From Amazon.com
Don't you wish you could write like him?
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: Cold Dog Soup is typical Guy Clark; literate, tuneful, wry, funny, brilliantly crafted, wonderfully played. Opening with the title tune, Clark's images invade your mind and don't let you go. Fort Worth Blues and Sis Draper follow inviting the listener on a journey with a group of fascinating characters. Men will be boys takes a playful putdown and turns it into a celebration of helling around sung as a bunch of guys having way too much fun.
"The only difference between men and the boys
is the size of their feet and the price of their toys"
Very well played, lots of great guitar and mandolin playing. Highly recommend
Poet at Heart
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: Guy Clark's country roots and West Texas idiom are so disarming that a casual listener might miss the sly literate quality of his songs. Who else gets away with talking about William Butler Yeats and Townes Van Zandt in the same breath? Clark has a poet's instincts and a sense of image unsurpassed by his contemporaries, most of whom are numbered among his admirers. And there is no finer side man around than Verlon Thompson, whose picking is as clean and fresh as a summer morning. God bless this music.
found another winner
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: Guy Clark was new to me, believe it or not. Found it at my library and checked it out...within 3 hrs I ordered it from Amazon. This is my kind of music and plan to check out simular artist & ALL of Clark's.
Great word pictures and plenty of pleasant listening
Album Rating: (4 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: This is the first full CD I've heard by Clark (borrowed from my local library) though I knew his name from the Highwaymen's cover of "Desperados Waiting on a Train". Judging from the inclusion of others of his catalogue on Listmania's invoking "Sad Bastard Music", this is apparently a bit of an anomaly for him.
Regardless of the fact that several tunes here involve musings on mortality, it's not of the "woe is me, I'm gonna die" variety. The philosophy expressed is more "Since we die eventually, live NOW". I don't think of the word "melancholy" here...I'd call it "reflective but joyful".
Clark is a definite wordsmith (check the title track for some of the best images.."Ginsberg and Kerouac shootin' dice and playin' Ramblin' Jack's guitar" and "At the door sat Tom Waits/In a pork pie hat and silver skates/Jugglin' three collection plates" [though I'm uncertain why he felt the need to toss in the gratuitious religious epithet at the end]) and has a wonderfully soulful "lived in" voice. On many of the songs, it's nicely matched with harmonies from Verlon Thompson and Darrell Scott (and Emmylou Harris on a couple tracks).
HIGHLIGHTS:
The picture of downhome feminism in "Sis Draper" ("Uncle Cleve dropped his jaw/Said she's the best I ever saw/She must be from Arkansas") is set to an addictive jig. If there IS a melancholy tune here, "Forever,for always, for certain" is it: a rumination on the difficulty of finding lasting love. ("Forever don't mean much in passing/Forgotten don't mean that it's done") "Indian Head Penny" is a counterpart to Mary Chapin Carpenter's "I Am a Town", letting the tiny tender relate its travels through the hands of children, hobos, and bank robbers. ("I rolled off the San Francisco mint in 1909/The last one they ever made, you should've seen me shine") "Men will Be Boys" is a folkie take on Mars vs. Venus. "Die Tryin'" encapsulates a lesson to a life well lived. ("What's the use in dyin' if you don't die tryin'?/If you don't die tryin', what's the use?")
LOWS:
While I think calling them "lows" is a bit harsh, I'd say I find myself least involved in "Fort Worth Blues" but that's more because of my personal prejudice in favour of strong choruses than any "shortcomings" of the song's. I just like a catchy hook in my songs usually and this one (a cover of Steve Earle) is more of a long narrative than a verse-chorus-verse style ditty.
BOTTOM LINE:
If you love singer-songwriters, you should love this. If you have anything by Mary Chapin-Carpenter, John Prine, or Richard Thompson in your collection, you owe it to yourself to give him a listen. Tasty bluegrass tinged country/folk with some meat to the lyrics.
Is there a bad Guy Clark CD?
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: Of course not. And this is another great one. Just stop putzing around and buy it.
Purchases
1 Cold Dog Soup
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