Eric Taylor/Guy Clark
Waterman's Art Centre
London, UK
15th May 1998

Recorded by Soledriver

Lineage Sony ECM 907 Mic > Sony D6 cassette machine...
AIWA tape deck > Tascam DA-20 Mk 2 DAT machine > HHb burnit CDr recorder...no EQ
CDr > EAC > Traders Little Helper > Flac8 sector aligned


I found this review online...

GUY CLARK AND ERIC TAYLOR
at Waterman's Art Centre, Brentford, Friday, May 15th, 1998

The Texans let it roll . . .

My first visit to the Waterman's Art Centre and not my last if they keep bringing back the Texas musicians. The Waterman's is more a purpose built,
University type theatre and cinema complex with a foyer bar area than any kind of dirt wood floorboard, dark Texas bar like the Borderline near Tottenham Court Road.
Tonight's gig will be after the patrons have left from the cinema, post 10.30pm.

Off the Waterloo train on a very hot Spring day, Brentford was siesta quiet. I might have mistaken it for any number of lazy provincial towns but for the sight of a winkle stall down from the station.
The winkle lady pointed me down the road to where the Waterman's was situated right on the river.
I had a good three hours before the gig kicked in so the opportunity to sit outside on the patio area eating pasta and drinking cool beer was welcome.

The tide was half out exposing the Thames mud which was frequented by a variety of wildlife. A heron stood erect in the water on the far shore,
a mallard skated around and various ducks investigated the mud for food. An old trawler beached high in the mud hung precariously on its keel. A pretty idyllic spot.

By nine o'clock, as the light faded, the foyer of the Waterman's Art Centre had been transformed.
Tables had been removed and then the chairs replaced at the insistence of a guy who must have been Guy Clark's road manager.
The area was steadily filling. The bar tills were ringing up the folding stuff. Some guys came in and posted flyers for a new book on Clark called Songbuilder due out this autumn.
Must be English authors or else they would have said 'fall' not 'autumn'.

Way past the allotted time with the Waterman's packed, somebody reckoned about 450 people, the event got underway. Eric Taylor, a tall Texan, from down Houston way was introduced by the road manager.
He sauntered to the front mic of this big square slab stage, took the plug for his guitar, began by wiping his hands in a big bandera he kept tucked in his guitar strap and then proceeded to paint my kind of Texas oil painting in song.

Eric Taylor had only time for six songs of which his last one was a bit miscast and out of place as a closer, something he admitted from the stage.
The other five, of which, one was a Townes Van Zandt cover just seemed to fit together. Not owning any of Taylor's work I couldn't say what they were called save one which I'd hear the next day, Hemmingway's Shotgun.

He picked impeccable tight arpeggio's from his guitar. The arrangements of the songs were solid. So good that I could imagine them extended by more instruments.
The voice over guitar was just South Texas to me. Part honey, part dusty as old saloon floorboards.

On that first song he had sung about "Driving down to Birmingham, flying up to Memphis and walking all the way back to Texas". A compelling invite to hit the road as I have heard in a long time.
The second song began with something like "Hit the spotlight running . . .".

The third song, he laconically introduced involved an argument with his friend and fellow Texas musician Richard Dobson over the literary merits of Ernest Hemmingway.
It had a graphic line in it that went something like "I heard about the rivers in these East Texas towns" and proceeded to detail how Hemminghway blew out his brains with a shotgun.
The next day I'd hear the full band version from a Taylor CD. Good as it was with a band augmented by some ripping organ work it paled against Eric Taylor live doing the song with just an acoustic.

The fourth song had a neat line in there about "knowing a place where the whistle sounds like Louis Armstrong . . ." By this time he'd lit himself a cigarette as if he needed to dispel some kind of nerves.
He went off into a monologue about visiting an English bank where the teller was like "Alec Guinness" and they had not been very polite to him. Then banks are in a class of their own and Texas musicians probably
don't figure too high amongst their chattering classes. Music is something they go to the West End to see in suits, probably by that prize dippy dooh dah Andrew Lloyd Weber.

I digress, however, for what Eric Taylor did next was to feature a song of an old friend. He worked it up especially for the tour he would say.
It was Townes Van Zandt's song that starts Where I Lead Me, I Will Travel (I must check out the proper title). Another fine Townes song done justice by a Texas songwriter. Pretty much as Townes would have laid it down.

At this point maybe Taylor got the nod to cut the set short because he went into a song that he himself admitted might not fit, I think he said it was from his latest CD.
Perhaps it was the first of that CD he'd featured in his short set. It didn't quite fit, he was right about that.
Not sure what the song was again, but it had a line that went something like having "Putting wings to my shoulders, pretend I can fly".

My friends who joined me found Taylor's set to be at one pace and in need of a change of gear midway through. Personally I loved it.
Then laid back Texans drawing pictures of the Lone Star state suit my coffeehouse tastes to a T.

During a twenty minute break I headed off to sample the 'barbecue' on the patio outside.
It must have been quite disappointment to a Texan because it turned out to be pretty much yer average English barbie of sausage, hamburger and plain sauces.
Not a chilli dog, polish sausage or a hint of mesquite sauce anywhere. Pity.

