Story & Photo by Pete Brooks

Let's face it -- pop music is in a state of torpor and decay. What doesn't suck outright is middlin' good at best. (Grammy's, anyone?)

That's why I've started looking backwards in time for "new" music. It's amazing what's already out there that we just haven't heard of, yet. The only drawback to this program, is usually the folks I find are dead or retired from the road, and I don't get to go see them in person, in concert.

Goodbye Roger Miller. Sorry I missed you, Tom T. Hall. Maybe next time, Hank Williams. Townes... I guess not.

Every once in a while, though, I catch someone before they fade. Saw Blossom Dearie at McCabe's Guitar Shop a couple of years ago -- awesome! Leonard Cohen at the Wiltern in '93 -- sublime! Johnny Cash at the House of Blues, two weeks before ill-health laid him low -- bittersweet, now.

Last week I did it right again, and managed to make it to The Troubador for a rare Guy Clark west coast appearance.

Who the hell is Guy Clark? Well friends, if haven't heard of Guy Clark outside of this column, then MTV, VH1, TNN, KZLA and the whole rotten mess of 'em have let you down and you need to go elsewhere to troll for meaningful, rewarding music.

Because it is out there. I've heard it with my own ears -- I know it exists.

Don't get me wrong -- Guy's not all that old. It's just his level of disinterest in the star-making apparatus of the industry makes me feel lucky to have caught him at all. Like at any time, he could just up and say "the hell with all this bs" and go back to making dobros for a living.

(There's even a local angle: Guy wrote "L.A. Freeway," one of his "biggest hits," (meaning somebody else recorded and sold a million copies of it, in this case Jerry Jeff Walker) about the time he and his wife moved back to Nashville from Long Beach -- where he worked in a dobro factory -- in the early '70s.)

Onstage, Clark comes across like the Good Guy Cattle Baron from a Randolph Scott western; tall, patrician, straight and strong, with wavy silver hair and bushy eyebrows. Decked out in his best Ben Catrwright duds for the show, he and fellow acoustic guitarist Verlon Thompson specialize in what Clark repeatedly referred to as "Old Dead Men" tunes.

If he had prepared a set list, it went unused. All night long, requests were called out and performed on the spot. It was like hanging out at an uncle's house -- a cool uncle with a guitar, who knew all the same songs you did. And just happens to have written most of them himself.

Some of his music is so intimate that the noise created by unwrapping a piece of gum draws "Ssshhh!" looks. And this is in a bar, not a coffeehouse! For one song, "Randall Knife," a spoken word tune about coming to terms with the death of his father, he even unplugged his guitar and walked up to the lip of the stage, and went 100% acoustic. You could have heard a pin drop.

By show's end, he had played for more than 2 hours, including lovely renditions of the three Essential tunes; the ones I came to hear: "Desperadoes Waitin' For A Train," "Randall Knife" and Townes Van Zandt's "To Live Is To Fly."

On the way home, it struck me how many excellent songs Clark has written. Some that folks may actually even have heard of, like "L.A. Freeway," "Homegrown Tomatoes" and "That Old Time Feeling," recorded and made popular by more high-profile, better publicized artists. Damned glad I caught him still in his prime. You can, too.

Because high-quality music is out there, friends. If you're serious about hooking up with it, I encourage you to find a copy of Guy Clark's live disc, "Keepers," available wherever tapes and CDs are sold, and start with that.