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Walking The Celtic Line With Terry Clarke

It's Christmas in Belfast, 1991 and you're drinking late into the night with your pal Terri Hooley - the owner of the Good Vibrations record label, the man who put out The Undertones' first single way back in '78, the only person you know who rhymes "Rastafari" with "Ulster Fry". But there's no punk music tonight - Hooley's rampaging through his house, pulling out dub reggae, folk and spoken word LPs, riffing between Richard Harris, The Mighty Diamonds, Elvis and Judy Collins, revealing lots of cool musical possibilities, laughing, smoking and gassing off. Suddenly, he pulls a CD out of the pile and grins. You realise that he's about to drop something special into your life.
"Remember that guy we saw at the Weavers Arms in London, Terry Clarke?"
Sure, you say. He was supporting Darden Smith, the country singer. Terry Clarke was from Reading, Berkshire, but he sang like his heart belonged in Sligo, Ireland, and his bones were happiest in Austin, Texas. He had the twang and the croon of a good rockin' boy. He told story songs about loners, free-wheelers and passionate homecomings. He was a sentimental soul and wasn't the least embarrassed about it -instead, he wanted you to feel all of those emotional possibilities too. He got you thinking of bloodlines and relations, of epic sessions and shorelines, expanses of space and time.
"Here, listen to this."
You're hearing Terry Clarke's just-released album, 'The Shelley River', and already those songs are moving your imagination. 'Detroit To Dingle' is potent like a short story, as the old priest thinks about solitude and escape from his fierce, violent life in Michigan. Somehow, you're thinking of Karl Maiden in 'On The Waterfront'. There's another song called 'American Lipstick' that just slays you, it's so sadly observed. The emigrants have a better lifestyle outside of Ireland, but they leave a hole in the lives of their people back East. Terry captures the tale with bits of dialogue, shifting scenes and reminiscing voices. It's reminds you of the first time you heard Bruce winding through 'Nebraska', Van's 'Veedon Fleece' or Shane's 'Poguetry In Motion'. Deep and strange and affecting. You're thinking too of that Bob Dylan line about "road maps of the soul", because that's definitely part of the deal as well.
For the next few years, you keep this record dear to you. You pick up on his theme of the "Celtic line" - some imaginary marker that

draws you back to the old places, even though oceans and mountain ranges may get in the way. You see Terry play live on many occasions, and you realise that he's a prodigious writer. At every gig, he's introducing new songs - stories about his career and his travels and chance meetings. He's like an old-fashioned almanac writer - singing his life as it unravels.
The details of Terry's career begin to emerge. Born just after the war in Reading, to Irish parents. Raised on the Everlys, Eddie Cochran and Johnny Cash. After wood-shedding in rock groups, folk clubs and soul bands, he finds himself playing the Radcliffe Arms, Oxford, with American strummers like Steve Young, Guy Clarke and Flaco Jiminez. By the late '80s, he's become friends with word-spinning Texans such as Butch Hancock and Jimmy Dale Gilmore, and he's working on his first LP, 'Call Up A Hurricane' in Austin, which is eventually released in 1990. Terry understands the idiom of the music and the humour of the people over there. It's a fine record.
After 'The Shelley River' in '91, Terry tours plenty and works on a rowdy tribute album with his friend, Michael Messer, a cool man on the slide guitar. They bring the blues of Muddy Waters and Mississippi Fred McDowell up the Thames Valley, adding their own personalities to the trip. They call it 'Rhythm Oil' in honour of the classic Southern writer Stanley Booth, who eventually comes across it and declares that it's "really good". A pre-release tape of the album also makes it over to Nashville. Johnny Cash hears it, likes it, and agrees to write the sleeve-notes. "What I hear is the real thing," Johnny reckons. "This record carried me down away to a long time ago, down a Delta dirt road to a land of musical good-old-daysing."
Fast forward to Saint Patrick's Night, 1996, and Terry's playing a gig at the Mean Fiddler in Dublin. He's supporting his old amigo Joe Ely, and is thoroughly enjoying the chance to play a lot of new songs. He finishes off and walks backstage. There, he meets Bruce Springsteen., who's dropped by to see his friend Ely. The New Jersey boy has actually been listening to the show. Bruce says a lot of encouraging stuff and talks to Terry about technique and songwriting and 12 string Gibsons. He invites him to meet up again at the Albert Hall later in the year, and on this occasion, he's even more friendly and forthcoming.
Meanwhile, Terry's working on his new album, 'The Heart Sings'. Some of the songs are re-recordings of favourites from 'The Shelly River'. On 'American Lipstick', he shares a duet with Rosie Flores, emphasising the transatlantic theme. The new tracks carry the degree of skill and soul-power you've come to expect from his writing by now.
Another Bob Dylan phrase comes to mind when you think of Terry Clarke. It's the idea of a "secret hero" - an artist who might not have an immediate hip value - who stands outside the ephemeral nature of the music industry. But still this person matters to those that hear and admire the songs. Terry Clarke matters because he writes beautiful songs that take you places. And because he sings it all from the heart.

