Guy Clark - Workbench Songs
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Guy ClarkEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-11-21
Music Label: Dualtone Music Group
Soundtracks:
- Walkin' Man
- Magdalene
- Tornado Time In Texas
- Funny Bone
- Expose
- Out In The Parkin' Lot
- No Lonesome Tune
- Cinco De Mayo In Memphis
- Analog Girl
- Worry B Gone
- Diamond Joe
Free Music Notes for Workbench Songs
Free Music Review: In a class with Woody, Townes and Bob Dylan
Hit: 5 Stars
I found Guy Clark late and have been working hard to catch up ever since. Not only are his lyrics and arrangements gorgeous, his sand and sagebrush Texas voice is highly listenable, too.
"Workbench Songs" is a mix of a lot of styles and emotions. Texans would joke it's like the weather--if you wait around, it will change.
The first cut, "Walking Man" sounds very Celtic and relates the lives of folks like Woody Guthrie, Ghandi, and all the others who have walked the hard world to make this a better place:
Was a walkin' man come by here
A hundred years ago
Walkin' down the trail of tears
Out to Oklahom-i-o out to Oklahome
Clark mixes the serious with humor, too--"Tornado Time in Texas" talks about the havoc storms create in the South Central plains all done to a swingy beat. One line--"when pigs fly, no I mean really fly" is very typical of what a real storm does. He's got the sight, sound, and effect of the storms down in rhyme:
Got your hailstones big as hen eggs, boys
Clouds as green as can be
Old Mother Nature raising h###
She parked a pickup in a tree
There's also some blues. "Funny Bone" talks about a rodeo clown losing his love and living with a painted on smile. "Expose" talks about someone writing their memoirs and telling tales "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."
I've got this CD in the car changer and it may well stay there for quite a while. Both my husband and I have played it extensively and repeated songs.
Workbench Songs Poster
The title of this album would seem a tad precious applied to the releases of the majority of Nashville musicians. But Guy Clark--song craftsman, guitar builder--has been doing such finely measured work for all of his storied career that "Workbench Songs" aptly sums up the pride and precision he brings to these 11 offerings. Joined by cowriters Darrell Scott, Rodney Crowell, Gary Nicholson, Lee Roy Parnell, and Verlon Thompson, Clark is at turns wry and poignant in chronicling human acts great and small. And, as usual with his albums, a number of these songs resonate long after first listen. "Walkin' Man," a Celtic-flavored demo recording which kicks off the set, pays homage to the pilgrims and searchers--Gandhi and Woody Guthrie--who had the courage to make their own path. "Out in the Parkin' Lot," the Darrell Scott collaboration which Clark recorded on 1997's live Keepers, has a more lived-in feel here, and better captures the novelistic scene of roadhouse rowdiness. ("Now there's a couple of cowpokes puttin' up their dukes / There wasn't much to it after both of 'em puked.") Clark knows how to deliver these gems with optimum emotional impact: His cover of Townes Van Zandt's aching "No Lonesome Tune" goes bone-deep despite its underplayed pathos, as does "The Randall Knife"-ish "Funny Bone," about a rodeo clown brought down by faithless love. But he's no less affecting on "Tornado Time in Texas," a jaunty country-blues tune spiked with a shuffle chorus ("Blow the tattoo off of your arm"), or on "Cinco De Mayo in Memphis," a wildly surrealistic snapshot of Mexican deckhands in the blue-suede-shoes territory of Graceland. Last year, the Americana Music Association honored Clark with its Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriter. This album is further proof that he deserved it. --Alanna NashCountry Music CDs
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