was all these cool, weird-looking guys, old folks
and young folks in cowboy hats and boots. It was
Texas Blues 101, right there on a Sunday night.”
The adults there welcomed these kids who had just
stumbled through the doors.
It was an open-mic night, and they put their
names down on the list to play. “We played Stevie
Ray’s Pride And Joy. [Shrugs] It was okay, but the
older people who were there would come up and
say: ‘Wow, kid, you really are into this stuff. Come
back next week.’”
They did come back next week, and the week
after and the week after that. Other musicians
would teach them songs, on stage in front of
everyone. “You guys know San Jose by Freddie
King? Come up here, we’ll show you.’”
They started getting gigs right away, playing in
front of anything from six to 60 people. “We were
14, 15 years old. It was kind of to lure people into
this dirty, nasty blues club: ‘Here’s Gary and Eve,
the young kids.’”
Jimmie Vaughan was one
early mentor, Clifford
Antone was another.
Antone was a big figure on
the Austin scene. He had his
own club, Antone’s, and
a record store and label. “He
would drive me and Eve to
the store and grab piles of
records. My whole CD collection was from him.”
The clubs became Clark’s second home. “As
a kid, you’re trying to look for some place to go
where you feel comfortable. We had something
that nobody else had. I was out ‘til, like, two in the
morning. I’d come in smelling of cigarettes and
booze ‘cos some dude spilled his Glenlivet when he
was teaching me the chords to whatever song.
There was a danger to the fact that we weren’t
supposed to be there.”
His skipped classes, and his grades nose-dived.
He was busted smoking weed on school grounds
and spent a couple of nights in jail.
“I was a rebel with a cause, and the cause was
music. I’m with the kids who are around the back
with the acoustic guitars and the bongos and the
smoke that smells funny. I learned how to drink
early, hung out with older women. I learned a lot
fast. It was blues university.”By the time he was out of his teens, he’d already
put out two albums: 2001’s Worry No More and
2004’s 110. But his personal life had become as
unfocused as his academic life had been.
“I was out of school, I had no responsibilities,
I had my own apartment – it was party time,”
he says. “I was running around, having a good
time, but I was also struggling to keep bills
happening, trying to figure out how to make it
as a musician...”
It was the morning after his electricity was cut
off that Clark got the text that changed his life.
“It was my friend Doyle Bramhall II,” he says,
naming the Texas musician who’s played with
everyone from Stevie Ray Vaughan to Roger
Waters and Elton John. Bramhall said Clark could
expect an offer from Eric Clapton to play the
Crossroads Guitar Festival in Chicago, a series of
music festivals and events founded by Clapton.
“I’m like: ‘Don’t bullshit me,’ and he’s like: ‘No, this
is going to happen.”
A few weeks later, Clark
got a letter from Clapton
formally inviting him to
play the 2010 Crossroads
Festival in Chicago in
front of 20,000 people. He
thought about his life, and
how the fun had
overtaken the ambition,
and he came to a decision. “I’m, like: ‘I need to
get my shit together,’” he remembers.C
lark did indeed get his shit together. The
Crossroads was the point where his career
properly achieved lift-off. Afterwards,
Clapton wrote him another letter, this one saying
that Clark had made him want to play guitar again.
That papal blessing led to a major-label deal with
Warners – and that whole Saviour Of The Blues
thing that he’s spent the whole time since trying to
shake off. He says he doesn’t count Clapton as
a friend so much as a passing acquaintance. Same
goes for Jimmy Page, who has also sung his praises.
Former US President Barack Obama doesn’t really
even qualify as that, though the two men met
when Clark was invited to play at the White House
in 2012. “We talked about Chicago blues, Buddy
Guy. Then all of a sudden I thought: ‘Man, he’sbeen talking to me for a little while. I should
probably let him get back to making sure that this
country is cool,’ you know what I mean?”
Still, there’s a sense of a torch being passed on.
“For the sake of the story, yeah, I’ll go with that,” he
says, not entirely convincingly. “But there was none
of this [mimes being anointed]. I didn’t get that
from Jimmie Vaughan or Doyle Bramhall either.
But I felt like I was being accepted. It’s like when
you’re a kid and you want to play with the big boys.
I guess I’m part of the squad. They never said I was,
but they keep calling me back.”
There’s a reason for that. In a form so hung up on
tradition, Clarke is an innovator – to the point
where classifying him as a ‘blues’ artist is a stretch.
His multi-genre mash-up is a world away from the
reverential approach of the Joes, Walters and Kenny
Waynes of this world. Does he think the blues has
been hijacked by white guys in shiny suits?
“Yes,” he says. Then he changes his mind. “Not
hijacked. You can’t say that, because it comes from
a love of it. But it’s definitely been borrowed and
interpreted and put out in a different way.”
In a good way?
“In some ways. I think Stevie Ray Vaughan was the
best thing that happened to the blues in a while. The
Fabulous Thunderbirds [in which Jimmie Vaughan
was the lead guitarist] were the best thing. Charlie
Musselwhite, guys like that. The thing that bothers
me is when guys think that they can make a career
out of trying to step in somebody else’s shoes.”
How do you mean? “For me, you can’t make
a record of Muddy Waters or Elmore James songs
and say: ‘This is my record.’ No it’s not. It’s great to
tip your hat, but I’m sorry, I don’t want to hear
that... It’s like: ‘I don’t want to hear that version,
I want to hear Muddy’s version.’”
Who are you talking about?
“You want me to name names?” he asks,
laughing. “Man, I’m not going to do all that.”
For all his iconoclasm and forward-thinking
momentum, Clark still sees himself as a classic
bluesman: “It’s at the heart of everything I do.
Blues, R&B, soul music – that’s what I grew up on.”
But at the same time, he stands at the cutting
edge of things. He’s a modern magpie, a one-man
playlist of styles and genres, righteous fury and all.
“The prize to me is there’s no prize,” he says. “It’s
just a feeling of not feeling contained. Because at the
end of the day, when I’m laid up in my deathbed,
I don’t want to say I was a caricature. I was just
a dude who rode a wave, and did whatever I felt cos
that’s how I felt. Just natural and comfortable.”This Land is out on now via Warner Bros.“I learned how to
drink early, hung out
with older women.
I learned a lot fast.”
Clark Jr: “I had no
responsibilities –
it was party time.”‘Papal^ blessing’:^ Clark^ with^
fan^ Eric^ Clapton.40 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COMGARY CLARK JR