By Stuart Bailie, New Musical Express sleevenotes for 'The Heart Sings 1997

Terry Clarke - The Irish Rockabilly Rules

The Elm Tree, Oxford, 6th April 1998



Sometimes you can't see a ship for the mist. Sometimes fate takes a hand and you get a glimpse of something wonderful. My local Irish pub had his photo up for a couple of days - I had his
past records including the wonderful 'The Shelly River' (originally on Minidoka and to be re-released soon on Koch International along with the rest of his back catalogue) - but had only seen
him play solo briefly as support to Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore and once at the Weavers with London along with Tom Pacheco. I was unprepared for what followed which
proved that his inclusion in Butch Hancock's list of favourite songwriters is well deserved!

He had been here or hereabouts throughout the 70's and 80's when an enterprising landlord. Bob Moore , filled a local pub, The Radcliffe Arms, with amazing and wonderful sounds - Jerry Jeff Walker and Guy Clark, Townes, Joe Ely, Steve Young - they all played here and supporting them and absorbing that sound was Terry Clarke. Friendships ensued and Clarke found himself being produced by J.D. Foster and being accompanied on his first record (Call Up A Hurricane) by Flaco Jimenez. Now here he was on a Monday night in Oxford sat in an empty bar under photos of Oscar Wilde, Patrick Kavanagh, James Joyce ... smoke curling around their heads, sitting as Clarke puts it in one of his songs, on 'the edge of Shamrock City'. As the only member of the audience I ended up chatting, and learning, as his natural enthusiasm for music ... Wayne Hancock, The Hancock sisters, Townes, Butch and Joe, just flooded out. He left me floundering with his knowledge of songwriting - talking of his heroes - Johnny Mercer, Billy Strayhorn, Hoagy Carmichael, even Willie Nelson's jazz connections. A whole raft of 'pre - rock' craftsmanship that are his writing foundations. A couple of curious souls joined us and Terry picked up his Guild 12 - string and set about guiding us 'Back to the Well'.

Drawing a line directly between austin and Sligo what followed was one of the most consumate displays of the art of songwriting I have witnessed, bettered only by Townes battling with a disinterested London audience bar many years ago. For more than three hours he dug deep in his transatlantic bag and pulled out covers (Johnny Cash and Van Morrison) and standards (Lakes of the Ponchartrain), Raglan Road) honed by years of support slots and playing with jazz musicians that truly sang around the room as the gold 12 - string flashed in the single spotlight and candles fizzed.
Then there were his own songs! Not only the known ones but others as yet unrecorded. Literary leaning emigrant ballads that breathed like oral history. Some describing life in Southern England and joyously detailing it's musical history (Bruce Channel in this Town) or like 'Sligo Honeymoon 1946' capturing a mood and a moment as well as Loudon Wainright's 'Pictures on the Piano' - autobiography in song. His love of Cash and Morrison clasp together in his voice as tightly as the hands on the 'Claddagh Ring' (an un-recorded song of his, incidentally, that could challenge Earle's 'Fort Worth Blues' as a tribute to Townes!). Then there were songs from his next CD due out in the autumn with titles like 'Mr Lucky', 'Pillow Talk' and 'Hyacinth Room' that brought out all those influences of his jazz heroes and included yet more references to other songwriters e.g. Marty Robbins and carnations in one line.

At the end the doors swung open, the candles guttered and as the faces on the wall disappeared for what was left of the night Terry was still there, still enthusing about other musicians - in this case his duet partner and good friend Rosie Flores. In a business that is at times cut - throat and ruthless, to see someone with an enthusiasm and heart this big thrills the soul. That few seem to recognise his worth he takes lightly, perhaps knowing like Butch that his day will come. If music can be passed on then he has truly drunk at the well. hands across the sea ... like the music of a ship coming in on a following wind ... all the way from 'Detroit to Dingle'.

