Guy Clark and music that speaks to the spirit

I was given an incredible opportunity a few weeks back, in the form of the Whispering Beard Folk Music festival.  My appreciation for folk music has grown immensely over the last few years, and this is the first real festival I've gotten the chance to participate in (Thanks to oSha Shireman for that).

Many of the performances were top notch, and I enjoyed nearly all of them.  But one really stood out in its deep simplicity - and that was Guy Clark's performance at the end of the second night.  I am going to paraphrase my notes, written immediately after the set was over:

"He stood slowly, steadying himself with the microphone stand, looking as though he were made of grimacing living granite.  A tear glistened on his cheek as he sang, his outward and unabashed emotion the price of a tale well told of a friend well loved and long lost."

The entire week leading up to this moment had primed me for the performance.  A dear friend with an unusual amount of insight had told me less than 48 hours earlier that great writing comes from being able to explain your deepest emotions to an audience of strangers while accepting that every last one of them might reject it wholesale.  I have only managed one such piece of writing.

Similarly, in a discussion of the author Louis L'Amour's book The Education of a Wandering Man, L'Amour says several times that great stories aren't fairy tales or fabrications.  Rather, they are honestly and skillfully told accounts of real people and events.  L'Amour used the stories of "old timers" to write his Westerns, framing his stories in historical contexts that are more or less true. 

Guy Clark told his stories in an honest and breathtakingly beautiful way.  The owner of the merchandise stand said something that distilled both prior points quite well - "Guy Clark does what the best storytellers do - he has the courage to tell his own story honestly and pour out his heart to strangers while telling things as they were." 

I had no idea how influential Clark was until I managed to find an internet connection the next day and look him up.  As it turns out, he's one of the most important country music songwriters of the last few decades. 

Being in the presence of someone who really takes their art form to the highest levels is an exceedingly rare experience.  I have been lucky enough to have two such opportunities, and this was one of them.

I have never been a live music snob - in fact, I often prefer recordings to live music.  I have to say that Clark's performance is head and shoulders above his recordings.  Not for any technical reasons - the guitars are the same, the lyrics are the same, his skill remains the same.  No, it is something else that I haven't quite nailed down that makes seeing a performance like his profound in a way a CD will never be. 

I left the stage with a strange lump in my throat that returns even as I recall the experience.  It seems odd to me for a short set in the midst of a small music festival to have such an effect on someone like me - perhaps that's why it did.