Getting Off The LA Freeway: The Guy Clark Story Quiz

Answer: Texas

Guy Clark was born in Monahans, Texas, in November 1941, but eventually settled in Nashville, Tennessee. Although an accomplished performer in his own right, he came to mainstream country music attention when other artists began to pick up his songs.

Answer: Ricky Skaggs

"Who wouldn't notice the fire in your eyes
Or the bitter direction of impending goodbyes
I'm fallen and folded and wilted in place
At the sight of you standing with streaks down your face

Chorus````````````;
Heartbroke and runnin' from the reason
Heartbroke Don't give up on believin' in me
Heartbroke Who kept me from leavin' with my
Heartbroke
Pride is a bitch and a bore when you're lonely
Sheer madness prevails upon reason to yield
But all is not lost it is only mistaken
That's small consolation but I know just how you feel..."

In 1981, Ricky Skaggs hit the top of the charts with "I Don't Care". Sixteen more Top Ten hits were to follow in that decade. He had five Top Ten albums in the 1980s. Between 1981 and 2009, he won 14 Grammy awards for songs, albums and performances.

Answer: Desperadoes

"Desperadoes Waiting For A Train" was, to an extent, a biographical song. In an interview in 2011 Clark said: "It's a true song about someone in my life - I mean, you couldn't have made that up. It's just as true as you could make it. It was about a guy who was like my grandfather. And when I started writing songs, that was one of the songs I knew I was gonna write at some point." [on the 'Songfacts' website.]
Clark told 'USA Today': "It's about Jack Prigg, a dapper old guy who was so important in my life. My grandmother's boyfriend, you could say. I'd stay with them in Monahans, West Texas. When I was 15 or 16, I had started playing guitar. Jack was big buddies with the guy that owned the pawn shop, and we'd borrow a guitar from him. We'd sit around the kitchen in my grandmother's hotel, and he'd get these big tears and say, 'Can you play the 'Red River Valley'? That was his favorite."
The song has been covered by numerous artists, and was initially popularised by Jerry Jeff Walker.

Answer: Dublin

Chorus:
"Forgive me all my anger
Forgive me all my faults
There's no need to forgive me
For thinkin' what I thought
I loved you from the git go
I'll love you till I die
I loved you on the Spanish steps
The day you said goodbye..."

"Dublin Blues" was the title track of a 1985 Clark album.

Answer: Landlord

Chorus:
"If I can just get off of this LA freeway
Without getting killed or caught
I'd be down that road in a cloud of smoke
For some land that I ain't bought bought bought..."

Clark wrote the song while he and his wife, Susanna, were living in Los Angeles - and had a row with the landlord. In an interview with Dan McIntosh, of Songfacts, he later said: " Oh, I'm glad I'm not there [Los Angeles] for sure. I mean, who would choose that? It's just too maddening for my taste."
Once again, it was Jerry Jeff Walker who picked up and popularised the song.

Answer: Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle

A recording of a concert featuring the three Texan-born singers was organised by Clark's wife, Susanna, and released in aid of the Interfaith Dental Clinic. The performance took place at The Bluebird Café in Nashville in September 1995.
Van Zandt and Clark were close friends. Clark often featured a Van Zandt song on his albums. Clark was also responsible for giving Steve Earle his first songwriting job in Nashville.

Answer: Dobro

Dobro guitars were first made in California in the late 1920s. This was a family firm that initially made resonator guitars. Gibson acquired the Dobro trademark in 1994.

Answer: Rodney Crowell

The song appeared on an album by Guy Clark in 1981, but seven years later Crowell took it to the top of the country charts. It was the third of his five consecutive Number One hits.

Answer: Susanna

"My favorite picture of you
is the one where you're staring
straight into the lens

It's just a Polaroid shot
someone took on the spot
no beginning no end ..."

Clark wrote it after about an episode in their joint friendship with the songwriter Townes Van Zandt. An album of the same name featured a covershot of Clark holding the photograph.
Susanna Clark was born in Atlanta, Texas, in 1939 and died in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2012. She and Guy met in 1971 and married a year later.
Songs she wrote or co-wrote included "I'll Be Your San Antone Rose", "Come From the Heart,"and "Easy From Now On". She created artwork for albums by her husband and others, including Willie Nelson.
Fran, Cindy and Jeanene were, in turn, the three wives of Townes Van Zandt.

Answer: Townes Van Zandt

Clark and Van Zandt toured together until Van Zandt's untimely death in 1997. Van Zandt often stayed with Clark and his wife, Susanna.
"Townes was really crazy and I'm not. Townes was what he was. He was a brilliant, brilliant person, writer... he was the funniest son-of-a-bitch I ever met in my life. His humor. His quickness of mind." Clark later told 'Turnstyled Junkpiled' magazine.

Townes Van Zandt was revered as a songwriter by his peers. Van Zandt came from a privileged Texas family but made songwriting and performing his life's work. He had a relaxed approach to both, with friends and critics alike maintaining that he did not put as much effort in as he could. Steve Earle famously said of him: " "Townes van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that."
Van Zandt's depreciating reaction was: "I've met Bob Dylan's bodyguards and if Steve Earle thinks he can stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table, he's sadly mistaken."
You can learn more in other TVZ quizzes on this site, "The Songs Of Townes Van Zandt" by agony, and "The Late Great Townes Van Zandt" by a certain darksplash.