Shaun Belcher Flyin' Shoes 1998

The new Van casts his spell

Terry Clarke is the new Van Morrison. He's a man who starts with the basics of irish music and turns them into something that transcends all barriers; deconstructing the obvious and rebuilding the elements into something familiar but darkly different.

Clarke takes the themes and feelings and sounds of Ireland's musical heritage, lets them party alongside the sounds of rootsy American country and rock and then sees something new and wonderful stumble out the door at the end of the evening.

Green Voodoo is the album. his eighth, which, as the title suggests, melds his Irish melancholy with the feel of hot, sweaty U.S. nights.

What's curious is that Clarke has never even lived in Ireland.
His dad emigrated from Sligo and the young Terry, with an English mother, was brought up in the Irish community in Reading, a mere Blarney stone's throw from London.
And he's just set up home with his family in the west of Scotland.

The music, he says, comes from childhood visits, and from an almost unconscious understanding of his roots.

Yet any chance that he'd wind up caught in the cliches of tradition quickly disappeared when he discovered Buddy Holly and then Van.

A youth spent in rock bands eventually gave way to writing songs that his spiritual if not actual roots.

"I'd been brought up in an Irish community but, like a lot of people, things don't take shape until you're older" he says.
I wanted to get a million miles away from that culture, anything to do with church.

"I grew up with the Stones, Beatles, rock 'n' roll, but then I started playing mandolin and it all crept up on me by default".

The new direction took in a delicious soulfulness and the tuneful twang of Texan music, resulting in highly regarded early Nineties The Shelly River (now reissued on Catfish).
It's not just the music that crosses borders ... Clarke's lyrics swerve like a speeding roadster between the hazy morns on the Irish coast to crazy nights in Louisiana. Songs with titles like
Angel in Ireland, Goin' Back To Belfast and The Mayo Mambo.



Clarke's American links came as he met a string of left-field country acts who toured Europe in the Eighties,
Green Voodoo , like most of his albums, was recorded in Austin, Texas (where he spends much of his time) backed by a set of local luminaries.

For the most part it gently rocks with a wonderful mix of country, smokey jazz, rock 'n' roll and ballads that at first sound traditional but are far from it.

Clarke's previous Irish dates have gone down a storm (tired of seeing , locals love to see him discovering his roots) and more are likely later in the year. Latch on to his mesmeric take on Ireland before he hits the big time.
Watch out Van Morrison !

Nick Dalton
Daily Express August 2002

Roots manoeuvre
GARTH CARTWRIGHT talks to second-generation Irishman Terry Clarke about his 10-year odyssey to release his 'lost' country album.


