So this morning as I watched tube permeameter tests, I listened to Guy Clark‘s new album Songs and Stories and what a terrific album it is! The live album was recorded at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville and it has a great homey feel. Guy is surrounded, sitting down as he notes on the introduction track, Clark by his musical family — his longtime sidekick and co-writer Verlon Thompson, along with Shawn Camp, Bryn Davies and Kenny Malone. according to his website: “It’s a comfortable atmosphere that feels like a peek into a 3am guitar pull at The Driskill Hotel“.
The albun is full of a bunch of stories about songs like “L.A. Freeway”, and Townes Van Zant’s “If I Needed You” Shawn Kemp and Verlon Thompson both get to do a couple of songs. But obviously the real star is Guy who is just a few months short of his 70th birthday (November 6th) and sounds as good as ever!
Here’s Guy performing “The Cape” that appears on the new album
After Guy I kept in the Americana singer songwriter mode and listened to another favorite album Hard Times from Adam Carroll and Michael O’Connor. While it’s not a live album the album is full of great songs as Adam and Michael alternate tracks. I love “Billy Gibbons Beard” and “Gulf Coast Losers” along with “Hard Times” and this one “I’m Tired of Myself”. So check out the album!
The morning ended with The Trailer Tapes from Chris Knight another
songwriter who like Adam and Michael writes story songs about folks from the wrong side of life. The Trailer Tapes consists of raw recordings Chris made before the release of his first album. From Amazon:
In the summer of 1996, inside a sweltering singlewide trailer outside a small Kentucky mining town, an unknown singer/songwriter named Chris Knight recorded an ‘unofficial’ batch of tracks prior to the release of his major label debut album. Over the next decade, through a combination of leaks, bootlegs and legend, those sessions would become something much more. “People have been talking about these tapes ever since I recorded them,” Chris Knight says. “To me, they were rough and stark and I never thought they’d see the light of day.” Ten years and four acclaimed albums later, The Trailer Tapes remain a remarkable moment in time, less captured than cornered, a portrait of the artist as a ferociously talented young man
A great collection of songs and a glimpse of what was to come! and what’s to come, well it’s off to Target!
Here’s “House and 90 Acres” which is on the album
