By Rosalind Cummings-Yeates
photos by Frank Maddocks
T
he Chosen One. The Future of the Blues
Guitar. The Next Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Savior of the Blues. At only 35-years
of age, Gary Clark Jr. has carried a lot of
pressure on his slim shoulders. But from
the time he was a teen, blasting away his
elders at Austin nightclubs, a grand des-
tiny has hovered around him. Clark has
never been comfortable with the stifling
expectations and the insistent labels, but
with the release of his illuminating third
album, This Land (Warner Bros), the musi-
cian has proclaimed his unique vision for
what his musical role will be.
“I did feel that those titles were a little
bit overwhelming,” said Clark quietly
about his early accolades. “My first album
was at 17, and it was a lot of things, not just
blues. Blues will always be the foundation,
but it wasn’t right to put all that pressure
on one person.” Industry insiders and sea-
soned fans poured their longing for a
young blues master who would keep the
genre visible and trendy into Clark’s daz-
zling talent, and he’s wrestled with that
yoke for over a decade. But clearly, that
struggle is now over. “I’m a musician and
a creator, and I like to experiment with dif-
ferent things. Music is music, and it does-
n’t make sense to hold that stuff [from var-
ied genres] back, it just wouldn’t be
authentic,” he insisted.
Holding it back is not something Gary
Lee Clark Jr. was ever inclined to do.
Growing up in Austin, Texas, he absorbed
the potent live music scene as well as soul
and hip-hop and started performing along-
22 illinoisentertainer.com april 2019
side veterans, sometimes without his
mother’s permission. “I’ve always loved
music, whatever kind it is. My neighbors
had mariachi playing, and I’d hear live
bands at Austin clubs, I loved it all. I found
this music community; Robert Cray,
Buddy Guy, Keb Mo, Albert Collins and
they just passed all that music to me. It was
so fresh to me. Magic Slim, Pinetop
Perkins, I got to see a good chunk of these
legends. I’d sneak out and steal the car and
go to school the next day like nothing hap-
pened.”
Although he was guided by blues
musicians substantially older than he was,
they represented not just a genre but a
lifestyle that he desired. “There were all
these different perspectives that I heard,
and I wanted to be a part of it,” he said of
the Austin blues community. “There was
all this acceptance and freedom to truly be
who you are.” Ironically, the very freedom
and acceptance that lured him into being a
professional musician would be the hard-
est-won aspect of his career
When Clark was 12-years-old, he
picked up the guitar for the first time. The
power and expression that the instrument
gave the soft-spoken East Texas boy was
something he never wanted to give up. He
played in local clubs, and he also played in
church. Clark’s mom insisted that if he was
motivated enough to play for the drunken
crowds that flocked to downtown clubs, he
could also play for Jesus. He played wher-
ever and whenever he could and then he
met Clifford Antone, owner of the leg-
endary Austin blues club, Antone’s.
Immediately recognizing Clark's stunning
virtuosity, Antone began regularly featur-
ing the young musician at the club, where
he caught the attention of Jimmie
Vaughan, Stevie Ray’s brother. Jimmie
took the young prodigy under his wing
and soon Clark was sharing the stage with
legends like Hubert Sumlin Jr. and Pinetop
Perkins. He caused such a sensation that
Austin’s mayor declared May 3, 2001,
"Gary Clark Jr. Day" when he was only 17-
years-old.
Listening to his dad’s B.B King and
Johnny “Guitar” Watson records and
studying icons like Buddy Guy and Sumlin
on stage formed the foundation of his
musical education, but Clark likes to
emphasize that blues wasn’t the only
music that he listened to. “On 6th street,
you hear all kinds of music – jazz, hip hop,
country, R&B,” he explained. “I was mak-
ing beats, and I was listening to Teddy
Riley, Curtis Mayfield, Tupac, and RZA.”
Underscoring his eclectic tastes, Clark says
it wasn’t Hound Dog Taylor's slide guitar
technique he studied for years, or Elmore
James or even Jimi Hendrix who first
inspired him to play guitar. For that, he
points to attending Michael Jackson’s
“Bad” concert tour as a kid and listening to
his mother’s Jackson Five records. Yes,
Gary Clark Jr’s first guitar push came from
Tito Jackson. Looking at Tito’s trajectory
from ‘50s doo-wop to R&B, to the blues
that he’s currently playing, it’s a fitting
example for the genre-bending guitarist
that Clark has always been. It’s just taken a
few albums for listeners to acknowledge
that.
Clark recorded two independent
albums and earned several Austin Music
Awards before he was invited to play the
significant role of a magnetic young blues
guitarist in John Sayles 2007 film
Honeydripper. Tracing the journey of a juke
joint owner played by Danny Glover, try-
ing to keep his club going amid the obsta-
cles of Jim Crow Alabama and featuring
Keb Mo playing a ghost character who rep-
resents the spirit of the blues, the film visu-
alizes the genre and the lifestyle that pro-
duced it. His film debut served to show-
case his blues prowess while also announc-
ing that the new guard had arrived. Just a
few years later, in 2010, Gary Clark Jr.’s
arrival and ascension as the heralded
“Chosen One” was announced to the
world with a legendary performance.
Eric Clapton would write two letters
that helped transform Clark's career. The
first arrived as he sat in the dark, contem-
plating whether he should get a full-time
job. Much to his parent's distress, Clark
had turned down a full scholarship to the
University of Texas at Austin to pursue his
musical dreams. At 26, he managed to
make a living with his music and had
earned local acclaim, even touring with
Jimmie Vaughan. But the power had just
been turned off in the house Clark rented
from a friend, and he wondered if it might
be time to give up his dream. Then he got
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