Popular Woodworking 2007-06 № 162, страница 60

Great Woodshops

Songs from the Workbench

Singer and songwriter Guy Clark builds both melodies and guitars in the woodshop of his Nashville home.

Songwriter, singer and luthier Guy Clark doesn't like technology.

"I put away all my recording stuff, built this workbench, ordered some wood and started building stuff," he says. The most high-tech machines on display in his workshop are a Delta band saw, a Craftsman drill press, a stereo receiver and a tape player.

A handmade workbench festooned with hand tools lines one wall; another wall is lined almost floor to ceiling with row upon row of cassette tapes. The late Texas singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt—a longtime friend of Clark's - gazes over the scene from a photograph at the back of the room. A blueprint detailing the anatomy of a flamenco guitar doubles as decoration on the opposite wall. Steam rises from an omnipresent coffee cup, filled several times during our visit. A hand-rolled cigarette smolders in a skull-head ashtray (a gift from Emmylou Harris).

Singer, songwriter and luthier Guy Clark in his Nashville workshop, where he crafts guitars and award-winning songs.

Clark's three main tools are an old Stanley fore plane, a paring chisel, and his favorite - a $10 Swedish-made beginner's carving knife.

It is here in this cozy workshop in the basement of his Nashville home that Clark writes almost all of his music, and handcrafts traditional flamenco-style guitars.

You've likely heard Clark's name lately. His most recent album, Workbench Songs, was nominated this year for a Grammy Award for Contemporary Folk/Americana Album. In 2004, he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Foundation's Hall of Fame, and in 2005 he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in Songwriting by the Americana Music Association.

by Megan Fitzpatrick

Comments or questions? Contact Megan at 513-5312690 ext. 1348 or megan.fitzpatrick@fwpubs.com.

And, if you're a fan of Jerry Jeff Walker, Ricky Skaggs, John Denver or Lyle Lovett, you've heard Clark's tunes. "L.A. Freeway" was a breakthrough song for Clark as a songwriter when Walker hit the charts with it in 1972. Skaggs had a No. 1 hit with "Heartbroke" in the early '80s. "Home Grown Tomatoes" was on several Denver albums; and "Step Inside This House" was the title song off Lovett's 1998 two-disc set of Texas songwriters.

A Knife, a $12 Guitar, a Career

Clark was born in 1941 in the West Texas town of Monahans, where he got his first taste for woodworking. "I got my first knife - a little pocketknife and a whetstone - when I was a kid," he says. "I just started making things. It

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Popular Woodworking June 2007