THE Irish have long been known for their love of country music.
Indeed, many US country stars now bypass Britain and solely play in Ireland where they get both larger audiences and more critical respect.
Terry Clarke may have been born in Britain and reside in Reading but his roots are Irish and the Emerald Isle resonates through his songs. Not a household name Clarke is known in musical circles as a superb songwnter. Johnny Cash is a fan ("What I hear is the real thing") and countless musicians and critics are at a loss to understand why thus far Terry has not received the recognition he richly deserves. With the reissue of his stunning 1991 album The Shelly River (Catfish) this should change quickly. The album was originally released on a label that disbanded shortly after and this jewel was lost until now. It is a mix-ture of beautiful ballads, up-tempo Irish-country stomps and timeless stories told through song.
The content of the songs take you on a spiritual and geographical journey through Terry's native Ire-land, which stimulates the mind __equally as much as the arrang~ ments stimulate the ears.
"Some of these songs were writ-ten while we were recording, while others probably began before I could write at all... of listening to my father telling his stories of growing up in Sligo, of his boat journeys across the Irish Sea to Liv-erpool as a young teenager. Of
walking the roads of Yorkshire looking for work, cutting beet in the freezing winter fields of Linconshire, working on the streets and underneath them excavating for the underground in pre-war London.
"Everybody's got a story to tell, some live them, some tell them, some write them down, some dream them, some make them up, some sing them and some of us try and do it all. They're all wild seeds now."
At the time of The ShellyRiver's release it attracted rave reviews with The NME claiming: "The Shelly River is a record that wfll tickle anyone who's ever got a thrill out of Springsteen's Nebraska or The Pogues' Shane McGowan at his most displaced and sentimental."
Clarke's label problems stopped him from benefiting from serious promotion and distribution but he kept on touring and recording. So far he has released nine albums and when I speak to him he is just back from recording a new album in Austin, Texas. He even got to open for country legend Merle Haggard.
Yet Clarke shouldn't be surprised that he goes down well in the US. Johnny Cash wrote the sleevenotes to his Rhythm Oil album after hear-mg it in Nashville and many other n6ted country musidans havecoVered his songs, as has London-Irish bard Ron Kavana.
Clarke endured the normal first generation experiences of Catholic school/church and Irish music until he rebelled and embraced rock 'n' roll. "I didn't reconnect with my Irish roots until 20 years
ago when I sat with some second-generation Irish musicians and immediately fell in love with the music again. That's how The Shelly River came about. The Gaelic name for Sligo is Sligeach which means 'place where the river flows through shells' and that's how I chose to name the album. It is an album with a Sligo soul."
The Irish reception to the album wasvery positive: Clarke was invited on The Late Late Show and toured Ireland. And with the forth-coming new album he has cut in Austin, he continues to explore his Irish roots.
"I've got a song on it called My Irish Soul and I was interviewed in Austin and the question came up:
'Why do the Irish so love Texan music? Because the likes of Guy Clarke and Townes Van Zandt and Joe Ely always do well in Ireland'. My answer was that they are story-tellers, their songs take you places, they are written to express some-thing rather than just to make money which is too often the case in Nashville and LA. Also, the bond between Ireland and the US is very strong. Nearly all my Irish relatives emigrated to the US so I've always felt a strong connection.
"It's funny," adds Clarke, "when I sing over here people tell me I sound American but when I sing in the US people tell me I sound Irish. One thing no one has ever told me is that I sound English!"

Garth Cartwright The Irish Post 2002

Voodoo Man
Nick Dalton surveys the eclectic career of Terry Clarke

For more than a decade now Terry Clarke has been creating a mesmerising sound that mixes up all things Texan and Irish, and throws in a feel of Brit-rock too. The album that everyone knows is THE SHELLY RIVER, a cool classic, but now he's surpassed that with GREEN VOODOO. He's the man who everyone thinks is Irish but in fact is from Reading, with an Irish father and has never lived in the Emerald Isle, either north or south.

A man who numbers the likes of Joe Ely and Butch Hancock and the rest of the Austin music hierarchy among his chums. And he's made an album that not only soaks up the influences of Texas, where he spends several months each year, but also takes in the best of Irish soul, the sort of mystical stuff that Van Morrison managed at his best. Songs like The Mayo Mambo, Green Voodoo, Cotton Town and Manhattan Blues throw together lyrical references to the misty shores that Clarke imagines as home with the feel of a hot Louisiana night.

"It was weird," he says in a very un-Irish brogue. "I was in Austin in '99 doing an album called THE SOUND OF THE MOON, which came out on Appaloosa. The sound was very jazzy. I'd got into that frame of mind for a few years, that southern vibe, kind've Georgie Fame, bluesy, jazzy thing. And I came back and suddenly started writing all these songs with an Irish vibe. I couldn't see how much further I could go in that direction. I thought, if I keep going I'm going to end up like Al Jarreau, and I can't do that."

'And just out of the blue it turned around 180 degrees, a mixture of country and Irish. In many ways I feel it's my best album, because there's still stuff with a jazzy feel, like Wild Honey Blues. We had a bigger budget... I think there's even money left over."

Clarke works closely with co-producer and drummer Merel Bregante in Texas. Merel's missus is singer Sarah Pierce, who sings harmony on GREEN VOODOO, along with Rosie Flores and singer/songwriter/guitar ace David Halley. And talking of guitar aces, his two lead guitarists on the album are Jesse Taylor, possibly the best blues and country player in the world, and John Inmon, long-time mainstay of Jerry Jeff Walker's band. Then there's Italian pianist Stefano Intelisano.






"Merel toured Italy with Sarah and when I toured there last year the band were people who he'd worked with, Ponty Bone's played with them, a band called Chicken Mambo, playing Italian versions of Tex Mex. Stefano was one of them, only about 25, classically trained jazzhead ... plays Hammond. He's ended up living in Austin on his way to getting a green card. He gave a lot to the record."

