I started writing about music for the Montreal Gazette back
in 1975 and one of the LPs I reviewed that year was Old No. 1, the first-ever
album by Guy Clark, who was already a favorite songwriter of mine thanks to
having heard some of his songs sung by Jerry Jeff Walker and Bill Staines.
Since then, I’ve written about almost every album Guy has done over the years. I’ve also hung out with him a few times at folk festivals and
interviewed him twice – once for the Gazette and once on the Folk
Roots/Folk Branches radio program when he came up to Montreal to play a concert
with Jesse Winchester at the Outremont Theatre in 2001.
One of those albums I’ve written about was called Old
Friends. And, indeed, almost all of Guy’s albums and songs feel like old
friends. They feel like old friends when you pull out one of those albums that
you haven’t played for a while and they feel like old friends when you hear
them for the first time. There’s something familiar and inviting about his
songs when you hear them for the first time – maybe it’s “that old time
feeling” Guy sang about on Old No. 1 – that turns his new songs into old
friends.
And so it is on Guy’s new album, My Favorite Picture of You:
10 new Guy Clark songs (and a version of Lyle Lovett’s “Waltzing Fool” that he
makes his own) that fast turn into old friends.
The title track is among the most affecting of these new
songs. You can see Guy holding the particular snapshot of his wife, the
songwriter and painter Susanna Clark, who passed away last year, taken maybe
40 or so years ago. In the lyrics, Guy reflects on the photo, describing her
and her mood when it was taken, and turning it into a touching but powerful declaration of
love.
I remember Guy telling me in one of the interviews we did
that Mexican folk songs were among the first things he learned to play as kid
growing up in Texas. I was reminded of that listening to “El Coyote,” another
of this album’s most affecting songs – this one about impoverished Mexicans
trying to find a better life only to be preyed on, exploited and deserted by human smugglers.
Guy also writes compassionately about American soldiers who
came back damaged from the war in Iraq in the poignant “Heroes.”
Accompanying Guy on the album are such fine acoustic musicians as
Verlon Thompson, who has been playing with him on stage and recordings for many
years, Shawn Camp, Bryn Davies and Chris Latham, and harmony singer Morgane Stapleton.
--Mike Regenstreif
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