ALWAYS TRUST YOUR CAPE—MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH GUY CLARK

I never really got why people cried when someone famous died. It’s not as if they knew them. Why all the hysterics? But when I heard the news of Guy Clark’s passing, I found myself deeply mourning and grieving this loss. I felt like a friend had died and left a hole in my heart. All I could do was listen to his music and let the tears flow. This was a person who’s art touched me deeply, and whose songs felt as if they were my songs. I gave in to the sadness and mourned in the way I knew best: driving down a country road and listening to the music that filled my life for so many years. It has been almost a week now and while the tears have lessened, the emotions I feel while listening to his music have deepened. The well-loved lyrics seem to have new meaning now.
 
The Cape by Guy Clark
Now, he's old and gray with a flour sack cape tied all around his head
And he's still jumpin' off the garage and will be till he's dead
All these years the people said, he was actin' like a kid
He did not know he could not fly and so he did

Well, he's one of those who knows that life is just a leap of faith
Spread your arms and hold your breath and always trust your cape

My love affair with Guy Clark’s music began when I was just a teenager. I was hanging out with a group of friends who were really into The Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, Neil Young, The Kinks and other 60s groups, but they also really dug the country and folk scene too, music from Emmylou Harris, Kate Wolf, Jerry Jeff Walker and Guy Clark.
 
I was just getting ready to head out to the desert for my first class at Malheur Field Station where I would study the Survival Skills of the Primitive Paiutes with Jim Riggs, a do-it-yourselfer who had put together this class teaching kids like me how to live off the land the way the native Americans had for centuries.
 
I was studying cultural anthropology at Oregon State University, so the class made perfect sense. To help pay for it, I got a gig being a kitchen assistant for the following session, helping to prepare meals for the nearly fifty students who would be taking other classes from ornithology to bird watching and geology.
 
At eighteen, I was fearless, ready to try anything and go anywhere I could get myself, and a summer spent in the middle of the Oregon desert was just the adventure I was looking for.
 
As we packed up our belongings from the house we shared, music blared from the boom box, including Guy Clark’s Old No. 1.  The lyrics to the song L.A. Freeway hit me deep in my gut with hope, excitement and a little sadness:
 
Pack up all your dishes.
Make note of all good wishes.
Say goodbye to the landlord for me.
That son of a bitch has always bored me.
Throw out them LA papers
and that moldy box of vanilla wafers.
Adios to all this concrete.
Gonna get me some dirt road back street

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Fast forward to 1992 0r 1993, I can’t remember exactly when. I had moved to San Francisco in 1990, and was a devoted fan of all things garage and punk rock. I worked in a record store and wrote and DJ’d for Maximum Rock n’ Roll. But my country and bluegrass roots never left me and I got a lot of shit for listening to Guy Clark, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Gram Parsons and Hank Williams during my shifts at the record store. When I found out my hero Guy was playing the Great American Music Hall, I jumped at the chance to see him and got there early so I could get a good spot.
 
The opening band was a young duo, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. I was mesmerized by their haunting harmonies and raw lyrics. They reminded me of John Doe and Exene Cervenka from my favorite punk band X, but they were pure Americana. After their set, I tracked down Gillian and asked her where I could buy her record. She just laughed and in a soft voice with a hint of a drawl said she was working on it, and maybe in the next year or two it would be ready. Guy Clark did the world a big favor bringing this unknown artist on tour. Their music would go on to attract millions of fans when that first record Revival came out in 1996.

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Then Guy took the stage and I was transported back into a world of hard living, open spaces and following your heart. Songs about life, heartache, bad decisions, faith and good food filled the hall for the next hour or so. I left that show further enamored with his music and vowed not to let my negative punk rock friends sway me from listening to the music that touched my heart.
 