So, given the cultural mix, how does Clarke come to sound so Irish? "Well, my father's Irish and I'd been brought up in that kind've community, he says. 'And like a lot of people those kind've things don't take shape in your mind until you're older. When I was a teenager it was the Stones, Beatles, rock'n'roll. I wanted to get a million miles away from that culture, anything to do with church."

"I played in a rock band but then over the years I kept getting pulled back. The first time I ever heard Van Morrison's ASTRAL WEEKS ... things would come through. And there was one point in the Eighties when I started playing mandolin and I got very acoustic. It all crept up on me by default. And that kind've music started connecting with people when I played it.

"Then apart from the Irish thing, there's been 30, 40 years of rock'n'roll ... something I pull very much towards, and people like Waylon Jennings, Buddy Holly. Holly was the man from when I was 10, 11, and then Joe Ely in the Seventies, and then I got to know people like him and Butch through hanging out at gigs. Then Townes, Guy Clark and everyone. I did an interview in Texas recently and it was touched upon that all of those writers, and Nanci Griffith, John Prine, are all very popular in Ireland. I think it's maybe because of the storytelling, and they're strong on melody."

The turning point for Clarke was THE SHELLY RIVER, the first of his eight albums, back at the beginning of the Nineties. "Some of those songs had been around 10, 15 years," he says. In the past few years there have been excellent albums like THE HEART SINGS, on Castle, and LUCKY and THE SOUND OF THE MOON, which while excellent suffered from sporadic distribution on Appaloosa.

Then increasingly hip Catfish Records called him up, and also re-released THE SHELLY RIVER. The label are also putting out new albums from Clarke's Reading cohort, National steel guitar master Michael Messer, and Jesse Taylor... who formed the Rhythm Oil trio with Clarke in the mid-Nineties for the recorded-one-late-night-adrenaline-fuelled album of the same name, which led to some corking live shows.

"I'd like to do RHYTHM OIL again," he says. "It all came together very quickly, like so many of these things. Jesse's playing great. The two of us did a show last year opening for Merle Haggard at Gruene Hall... I'd never seen Merle before and he had his full band .... absolutely incredible. No matter how long you've been doing what you've been doing you can stand and watch someone like him and learn everything."




For now Clarke's just moved to the west of Scotland but plans a top band tour to celebrate GREEN VOODOO (which may get a US release on Willie Nelson's Pedernales label). He's written most of the songs on Michael Messer's, and plans a return to Texas to work on Sarah Pierce's new album. In fact life's never been busier... and Clarke could even find himself a wider audience with the album that's so much a part of his past, and yet so new.

Nick Dalton
Maverick
February 2003

Irish Rockabilly Blues

The moment he saw Gene Vincent open with Say Mama, Terry Clarke knew where his future lay. Johnny Cash would one day write sleeve notes for Clarke. His friends and admirers grew to include Flaco Jimenez, Guy Clark, and Butch Hancock.
Roddy Campbell reckons it's time the rest of the good planet roots also took notice.

August, 1994: the 25th anniversary of Woodstock rouses an unusual excess of tattle. Joni Mitchell, coincidentally, is in Edmonton to play the folk festival. Mitchell wrote the Woodstock anthem in a hotel room in New York City while Henry McCullough played guitar for Joe Cocker on Max Yasgur's farm for the assembled 'stardust and billion-year-old carbon'.
McCullough, too, is set to appear at the folk festival. And he gives credence to the old saying, 'if you can remember the 60s you weren't really there,' when prodded by a local reporter. Me. McCullough left Cocker to join Paul McCartney's Wings, but in Edmonton that weekend he played guitar and mandolin for Terry Clarke - a tall, reserved, relatively unknown Anglo-Irish singer songwriter.

Clarke had made two records: his debut, Call Up A Hurricane, and The Shelly River- an exquisite, timeless recording full of heart breaking nostalgia and unrepentant craic. It remains a fabulous fusion of Irish rockabilly roots and bar-room storytelling. But like Nic Jones' Penguin Eggs, Paul Brady's Hard Station, Tom Russell's Road to Bayamon, The Innocence Mission's Glow.. The Shelly River never quite received the international recognition it so rightfully deserved.

