It is good to see you have used some up and coming songwriters on Somedays The Song Writes You.
Yes, some of them are really good.


Jedd Hughes, how did you get to meet him?
I am not real sure where I got to meet him. He is a great guitar player and is from Australia and I really like writing with him. Jedd comes up with musical ideas I would never think of. He played with Keith Urban, Patty Loveless and Rodney for a while. Jedd is just a stunning guitar player.


When you are surrounded by these young players it must give you quite a lift and a challenge at the same time?
It is great. Having them write with me make me want to do better. People like Jedd bring a lot to the table.

You wrote the song Eamon with Rodney Crowell. Is it a new song?
It is pretty new. Rodney had those first two verses and wasn’t sure what to do next and he called me. I thought what he had done was just perfect and took it from there. I will always write with Rodney as I have done for around 30 years.


Many a time you will have written one or two lines or more and never got back to them?
That does happen. I have a heap of them sitting right here where the chorus might not be quite right or are the type of thing a co-writer might be able to help me. 


What inspired you to write The Coat?
It was an idea Ashley Monroe had, and had a few lines to that song and we sat down with Jedd Hughes and worked on it for a while and that is what came out.


Could you tell me a little about Patrick Davis who you also write with?
He comes from North or South Carolina and we write for the same publishing company and got together.


So much so that the song ‘Wrong Side Of The Tracks’ is pretty much vintage Guy Clark!
Thank you. I am really glad you enjoyed it. Like I said he is a good young writer and we work well together and he is a nice guy too.


How does a new song that you have thoughts of recording pass the test? Do Verlon (who accompanies Guy on the road) and yourself play it a time or two?
Yes, I usually try to do that so when it comes to going into the studio I know what I am doing. I don’t think it is very smart, economically, to go pay musicians studio time to learn a song. You have got to have it learnt and have thought out what you are going to do when you get in there —it isn’t my favourite place to play music.


Where did you get the inspiration for ‘Hemmingway’s Whiskey’? 
One of the co-writers, Joe Leathers had the idea and we just sat down with Ray Stephenson and worked on it till we worked it out.


Why did you choose to record Townes’ song ‘If I Needed You’?
Back in the early 1970s Townes was living with my wife, Susannah and I at the time and he got up one morning got a cup of coffee and picked up a guitar and put a piece of paper on his knee and played that song and I asked him where did he get it? He turned around to me and said I dreamed it last night. He wrote the whole thing in a dream and woke up, wrote it down and then he went back to sleep. 


Now the album’s out are you going to have a break from writing?
No, I am always writing for the next album.


What advice would you give to the young writers you work with?
Write with a pencil and a big eraser! I think it is important to make it so less is more.


Do you still build your own guitars?
I did when I had time. It is a hobby of mine and unlike song writing which is very cerebral where you are looking out the window looking for ideas all if the time it is about co-ordination and you using your hands. It is like left-brain, right brain. Sometimes I might be working on a guitar as an idea come to me and go write it down because the thing about song writing is you just stick at it and think it out.


Do you see many changes in the music business today compared to when you started?
As far as I am concerned it is always been about going and writing better songs, and though it has changed about how it gets to people you still have to write good songs to make it. But in general I feel it is healthier today as far as aspiring singer-songwriters are concerned and there is plenty of good ones coming along.


How important is humour in your song writing?
I think humour is an integral part of the human condition as important as sadness or anger or, any other emotion if that is what you would like to call them. Humour is just as valid a part and is just as serious to me. I always try to get keep a little balance between that and desperation because you have to be able to laugh at yourself. 


Early in your career among other things you had a job making Dobro guitars didn’t you?
I did a lot of different things. I worked in the Dobro factory in Los Angeles for eight months when I was trying to break into the music business. Previous to that I had been an art director in Houston, Texas working for CBS it came as a series of events, and it always came naturally to me. But I was still playing music on the side.


When was it that you started to play guitar?
I was 16 or 17 and it wasn’t till I was 26 that I started writing songs and it was another ten years before I made my first album for RCA ‘Old No1’ (1975). So it was ten years work of writing all put into one album and that is a great body of work to choose from.


After your days on RCA you moved to Warner Brothers and made what I thought were three fine albums. How do you rate them?
I did not particularly like the style of recording that was done like everything else it was a learning process.


Was that aspect out of your control?
No, I wasn’t powerless. Rodney produced two of the records The South Coast Of Texas and Better Days and it was also a learning process for him. There are some good songs on them, but through using a full band for Randall Knife it destroyed the intimacy of it that is why I recorded it again for the album  


Guy Clark’s Somedays The Song Writes You is out now on Dualtone. More info at Guyclark.com and Dualtone.com