AUSTIN CONSIGLIERE

OLD NO. 1 by Guy Clark (RCA, 1975)

Guy Clark’s farmhouse was ground zero for a whole generation of America’s finest songwriters. Check out the scene in the “Outlaw Country” doc, Heartworn Highways, with the babyfaced Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, and Guy harmonizing and trading songs and stories at the kitchen table. This was a summit meeting of Towne Van Zandt’s Gospel spreaders keeping the flame of devotion burning- and Guy, Towne’s best friend, was John the Baptist. Or, watch that David Letterman clip, 24 years later, with Guy, Jerry Jeff Walker, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Nanci Griffith, Steve, and Rodney standing up there like Mount Rushmore, singing “Desperadoes Waiting for a Train”, and you realize that the gospel seeds that had been spread in the 70’s had flowered across the nation. 

Well, that signature song appears on this, Guy’s debut album, and it’s like encountering the Dead Sea Scrolls - the original rendition. Add to this the elegiac, definitive version of L.A. Freeway - the song Jerry Jeff made into a folk-rock hit - (with my high school buddy, Jon Simons on harp), and you begin to intuit that you’re listening to history being made - and, oddly, it still sounds brand new.

To quote the liner notes in Apple Music, a Guy Clark song…”isn’t as loose as Walker, or as poetic as Townes Van Zandt, but his songs were the best built.” In 2006, this professional luthier put out the album “Workbench Songs” who’s title characterizes his steady carpenter’s hand. It was nominated for best Contemporary Folk/Americana Grammy. By this time the much covered consigliere of Austin was a universally acknowledged master and national treasure. In 2019 Steve Earle recorded an album of his mentor’s songs and I made the pilgrimage to Amoeba Records to get my copy signed and my picture taken with the man who knew the man who wrote these songs.