There’s some part of me that wishes I could say I’ve been a life-long fan of Guy Clark’s music.  But the truth comes in two parts:  1) I haven’t lived my whole life yet and 2) It’s really only been a little over seven years now since I first discovered the Texas-born singer-songwriter that has become one of my musical heroes, even if I am neither a singer or a songwriter myself.

Guy Clark’s first songs were recorded and made known to the world by one Jerry Jeff Walker.  In 1971, Jerry Jeff recorded and released Clark’s poignant, “let’s get the hell out of California” ballad “L.A. Freeway”.  Two years later Walker added Guy’s country masterpiece “Desperados Waiting for a Train” to his now classic live album ¡Viva Terilingua!.  At the time, you would’ve had to closely examine the liner to discover that Guy Clark wrote those songs, but once you did you’d have to say: Damn, that man can sure craft one hell of a tune..

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My introduction to Clark’s music didn’t come from those old Jerry Jeff records even though I had heard them many times before I even knew who Guy Clark was.  My education began in 2001, as I was driving to my job at a West Virginia radio station at five in the morning listening to Clark’s  1975 debut Old No. 1.  That’s when I really first heard “L.A. Freeway” and “Desperados…”.  The poetry always takes on a deeper meaning when you hear the poet who wrote it and felt it, sing it. When you hear the poet, who in late nights, recited it over and over until each line was true and nothing was wasted.

At the time when Old No. 1 was released Guy Clark had indeed gotten the hell out of California.  He had re-located to Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Susanna.  He had become great friends with Townes Van Zandt and he spent evenings around his kitchen table with the likes of Steve Earle, Billy Joe Shaver, Mickey Newbury, Rodney Crowell, and Steve Young, passing the wine and the guitar and the songs in a never-ending circle.  He had begun building hand-crafted guitars in his basement and he listened to Dylan Thomas as a reminder that a great song should live both in the ear and on the page.

In the years since 1975 Guy Clark has recorded close to a dozen more studio albums. In that time he has established himself as a songwriter on par with the greatest that have ever weaved together words and melody.  He’s traveled the world as a performer.  He’s battled cancer and probably a few personal demons along the way.  He’s continued to build guitars in his basement and he’s continued to write some of the best damn songs around.  Give a listen to “Randall Knife” or “Magdalene” one time.  Sit there and soak up tunes like “Boats to Build” or “Dublin Blues”. And while the label has been used far too often, it’s hard to argue with the idea that Guy Clark is indeed a craftsman of song.

And so driving to work on that West Virginia morning I discovered Guy Clark.  Already a fan of Townes Van Zandt’s For the Sake of a Song, John Prine’s self-titled debut, and Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger, Old No. 1 brought all three of those albums together into one ten-song cycle.  The wit and humor of Prine on display in the album’s opener “Rita Ballou”.  The vast beating heart of Willie’s Lone Star spirit in “Texas 1947″.  The wounded beauty of Van Zandt felt in “That Old Time Feeling”.  I must have listened to that album at least once a day for the next month.  I now know those songs like the back of my own hand.

It was a little over a year later, in October of 2002, that I saw Guy Clark perform for the very first time at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia.  By luck I found a table right up front that I shared with a married couple and their two young girls who were probably five and eight years old.  When Guy Clark came out of the side door to the right of the stage and began to walk up the ramp to begin the show, the two little girls jumped up and raced to meet him, each with a piece of paper in their hands.  Guy stopped as soon as he saw them and bent over with a smile to say Hello.  The two little girls held out their pieces of paper, not looking for autographs, but to give him the crayon drawings of watermelons that they had made for him.  He took them in his hands, admired them, and reached down and gently patted their heads.

The girls ran back to the table with huge smiles on their faces, unable to contain their excitement as the full house clapped and yelled as Guy took the stage.  Joined on the stage by his long time performing partner Verlon Thompson, Clark carefully set the two drawings on the stool behind him, strapped on his guitar, and kindly thanked the crowd for coming out.  As the place got quiet, Guy approached the microphone and started off his show by saying “We’ll play this one….it’s a request” and with that he began playing “Watermelon Dream” from his 1988 album Old Friends.  The two little girls, their eyes as big as saucers, clapped their hands and bounced up and down in the chairs.  This is the song they came to hear.  This is why they drew those watermelons in crayon on the page.  And as Guy started singing, those two young girls sat perfectly still, watching his every move, as they mouthed in unison every word of the song.  That’s one reason why Guy Clark is my hero.

