CMT Blog: Archive

Coming up as a journalist, I was encouraged to read as much as I could, to learn how to tell a story well. During an interview about his new album, Somedays the Song Writes You, I asked Guy Clark if songwriters should take the same tactic. "Yeah, of course, and read something good, too," he said. "Read Dylan Thomas or listen to it. I just got a new CD of the whole Under Milk Wood play. Every time Townes (Van Zandt) and I thought we were pretty hot shit writers, we would put on a tape of Dylan Thomas reading."

That would make you humble pretty fast, I said. "No shit," he replied.

Clark recalled that he grew up in a pre-TV era and after dinner, his family played Scrabble or Monopoly or read out loud. His father was a lawyer in Rockport, Texas, and his law partner introduced Clark to the Flamenco guitar, an instrument that would become as fascinating to him as words. "I had never seen people sit around and play guitar. She just played Mexican music, Texas Border music. The first year I played guitar, I didn't know any songs in English. But it was very cool. I still love that style of guitar and built nine of them."

Fellow songwriters such as Rodney Crowell and Steve Earle have cited Clark as a mentor, and lately he's been collaborating with younger songwriters, too. Asked about the guidance he received coming up in the Houston clubs, Clark said, "There wasn't really any business as such. There were people playing in the little folk joints. That's what I did, I was a folk singer. I still have some friends who I played with who were inspiring. I mean, everyone's inspiring to me."