Clarke has gone on to record a rake of rousing, haunting and just plain beautiful songs. But dammit, still he remains virtually an unknown, at least he does in Canada. All that may change soon enough, though. His current disc, Green Voodoo appears set for release here and plans are well underway for a tour with former Spirit of the West multi-instrumentalist Linda McRae in the New Year. They met appropriately enough at the Edmonton folk festival this past summer-Clarke's first date there since 1994.

"Before I left she gave me a couple of her CDs. I went home played her records and I loved them. I really loved them," says Clarke on the phone from his home in Scotland. "So I sent her a copy of Green Voodoo and a compilation I made myself.

She e-mailed me back and she'd flipped out. She said, 'I really, really love what you are doing. How do you feel about us teaming up together doing something sometime?' I said, I'd love to. What have you in mind?' 'Well, how about if I book some gigs for us in Canada.' Basically, I said, 'Yes.' I was pretty excited about it." Terry Clarke will talk your ear off about music. He'll go on for days about Johnny Cash, Guy Clark or Butch Hancock. With wide-eyed wonder, he'll regale you with stories of childhood discoveries of musical heroes, most of them American. Born in Reading, England, 40 miles west of London, the son of an Irish immigrant, Clarke saw many of the great rockabilly acts of the '50s. Gene Vincent, in particular, had a profound impact on the then 15-year-old teenager.

"He was absolutely awesome. He had the English band Sounds Incorporated, which was an eight-piece with horns and stuff. The first song he sung was Say Mama and it was electrifying. He stood there with the spot-light on his face-that thing that he had, looking out in the middle distance-he was holding the mic stand and he went into that and it completely blew my mind. I can remember being so excited, being absolutely electrified."

From that night on, Clarke set his heart on becoming a musician. He got a guitar while still in school. Lonnie Donegan was an early hero. Clarke's first band covered The Beatles and the Stones, then he flirted with soul. While he occasionally performed in local folk clubs, he really never felt comfortable there.

"That whole English traditional thing, Martin Carthy, Nic Jones and that, it was very much a finger style of guitar playing and based on traditional songs. I was coming from the rock 'n' roll, country side. I always went down well when I was in those places but I never really felt I connected with the organizers. I think I'd more a connection with the Americans. People like Guy Clark started coming in, and Steve Young, and Rattlesnake Annie. I started getting opening spots for them in the Mean Fiddler in London, and getting gigs in Oxford and Birmingham . I think the feedback from these people was what really encouraged me, because I was working solo then."

These gigs started largely through publican, Bob Moore. A chronic country fan, Moore owned The Radcliffe Arms - a tiny Victorian bar in the old part of Oxford and began booking touring Texas troubadours like Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark and Terry Allen. While the Radcliffe Arms held little more than a 100 punters, Moore would pack it to the rafters.

"When I first met Bob, I was playing in his pub and and we got talking after hours. He found out that I was a mad Joe Ely, Butch Hancock fan. Whenever he got somebody like that, I'd be the first call. It was fantastic in retrospect. It was a wonderful opportunity.

When they'd come in, I'd roadie for them. I'd drive the car and then I started opening on the tour."

Austin native Butch Hancock, a co-founder of The Flatlanders with Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, became a firm friend. He encouraged Clarke to travel to Austin to record his debut. Clarke had been to Nashville in 1989 to perform at a Gram Parsons, Clarence White tribute and had made friends with J.D. Foster, Dwight Yoakam's bass player. Foster also lived in Austin and he too extended an invitation

Meanwhile, back in Britain, Clarke toured with the legendary Tex-Mex accordionist, Flaco Jimenez. Flaco had previously been to Europe with Ry Cooder and Peter Rowan and recruited Clarke to open for him. He wound up singing in Jimenez's band. Inevitably; their after-hours conversations turned to Austin and to recording.

"I'll never forget, Flaco said, 'Austin is four beers from San Antone.' He said, 'If you can get there I'll come and play for you. That was the deciding factor; Flaco playing on it. The rest is history."

Produced by J.D. Foster, Clarke released Call UpA Hurricane in 1990. Clearly, it was out there in outlaw country with the Butch Hancocks, Robert Earl Keens and Kevin Welchs of the time. which shouldn't be that much of a surprise considering who played on it. But put in the context of most of what followed, it does seem a bit of an anomaly. Then again...

