CD Review: Guy Clark

By Aaron Davis (for JHWeekly.com)Clark is one of my top ten favorite songwriters of all time. His wordsmithing and accompanying delivery are timeless, funny, heart wrenching, and at it’s best, unfathomable and poetic. His peers know this too, and thus we have a double-disc salute with no less than thirty tracks from luminaries Willie Nelson, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Patty Griffin, Kris Kristofferson, Robert Earl Keen, Jerry Jeff Walker, Rodney Crowell, John Prine, Emmylou Harris and well, you get the picture. It also happensto be a 70^th birthday present for Mr. Clark.There’s a lot to experience here, so I direct you to some of my favorites: “Desperadoes Waiting for a Train” is delivered passionately by Nelson, the quintessential “Old Time Feeling” kicks-off the set in fine form by Crowell, and “Let Him Roll” gets subtle treatment by John Townes Van Zandt.In the end, of course, I’d prefer to hear Clark himself singing these songs. While some of the arrangements just didn’t fit the artists covering them, most of his friends do serious justice here, reaping the foundational qualities that make this a batch of acoustic, Americana/folk classics. Fans or not, this one’s easy to enjoy.