not on top-forty radio, ‘cos it’s not what’s
popular. The Saviour Of the Blues? It’s more like
saviour of my youth. Which is not my
responsibility.”
He says this good-naturedly. Clark is as in love
with the blues as anybody. He came up through
the vibrant blues scene in his home city of Austin,
a liberal oasis in the conservative desert of Texas.
But his tastes went beyond the usual suspects: he
was just as likely to listen to rappers like 2Pac or
Outkast as he was to Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy
Waters; he loved Stevie Ray Vaughan, but he lovedKurt Cobain and Michael Jackson too. That broad
musical bandwith is reflected in This Land. The title
track provides a flashpoint, but elsewhere Clark
digs deep into garage rock, modern soul, reggae
and, on Pearl Cadillac, the kind of woozy funk that
sounds like a deliberate nod to Prince (“I’d be lying
if I said it wasn’t,” he says with a grin). The latter is
both an apology to his mother for being “a punk-
ass kid, always sneaking out, stealing her car,
getting into trouble” and a callback to a pivotal
moment in Clark’s own career.T
he car of the title is real. In 2003 he took off
on tour with his friend and mentor Jimmie
Vaughan (younger brother of Stevie Ray) in
a pearl-coloured Cadillac his father had bought for
him. He was still in his late teens and was
dreaming of being a star. “I packed up my
stuff, took off, trying to make something
happen. I still got it, too. It’s my baby.”
Clark was already a veteran of the
Austin scene by then. He’d fallen hard for
the blues as an 11-year-old, when his best
friend, Eve Monsees, got her first guitar.
Clark followed her lead, and soon the two
of them were listening to local blues stations and
devouring as much music as they could: Stevie Ray
Vaughan, Albert Collins, Freddie King, T-Bone
Walker. “Me and Eve, we’d listen to the radio, and
dub shows on Memorex D90 tapes then go back
and listen to them. We’d sit and figure out licks.”
Clark was 14 when he played on stage for the
first time. Monsees said she wanted to go to a blues
jam on Austin’s Sixth Street – aka ‘Dirty Sixth
Street’, home to many of the city’s clubs and bars –
and Clark agreed.
Together with a couple of friends, they hit a bar
called Babes. It smelled of burgers and spilt beer
and smoke. Clark had never been anywhere like it,
never even seen a live band before. “First time I
heard an amp turned up. First time I saw a Gibson
Flying V. First time I saw a Fender P Bass. ThereAnd that cause is music. Gary Clark Jr. may have learned his chops with veterans of the blues
scene in Austin, Texas. But whatever you do, please don’t call him The Saviour Of The Blues.Words: Dave Everley“We are citizens. We should
all have the right to make
a living and not be bothered.”
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