It’s an odd analogy, but I tend to compare country music as an art to haiku. Both are severely limited in form, although for very different reasons, and the artists working within those mediums have to find the fullness of their creative expression through that prohibitively rigid framework. Like the best haiku, the best Country music takes the sparse elements that it has to work with and shapes them into something that expresses something far richer than the unassuming parts that make it up. And there’s a lot to be said about the little intimacies of the human condition that are revealed when viewed through the lens of “mama, trains, trucks, prison or getting’ drunk”, to paraphrase David Allan Coe.
It’s in revealing these little intimacies that Guy Clark excels, above all his other musical gifts. Like many of the greatest country music lyricists, Clark finds poetry in the commonplace, his songs rich with images of highway diners, empty bottles and the glow of cigarettes on front porches. It’s in simple pleasures and simple griefs that Clark finds the most meaning, and he expresses that meaning with a simple eloquence often aimed for but rarely this fully realized in country. Through these simple narratives of L.A. Freeways, alcoholic outlaw father figures and flash-in-the-pan love affairs, Guy imparts a kind of wry understanding of the little absurdities that make up some of the most significant parts of our lives.
Perhaps unique to Guy’s sound, out of all of his Outlaw contemporaries, is a kind of world-weary wistfulness, a heartworn nostalgia that perhaps only Townes and John Prine came close to reaching. This nostalgia runs through even the most upbeat tracks like a thread, imbuing the album with a kind of reflective sobriety that seems like it should have come from a much older artist, looking back at a long life and career. Guy’s hazy, nasal vocals are particularly suited to this mood, limited in range but rich in expression, an affecting, emotional performance that, when combined with his homespun poetry, makes for something far greater than the sum of its parts. The accompanying instrumentation on the album is impeccable, a subtle complement to Guy’s voice that supports his every word without ever intruding or threatening to bury the storytelling.
When the music and lyrical output is as strong as it is here, it’s easy to forgive Guy’s momentary lapses into mawkish sentimentality or the occasional overwrought metaphor ( a failing that’s the only real detriment to the album). To continue the comparison to Townes Van Zandt, (who, incidentally, was a close friend of Guy’s) the themes on much of Old No. 1 run parallel to Zandt at his most yearning, although Clark eschews his friend’s slightly haunted, nihilistic bent for a kind of wry, good-humored fatalism. It’s a mood that makes for a rather easier listen than the likes of “Waitin’ Round to Die”, and although while Old No. 1 may not have quite the same heft as Townes at his best, it handily earns its right to be included among the absolute greats of Outlaw Country.