As the night wore on at the Birchmere, the songs rolled out of Guy Clark.  He pulled out a number of tunes from his new album at the time, The Dark.  He played the old classics like “L.A. Freeway”, “Out in the Parking Lot”, and “Texas Cookin’”.  And between every song the audience yelled out for more.  A sea of requests were thrown in shouted voices towards the stage and he damn near played them all.  Except one.

My grandfather was born in 1901.  He was 16 years old when America entered World War I and even though he was too young, he tried to lie about his age so that he go fight for his country.  He was found out and was forced to stay at home.  He lived through the Great Depression when everything was hard-fought and progress was slow to come.  He worked in a lumber camp in the eastern mountains of West Virginia.  By the time World War II broke out he had lost an eye in a field accident and watched as one of his sons left home for the South Pacific only to see him return in a flag-covered casket.  He built fences up and down the farmland valleys of the Allegheny Highlands.  He chewed Red Man tobacco and kept a bottle of brown liquor tucked away in an old wardrobe that he brought out when he felt a cold coming on or when a Friday night saw him sitting around with an old friend.  He liked to split wood and work in the garden.  He always wore a pair of suspenders and and old straw hat.  He, along with my grandmother, raised my brother and I, for a handful of years when we were just a young little shits.  By that time he was in his 80’s.  As I think about him now I am reminded of something I always like to say about my grandfather:  That he saw more with his one eye than most people ever saw with two and that through him I too have been able to see a great deal.

The one song that Guy Clark hadn’t played that night at the Birchmere was “Desperados Waiting for a Train”.  That’s the one that I wanted to hear.  So I yelled it out.  I wasn’t the only one yelling to hear it, but he played it that night.  I sat there, just like those two little girls, perfectly still, and mouthed every word in unison of that song.  It’s one of my favorite all-time country classics and as I sit here thinking about that moment, I also think about that long drive to work on that morning in 2001 listening to Old No. 1 for the very first time. Of all the songs on that album it was “Desperados…” that reached out of the speakers and grabbed me.  It’s never let go.  It takes a rare talent to speak across the expanse of time and place.  That’s why Guy Clark is my hero.

I played the Red River Valley
He’d sit in the kitchen and cry
Run his fingers through seventy years of livin’
And wonder, “Lord, why has every well I’ve drilled gone dry?”

We were friends, me and this old man
We’s like desperados waitin’ for a train
Desperados waitin’ for a train

He’s a drifter, a driller of oil wells
He’s an old school man of the world
He taught me how to drive his car when he was too drunk to
And he’d wink and give me money for the girls
And our lives was like, some old Western movie
Like desperados waitin’ for a train
Like desperados waitin’ for a train

From the time that I could walk he’d take me with him
To a bar called the Green Frog Cafe
There was old men with beer guts and dominos
Lying ’bout their lives while they played
I was just a kid, they all called me “Sidekick”
Just like desperados waitin’ for a train
Like desperados waitin’ for a train

One day I looked up and he’s pushin’ eighty
He’s got brown tobacco stains all down his chin
Well to me he was a hero of this country
So why’s he all dressed up like them old men
Drinkin’ beer and playin’ Moon and Forty-two
Jus’ like desperados waitin’ for a train
Like a desperado waitin’ for a train

The day ‘fore he died I went to see him
I was grown and he was almost gone.
So we just closed our eyes and dreamed us up a kitchen
And sang one more verse to that old song
(spoken) Come on, Jack, that son-of-a-bitch is comin’

We’re desperados waitin’ for a train
Was like desperados waitin’ for a train

Guy Clark performs at the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville on Thursday, November 20.  He will be joined on stage by two extremely gifted performers, Jesse Winchester and Peter Rowan.  Tickets are currently on sale.  $29.50 - $38.50.  Doors at 8pm.  [buy tickets].

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