It was inevitable that Steve Earle would eventually pay tribute to one of two his major mentors, Guy Clark, having done the same for Townes Van Zandt ten years ago. On GUY Earle and his newly recast band, The Dukes, deliver 16 Clark tunes, both the well-known and relatively obscure in heartfelt, admirable style. As Earle says, “No way I could get out of doing this record. When I get to the other side, I didn’t want to run into Guy having made the TOWNES record and not one about him.”
Earle’s friendship dates to 1974 when Earle hitchhiked from San Antonio to Nashville. A few months after his arrival, at age 20, he found himself taking over for the also young at the time Rodney Crowell, as bassist in Clark’s band. Clark was 33 at the time. Earle recounts a memoir written last November – “Guy…had always seemed to me, form that day until the last time I saw him alive, above and beyond any such world contrivance as time. I could go a year without seeing him and find him utterly un-changed….And now he’s gone and when I follow him (because I always have) I’ll leave this world with only one regret and that is that I never wrote a song with Guy Clark.”
Clark’s classic songs are here – “Dublin Blues,” “L.A. Freeway,” Desperadoes Waiting for a Train,” Rita Ballou,” The Randall Knife” and “Old Friends” nestled among ten others, many also familiar. These are songs that are burned in Earle’s soul. He’s played them, been inspired by them, and admired them closely for years. As such, he claims this was not a difficult album to make. It was done in five or six days with almost no overdubbing. It’s meant to sound live. Truth is that Clark’s songs were often so unadorned, that the focus was almost totally on the lyrics. With the talented musicians in The Dukes as well as guests, Earle and company add flourishes and deft touches that bring out the strong melodies as well as the emotional qualities of Clark’s tunes.
Those musicians are Kelly Looney (bass), Chris Masterson (guitar), Eleanor Whitmore (fiddle/mandolin), Ricky Ray Jackson (pedal steel) and Brad Pemberton (drums). Masterson, Whitmore, and Jackson add harmonies. Frequent Clark collaborators Shawn Camp (three tunes) and Verlon Thompson (“Old Friends”) join as do Mickey Raphael, Jim McGuire, Gary Nicholson – all also on “Old Friends” which has a group of Clark disciples as a choir of sorts – Terry Allen, Jerry Jeff Walker, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell and Jo Harvey Allen.
It was the deep emotional quality of Clark’s writing that has resonated with so many songwriters. It was so damn powerful in its deceptive simplicity and vivid imagery. To appreciate Clark’s writing, tke for example the verse from “She Ain’t Nowhere” – “She ain’t going nowhere, she’s just leaving.” Earle captures it well there and in the tear-jerking “The Randall Knife” and “That Old Time Feeling.” His relaxed approach and pacing of these two, especially, are incomparable tributes to Clark. Similarly, he evokes Clark’s inimitable West Texas style in “The Last Gunfighter Ballad” and the classic “Desperadoes Waiting for a Train.”
”Old Friends,” with the large cast aboard, could be taken as an elegy but it’s a warm song where you feel the love of Clark’s many friends through the spoken passages and choruses. Earle has made a gorgeous tribute, every bit as good, maybe even a shade better than TOWNES.
