I have always admired from a distance the school of Texas songwriters exemplified by Townes Van Zandt, but I make an exception for the great Van Zandt interpreter and admirer Guy Clark. It could be that Clark had a more interesting subject in the ’70 than he does these days — back then, he wrote about escaping Los Angeles and other weighty matters. And sure, I think 1975's "Desperados Waiting for the Train" is sentimentalized, but I like it, just as I enjoy his new live full-length
Songs and Stories, which catches Clark relaxing at Nashville's Belcourt Theatre — a homestead in Music City being the land the protagonist of "L.A. Freeway" did eventually buy. Rounding out the bill is the Oklahoma-born singer Ray Wylie Hubbard, whose latest work — the amazingly titled
A. Enlightenment B. Endarkenment (Hint: There Is No C) — stomps the hell out of the blues.
— Edd Hurt