"If I'm really honest, nothing gives me a thrill like Johnny Cash or the Everly Brothers. There's just some primal place in me that that music hits me.

"His death hit me very, very hard. There was something about him that really broke my heart, you know. There's people whose music I have always loved and I would be proud to count as influences -Van Morrison, Bob Dylan -but I've got more recordings by Johnny Cash than anybody. Vinyl albums, cassettes, CDs, I wouldn't say I've got everything he's done, but most of it."
Cash would write the sleeve notes for Clarke's third release Rhythm Oil.
"What l hear here is the real thing. Bare-bones blues, gut-bucket rural rock. This record carried me away to a long time ago, down a delta dirt road to a land of my musical good~old-daysing," wrote Cash.

They met fortuitously. Michael Messer, Clarke's slide player, has a brother who lived in Nashville. For almost 30 years, Alan Messer took photos for album covers for the likes of Willie Nelson and Stevie Ray Vaughan. He also did several for Cash and they became friends.
"We were doing the record and Alan had a tape of it and was playing it in the car. John heard it and really loved it He basically offered to write the sleeve notes for us.

"I met him once at the Shepherd's Bush Empire [in London). He had just put out the first of the Rick Rubin records. His people got in touch. I got to meet him afterwards. June was there as well. It was momentous."

However, before Rhythm Oil came the wonderful Shelly River. It's awe-inspiring story-telling is largely set in Ireland or about Irish immigrants in America. Clarke's father came from Sligo in the west of Ireland. He came from a family of nine, most of whom went to America and never returned. It's their stories that are told in American Lipstick, Detroit Th Dingle, The Leaving Of Sligo and the beautiful, beautiful Sligo Honeymoon 1946. But there's also Clarke's pervasive and unbridled enthusiasm for music that weaves in and out of Irish Rockabilly Blues, The Edge Of Shamrock City (later covered by Ron Kavana), Johnnie's On The Road, Song Of The Streets and the brilliantly biographical, Hometown.

Clarke initially planned to make another record with J.D. Foster and a band. Foster had come to London to work with Green On Red and Clarke used some of their studio time to polish his demos. But his label went broke. Publicist Pat Tynan worked at the studio at the time, and encouraged Clarke to make a stripped-down, solo recording.

"Basically [Pat) said to me, 'I prefer what you're doing on your own.' He was Irish from Tipperary although he was brought up in London. He said, 'You should carry on because it is so different. If you can give me a whole album like that I'll put it out. Have you got any more songs like that?' I said, 'Yeah, I've got about three dozen of them.' I did it and that's what ended up on The Shelly River.

"If I had known I was going to make a record like that, I would have probably gone to Dublin and asked Donal Lunny to produce it 'Martin O'Connor on accordion. Frankie Gavin on fiddle. And can we have Andy Irvine or Paul Brady to play mandolin.' I never would have dreamt of doing it myself. I would never have thought myself a good enough guitar player or mandolin player. So it took me by surprise how well it was received." Shortly after its release, Clarke met up with Henry McCullough through a mutual friend in Belfast.
Together they toured Ireland and North America.

"I went to Cork and Kerry for the first time with Henry McCullough. A lot of songs came out of that trip, like the Rocks of Ireland and Frankie Murray Sings Kansas City. They came straight off the road. It was a good time.

"[Jimi Hendrix's former bass player] Noel Redding came out to see us play. He was a good friend of Henry's. It was a lot of fun. I wouldn't trade it for anything."

Henry McCullough had his own personal demons to confront, however. And Clarke would go on to perform with the likes of noted Texas singer, Rosie Flores. Butch Hancock, again, provided the introductions. Clarke released a further half-dozen discs in the past decade with songs as diverse as Conjunto waltzes and acoustic jazz ballads. The one consistency throughout, though, is his remarkable story-telling ability. He partially attributes it to the rich seam of Irish literature he grew up with. But there's also his old Texas compadre to thank.

"Hanging out a lot with Butch Hancock in the '80s, I think Butch opened a lot of doors for me, in as much as you can do anything really if you want to do. Being around Butch was exploding my head. Really, the man's mad!
He taught me there is virtually no word that you can't use if you find the right setting for it".

Roddy Campbell
Penguin Eggs, Canada
Winter 2003

How Johnny Cash fell in love with songs about Reading

 

Lou Reed wrote love letters to New York and The Clash celebrated London life - but Terry Clarke prefers to sing about Scours Lane and Lyndhurst Road. Weekender meets the Reading singer/songwriter who counted one of the world's greatest music legends among his most vocal admirers.

