PRESS RELEASE
January 2008
Terry Clarke
Terry Clarke's music is infused with the warm, breezy subtleties of Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael, the rough-hewn, hard-living country of Johnny Cash and street poetry and vivid imagery that make him a writer and performer of consistency and integrity, in a musical climate of too many shallow charms.
Whether he is calling up the spirit of the blues, tearing through a good, honest rock & roll song, introducing you to one of his flesh, blood and bone character studies or breaking your heart with a lonesome lament his work has the weight of history behind it - the history that gave us Son House, Dion, Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Jimmy Webb and Mercer - but his work pulses with a contemporary heart that continues to make his music full of surprises.
Terry's back-catalogue of 11 albums are coloured by his love of country, the blues, of rock & roll, as well as by his Anglo Irish roots and by his long association with Austin, Texas. And this latest disc, Big Road - The Caithness Sessions, raises a robust melody and a well-turned lyric to the stories and the landscapes of Scotland - which was his adopted home for a time.
Recorded and produced in a lighthouse/studio in the farthest northerly point of the Sottish mainland, this record summons up some of the wild beauty of that weather-scoured landscape as well as some of its tall tales and ancient rhythms.
The album has the finely-turned songs that are a hallmark of a Terry Clarke record, with tracks like Loch Carron recalling some of the beautifuly-stated emotion of his much loved album The Shelly River and with robust and raging tracks like Maggie Fraser and Go 'Long Lonnie set to please those who enjoyed his pairing with Jesse 'Guitar' Taylor on Rhythm Oil - Jesse's spirit endures in Big Road too, in it's cover art, which features the guitarman's 1970's Cadillac Seville.
Now living near Swansea, Wales, the home of one of his writing heroes Dylan Thomas, Clarke is assimilating the richness of his new surroundings to produce a fine body of work hewn from that landscape.
To date he has enjoyed some great performances there, debuting a suite of songs written as an homage to Dylan Thomas, at The Dylan Thomas Centre (this work was commissioned by them), and he enjoys a frequent partnership with respected poet and rock-and-roller-at-heart, Peter Thabit Jones.
During his twenty-year writing association with blues slide guitarist Michael Messer, Terry has been responsible for the modern classics of the genre that are winning Messer increasing recognition. The bluesman's last album, Lucky Charms, was, as ever packed with Clarke laments and finely drawn character studies and Terry has plans to record some of those songs himself, in the spirit in which they were penned - drawn from the well of the Everly Brothers, Dion DiMucci and Merle Haggard, rather than from the muddier waters of the delta.
Recent years have brought Terry a UK tour with cult legend Ronny Elliott alongside one of Austin's favourite adopted sons, Wes McGhee, as well as a Terry/Wes collaboration that led to a neon, jukebox of an album, Night Ride To Birmingham.
He also enjoyed a tour of North Carolina, West Virginia and Ohio, alongside David Childers and the Modern Don Juan's.
In 2008 he looks forward to a return trip to Austin, Texas.
What they say about Terry Clarke:
". refreshing, earthy, bare-bones blues . gut-bucket rural rock."
Johnny Cash sleevenotes for Rhythm Oil
"Terry Clarke is the new Van Morrison. -
Nick Dalton, Daily Express, August 2002
Journeying along the A9 may have been the spark that found fruition in 'Big Road' but in completing this masterpiece Clarke's canvas subjectively embraces all of life. All in all, the Celtic heartbeat that powered Clarke's distinctly emerald green The Shelly River is alive and well in the tartan-tinted Big Road.
Arthur Wood, Folkwax 2007
".he sang like his heart belonged in Sligo, Ireland, and his bones were happiest in Austin, Texas.
"He got you thinking of bloodlines and relations, of epic sessions and shorelines, expanses of space and time." -
Stuart Bailie, New Musical Express. Sleevenotes for The Heart Sings.
Roots 'n'roll at its very best - As wonderful a collection of 1950s-rock'n'rolI-meets- beautiful-if-deranged-country as I've ever heard.
Clarke is the king of conjuring up images from forgotten times and places and creating songs that are autobiographical in a way that's curiously out of time
Nick Dalton on Night Ride To Birmingham, in Maverick magazine, October 2006
"Drawing a line directly between Austin and Sligo what followed was one of the most consumate displays of the art of songwriting I have witnessed`'
Shaun Belcher Flyin' Shoes 1998