Guy Clark's set, however, was chock full of 'Texas cooking'. I think it was his road manager who came on stage to announce him. The announcement made me cringe.
It talked of Clark being the "Musicians musician, the songwriter's songwriter". What a cliched introduction to one of, if not the number one, Texas songwriter.
Nope what the guy should have done was drop all the tired old, worn tyre introductions and just said "West Texas's finest son, Guy Clark".

Paring down a songwriter to just the floorboards of a lone acoustic and their songs is about the best arbiter of talent there is. Songs with solid structures don't need much more than these elements.
Eric Taylor had already proved that. Guy Clark compounded the point.

He spilled his drink, he plugged in his guitar, asked for the lights to be taken down low and complained "I'm getting too old for this . . .".
Then he asked the audience for requests as though he might roll through an unprepared set. Old No. 1 that he is I think he had already worked out his set and he managed to ignore quite a few requests
but he played all the classics he is noted for:

The Cape � LA Freeway � The Parking Lot � Texas 1947 � Homegrown Tomatoes � She Ain't Going Nowhere � Picasso's Mandolin � To Live Is To Fly (Townes Van Zandt) �
Ramblin' Jack � Let Him Roll � Like A Coat From The Cold � Texas Cooking � Indian Cowboy (Joe Ely) � Watermelon Dreams � Stuff That Works � Boats To Build �
Baby Took A Limo To Memphis � Desperadoes Waiting For A Train � Dublin Blues � Comes From The Heart (Susanna Clark) � Randall Knife

The big tall Texan with the big hands played that guitar like an old tack piano slung against a bar wall in a saloon. His voice, as ever, embued with that Texas growl, part gnarled, part poetry.
The stories between songs illuminating the song after song as he played them. Lately he seems to have taken to Townes Van Zandt's approach in coming out with the odd joke.
He dryly observed "It's the early bird that gets the worm but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese . . ."

He retold the Townes story about Joe Ely being the only guy who actually did run away and join a circus as a marvellous introduction to Ely's Indian Cowboy.
Probably for the enth time he rolled out the tale of that legendary night at one of Jerry Jeff Walker's infamous birthday bashes at the Driskill Hotel when Clark,
Rambling Jack Elliot and a famous rodeo cowboy got "cowboyed to hell". Clark dryly observed "They don't call him Rambling Jack because he travels around . . ."

My favourite story tonight had to be the one which told how Guy Clark wrote Baby Took A Limo To Memphis. Susannah Clark was writing Quarter Moon In A Ten Cent Town with a guy called Keith Sykes.
So she had to travel down from Nashville to Memphis, a journey of 200 miles. As Clark told it she was taking a limo to the airport when, on impulse, she had the driver take her all the way to Memphis
which inspired Clark to write the song for her.

I didn't have a favourite song tonight, the whole lot were so well crafted that it was impossible for me to find one that I preferred above another.
Guy Clark's final song was Come From The Heart which he said was written by Susanna Clark and a guy called Richard Lee.
He sang a piece of another Susanna Clark song the one made famous by Crystal Gayle, (Your Brown Eyes Blue). And that was about the end of the evening save for a song he had deliberately avoided playing close to Let It Roll.

Guy Clark ended with Randall Knife, a song about the death of his father. I soon realised why he had kept those two songs apart for Randall Knife used exactly the same loping ragtime guitar tune as he'd used for Let It Roll.
That really threw me.

As the punters pushed out into the early morning air of Brentford Guy Clark and Eric Taylor hung around to shake hands and exchange pleasantries in a small room near the main door.
I resisted giving Guy Clark the old line about him being wonderful tonight and just asked him where the Dublin of Dublin Blues was, "Ireland or Texas?".

"Ireland, of course, Hell, I've never been to Dublin, Texas . . ." he drawled. I was just curious.

Mike Plumbley


Disc 1: Eric Taylor

01 - Intro...
02 - ...Walkin' Back Home
03 - Prison Movie
04 - Intro...
05 - ...Hemingway's Shotgun
06 - Intro...
07 - ... Lous Armstrong's Broken Heart
08 - Intro...
09 - ...Where I Lead Me
10 - Intro...
11 - ...Strong Enough For Two

Disc 2: Guy Clark set

01 - Intro...
02 - ...The Cape
03 - L.A. Freeway
04 - Out In The Parking Lot
05 - Texas 1947
06 - Home Grown Tomatoes
07 - She Ain't Goin' Nowhere
08 - Picasso's Mandolin
09 - To Live Is To Fly (Townes Van Zandt)
10 - Intro...Ramblin' Jack And Mahan
11 - Let Him Roll
12 - Like A Coat From The Cold
13 - Texas Cooking
14 - Indian Cowboy (Joe Ely)
15 - Watermelon Dreams
16 - Stuff That Works
17 - Boats To Build
18 - Intro...
19 - Baby Took A Limo To Memphis
20 - Desperadoes Waiting For A Train
21 - Dublin Blues

Disc 2: Guy Clark encore

01 - Comes From The Heart (Susanna Clark/Richard Dobson)
02 - The Randall Knife

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