I got texts this week from two friends who have known me over 30 years and have a grasp of what events are going to be significant to my life.  Both knew instinctively I would want to know Guy Clark passed and relayed the information in the newest fangled way by text and Facebook Messenger.  They had both sat in bars with me in wilder days, drinking beer, analyzing and marveling at Guy Clark lyrics.

 

There is a reason I chose a Guy Clark lyric to rest under the masthead of this website, A Country For Old Men.  “To me he’s one of the heroes of this country, so why’s he all dressed up like them old men?”

 

To me, Guy Clark was one of the heroes of my personal country and the last time I saw him play last year at the Franklin Theatre he had turned into an old man just like I in what seemed like just a blink of an overnight.  Rodney Crowell, another Houston kid, had to help with the singing as cancer and respiratory problems had diminished Guy’s always raspy voice.  When those texts came from my friends I wasn’t surprised as I had been subconsciously expecting.  When I saw him that last time on stage I knew I’d never see him again, sort of like the last time I saw my brother.  I’ve learned time takes care of fate.

 

Guy wrote two perfect songs and a bunch of purt near perfects.   “Desperadoes Waiting for a Train” and “Randall Knife” were perfect in they captured the delicious pain of male relationships with all their love and lack of verbal communication.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I first heard “Desperadoes” on Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Viva Terlingua” album while in college and the Guy’s song about his relationaship with his grandmother’s oil driller boyfriend struck a chord with my own relationship with my cowboy brother.  Brother Jim was 18 years older and also an old school man of the world who ran ranches and trained and competed with quarter horses.  He invited his city raised little brother from my sixth to 16th years to work on the ranch every summer and our lives were like some old western movie. It’s a sidekick relationship I haven’t yet written about, maybe because Guy did such a number on the genre with his contribution.  More likely I’m still percolating six years after Jim’s death trying to figure out what to say.

 

In “Randall Knife” Guy struggled to find a “perfect tear” to summarize his father’s life after the funeral. His father had been a small town West Texas lawyer in Monahans. His mother had given him the Randall Knife before he left for World War II.  Guy had broken the tip off trying to stick it in a tree, but his disappointed father had just taken the knife and put it in a drawer without a “hard word one”.    After the funeral, Guy went to the bottom drawer where the knife had “slept and stayed for 20 some odd years kind of like Excalibur waiting for a tear”.  I’ll let Guy finish this thought as he does it best:

 

My hand burned for the Randall knife
There in the bottom drawer
And I found a tear for my father's life
And all that it stood for

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guy may have summed the male human condition pretty well, but it wasn’t just the higher thoughts he covered. Moe Bandy had a song claiming “Hank Williams Wrote His Life”.  I could say the same about Guy Clark because so many of his phrases are interwoven into my thought patterns.

 

Back in the roaring bachelor days, any party I attended the phrase ran across my mind and often out of my mouth, “Hold on to your lamp shade honey, I’m looking for a hat!”.  Jan and I recently got back from eating our way in a wide arc across Texas and somewhere in every plate I could hear Guy singing how that Texas Cookin’ can keep your belly and backbone from bumping.  Not that my belly and backbone are in any danger of meeting anytime soon, but the song and cooking still fit.

 

Guy’s characters created in his songs were as memorable as any of Hemingway or Faulkner. 

 

I went to my nephew Keith’s wedding and was surprised he was marrying a real-life “back slidin’, barrel ridin’” Rita Ballou, as Amanda fit the rodeo princess description of a “walkin’ talkin’ Texas texture, high timin’ barroom fixture kind of a girl”.   Fifteen plus years later I sometimes look at Keith and see the same sly knowing grin ole cousin Willard had in the song for getting the girl any cowboy in Texas would ride a bull to impress.

 

Another favorite character was the elevator man in a cheap hotel, a wino tried and true, who drank himself to death before his time because the hooker he loved wouldn’t marry him.  The story teaches not everyone sees heaven as angels and harps:

 

Let him roar, Lord let him roll
Bet he's gone to Dallas Rest his soul
Lord, let him roll, Lord let him roar
He always said that heaven
Was just a Dallas whore

 

It wasn’t just male to male relationships Guy covered so well.  He summed up the rules of engagement in the one night stand in “Instant Coffee Blues” with the phrase:

 

So you tell them the difference between caring and not.
And that it's all done with mirrors, lest they forgot.
I said it's all done with mirrors, of which they have none.
To blend the instant coffee blues into the morning sun

 

Guy was part of a lifelong duo of Guy and Susanna Clark, she a writer in her own right and a better painter who he claimed “woman I love she's crazy, paints like God”.  Her death a few years ago paved the way for his own transition pilgrimage he made this week.  Theirs was likely a constant seeking their own level ground as many couples do. He summed up in the chorus of “Tryin’ to Try”:  

 

I'm not tryin' to say I'm sorry
I'm trying to say I love you
I'm not tryin' to make excuses
Nor set myself above you
I'm not tryin' to rearrange it
I'm not sayin' I can change it
The only thing I'm tryin' to do is try

 

In the end the point of getting older hopefully is to gain some wisdom and perspective.  Guy sang about things that worked, like old used cars who run just like tops and boots you can work in all day and dance all night. He lamented being a pitcher who used to have a smokin’ little fastball but now he can’t even make it on the church team.  Yet he gave advice that resonates with me, especially as I look at too much time spent on the easy things like television and Facebook.

 

Hang on just as long as you can
Get up whenever you fall
Shake it off, boys and go 'round again
Don't be hangin' your life on the wall

I remember the gist of the liner notes Jerry Jeff wrote on Guy’s first album, “Old No. 1” though I can’t find them anywhere. I wore the album out long ago and iTunes can’t profit from liner notes.  Scamp Walker said Guy was such a craftsman he taught himself to make guitars, so he could be intimate with every part of the creative songwriting process.   I remember how excited I was to get that first album in 1975 and I’ve been that way with every one since.  Guy’s first album reflected a vision of “one old years before his time, no thanks to the world and white port wine.”   

 

Sadly, the years finally caught up with Guy’s vision and himself so I’ll have no more songs to anticipate.

A cartoon ran in the Tennessean this morning of Guy’s grave pushing up homegrown tomatoes just as he requested in his song by the same name.  He saw better vegetables as a higher calling than a cemetery monument.  Makes perfect sense as Guy liked stuff that works and his stuff holds up.