Fast forward another several years, to 1995 or 96. Guy Clark was coming back to the Great American Music Hall and this time I had a partner in crime join me. My friend Cathy and her boyfriend Andrew were both fans so we went and had the amazing pleasure of going back stage afterwards with Guy. Andrew had toured with him as a roadie, so he was the one who finagled us back stage. Rambling Jack Elliot opened the show and they were both hanging out at a shaky wooden table telling stories, sipping off a bottle of Stoli, and just letting loose. I was a little in awe. There I was hanging out with these legends, and let me tell you, they don’t call Rambling Jack that because he moves around a lot. That man can talk! And he and Guy clearly dug each other’s company shooting the shit, laughing, drinking and swapping stories. Two hard-living guys, credited with creating the outlaw country genre, just hanging out. I was transported to another world.
 
After a couple of hours, it was time to head out. Guy very sheepishly asked if anyone could give him a ride to his hotel. I was the only one with a car, and of course I jumped at the chance to assist this artist who had given me so much pleasure that night. I neglected to tell him that it was a tiny 2-door Toyota Tercel.
 
When I pulled up in front of the venue, Guy just looked at my tiny silver car with a wry smile on his face. He’s a big man, well over six feet. I apologized for the size but he was so gracious, he thanked me profusely for helping him out. I opened the door and flipped the seat back so he could stow his guitar in the back seat, then stood mortified as he folded his massive frame into an accordion to fit into my tiny car.
 
We drove those ten city blocks making small talk, all the while I was freaking out inside, “Oh My Gosh, I have Guy Clark in my car!!” When we got to the hotel, he unfolded himself and I helped get his guitar out of the car. We shook hands and he thanked me again for the lift and for coming to see him play.
 
I headed home that night, knowing the only people who would be as thrilled as I was were my friends Cathy and Andrew. None of my other punk rock friends would get that I just had a legend in my car.
 
Fast-forward to 1999, my first time in Austin, TX for SXSW. I tracked down one of the spots he sang about. South by Southwest was still a relatively small festival in 1999, and I had gone by myself to check it out and see some of my favorite bands play: The Derailers, The Dragons, Steve Earle and The Briefs.
 

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I was determined to find the Texas Chili Parlor bar Guy sings about in Dublin Blues:
 
Well I wished I was in Austin, hmm,
In the Chili Parlor Bar
Drinkin' Mad Dog Margaritas and not carin' where you are
 
I headed out of the heart of SXSW, 6th St and Red River on foot, with a vague sense of where I was going. This was before Google Maps and Siri and I asked people I passed on the street for directions. Some had never heard of the place, but those who did looked at me with a knowing smile and asked me if I was a Guy Clark fan.
 
 When I got there after walking for almost 40 minutes in the muggy Texas heat the first thing I did was order a Mad Dog Margarita and a chiliburger. Everyone there knew that song, so that fact that yet another tourist had found this secret hideaway because of Guy wasn’t big news.
 
Guy’s music is so much a soundtrack to my life; it’s hard to separate the events and emotions from the music. I only met the man once but his songs painted such clear pictures in my mind of people with worn and lined faces, scrabbling a living from an earth parched and dusty, but with hope and love in their hearts. Plates of Texas BBQ, drinking and smoking and riding the rails, and of love and loss and pain and perseverance. His music has given me the strength to keep going and walk my own path, even when I’ve been surrounded by people who thought I was nuts and said so to my face. When I get down, I pull out a Guy Clark record and sing at the top of my lungs until I feel able to face whatever situation has me all tied up in knots. I know I can keep going because of Guy Clark’s music gives me courage:
 
Come From The Heart by Guy Clark
When I was a young man my daddy told me
A lesson he learned, it was a long time ago
If you want to have someone to hold onto
You're gonna have to learn to let go
You got to sing like you don't need the money
Love like you'll never get hurt
You got to dance like nobody's watchin'
It's gotta come from the heart if you want it to work
Now here is the one thing that I keep forgetting
when everything is falling apart
in life as in love, what I need to remember
there's such a thing as trying too hard
You got to sing like you don't need the money
Love like you'll never get hurt
You got to dance like nobody's watchin'
It's gotta come from the heart if you want it to work
 
Thank you Guy for always being there for me with the right words of encouragement.
Guy Charles Clark (November 6, 1941 – May 17, 2016)

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