Unadulterated 50's Rockabilly will sit happily beside earthy blues and folk, whimsical lullabies and love songs when Reading-born singersongwriter Terry Clarke returns to play in his hometown next Friday (May 21).

Terry Clarke's music is laden with affectionate references to the town where he grew up, saw his first heroes play and where he bought his first records.

Playing his signature 12 string Guild, and with a voice that is by turns sorrowful, edgy and rabble-rousing, his songs are compelling sketches of the people and places he loves, coloured with rich description.

The "terracotta blush" of Reading's Victorian and Georgian brick facades are celebrated for their beauty; the "hidden history" of his grandparents home in Lyndhurst Road is remembered, as are nights out with the lads at the Majestic, the Kennet Arms and the Polish Club.

Weekender caught up with Terry for a chat about music, memories and work in progress.

The listening public is used to hearing New York songwriters immortalising that great city in their music, but you see romance and beauty in the streets of Reading. What makes the town special?

A place can be as ordinary, or as interesting, as you make it. I'm sure James Joyce's Dublin and Dylan Thomas' Swansea were much like Reading on the surface, but everyone and every place has a story to tell. I have always loved Reading and have written about some of my favourite places and favourite sights here, like Mcillroy's Park, Scours Lane and all along the riverside. Even the crows at Norcot.

Many of your songs feature the anecdotes and histories of your family, particularly your father. Do you feel a sense of responsibility or any reticence in sharing them with an audience of strangers?

When I wrote them I didn't realise that they might become a little more difficult to sing. And I guess I am beginning to feel the responsibility of them. Particularly now my father has recently passed away. But they talk about an important time in history. My song The Leaving of Sligo is pretty much verbatim the story of my father's favourite older sister who emigrated to America when he was a kid. Back in Ireland, the night before a brother, sister, or cousin left for America, the family would hold what they called an American Wake. My father never saw his sister again and he talked about that night for the rest of his life.That kind of diaspora had a massive affect on families.

Your songs are loaded with metaphors. Tell me about your writing style.

That's just the way they come out! Sometimes I wish I could just write a straightforward narrative song. It would also be a real challenge to me to write a song without a proper noun!

You don't analyse the mechanics of song-writing?

When asked the secret of writing a great song Townes Van Zandt said: "You've got to be sitting in the right chair." And he wrote some of the greatest lyric poems in the world. I agree with him that luck has a lot to do with it.


Johnny Cash loved your music and asked to write the sleeve notes for your album Rhythm Oil (Which he said was '... refreshing, earthy, bare-bones blues ... gut-bucket rural rock...') Did that thrill you?
It did, It does and it always will!

When I started listening to music it was all about Bowie, Hendrix and Pink Floyd. And I loved all of that, but the first record I ever owned was a Johnny Cash record. There was a period when Cash and Eddie Cochran and those guys were out of favour, but when punk came along, and with it bands like The Clash and The Stray Cats, you cold hear their influence in the music again. Cash was always cool.

Did you ever get to play together?

Almost. We kept 'missing' each other. A friend of mine, Rosie Flores, who sings on my latest album, Green Voodoo, told him I was in Austin a few years back and I know he was keen for us to get together. A little later I was touring Ireland and he sent me a postcard in Reading to say he wanted us to hook up, but that was at the start of his illness so it never happened. But it was an immense occasion just to meet him. He was someone with a deep sense of humanity and humility.

What are you working on at the moment?

I have composed new melodies for two Robert Burns pieces, Highland Mary and The Slaves Lament. The natives seem to like them and I ain't been hung yet! I will play them at the Robert Burns Festival in Ayr this year.

I am also putting some more work into a collection of 'Reading songs' called Blue Eyed Plaice and Shiny Windows, with Tim Hill and the Pandaemonium Band. The album is being produced by Chris Britton's Wired Studio, for his Weird City Records, based at the Rising Sun Arts centre, so it is a truly local project.



* Terry Clarke plays the Rising Sun Arts Centre in Silver Street, Reading, on Friday, May 21. Contact: 0118 9866 788 Green Voodoo is available from Little Bear Records. For more information, visit www.terryclarke.com
Kate Lay

The Reading Chronicle May 13 2004

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