American Songwriting Legend Guy Clark

GUY CLARK RELEASES SONGS AND STORIES, AUGUST 16 ON DUALTONE MUSIC GROUP

Live Album Includes "The Randall Knife," "Homegrown Tomatoes," "The Cape" With Stories and Insights

At the tail end of his performance of “L.A. Freeway,” master songwriter Guy Clark pauses to share a memory from that time decades ago, about a landlord and a grapefruit tree that might have added to the final push to say, “Adios to all this concrete. Gonna get me some dirt road back street.” It’s the kind of story you want to hear from a legend like Clark and on the live album Songs And Stories out August 16 on Dualtone Music Group, not only are there the beloved songs, “The Randall Knife,” “The Cape,” “Homegrown Tomatoes,” and “Stuff That Works,” but also the essential asides and insights that can only be experienced from a seat in the audience.

The album was recorded at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, Clark warmly surrounded by his current musical family -- his longtime sidekick and co-writer Verlon Thompson, along with Shawn Camp, Bryn Davies and Kenny Malone. It feels like a 3am guitar pull at the Driskill Hotel, or the egalitarianism of  Clark's famed dining room table where troupes of greats including Steve Earle, Shaver, Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris, Kristofferson and more gathered for show-and-tell song swapping sessions.

Before beginning the song “If I Needed You,” written by his longtime friend Townes Van Zandt, Clark shares the story about the surprising ease Townes had writing the popular song when living with Clark and his wife in Texas in 1972. “Townes came in for coffee one morning, picked up his guitar and laid this piece of paper on his leg and sang this song…and I said ‘where did that come from?’ and he said ‘I wrote it last night in my sleep, I just rolled over and wrote it down and turned over and went back to sleep.’” Clark laughs, adding, “Suspicion confirmed.”

Just months prior to his 70^th birthday, Guy Clark remains a national treasure and folk icon, crafting masterful, poignant melodies and insightful lyrics. Inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Foundation's Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2004, Clark was honored with the Americana Music Association's Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting in 2005. The following year, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum named Guy Clark as its prestigious 2006 Artist-In-Residence. Workbench Songs (2006), released to universal critical acclaim and the delight of his worshipful fans, was nominated for the 2007 Grammy award as Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album, as was his most recent studio album Somedays The Song Writes You.