Gene Clark Goes Twang: A When You Awake Mixtape

Gene Clark is one of the most important figures in the American music tradition of the past sixty years and one of the least known outside the community of serious listeners. This is not a controversial claim among the people who know his work — it is something close to consensus. It is also the kind of thing that gets said about many artists, so let me be specific about what makes Clark exceptional.

Clark was the primary songwriter for the Byrds during their most productive early period. The records he wrote or co-wrote — "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better," "Set You Free This Time," "Here Without You," "Eight Miles High" (co-written with David Crosby and Roger McGuinn) — were not supplementary contributions to the band's catalog. They were the core of what made the early Byrds records endure.

He left the Byrds in 1966 because of an acute fear of flying. His solo career, which began immediately after, produced some of the most consistently interesting records in the country-rock and Americana tradition over the following twenty years.

The snapshot entry of Gene Clark with Emmylou Harris and Eddie Tickner is related: Snapshot: Gene Clark, Emmylou Harris and Eddie Tickner.

The Byrds period

The Clark songs in the Byrds catalog have a melodic sophistication and an emotional complexity that distinguishes them from the other songwriting on the records. The country influence is present from the beginning — the chord structures, the melodic intervals, the way the vocal harmonies are constructed.

Clark was from Missouri, from a musical family, and he brought a Mid-Western country sensibility to the California folk-rock sound that the Byrds were developing. The synthesis is audible in every Clark-written track on the first two Byrds albums.

The solo career

Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers (1967) and The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark (1968) are the immediate post-Byrds records. The Dillard & Clark record is the more interesting one — Doug Dillard's banjo and bluegrass background combined with Clark's folk-rock sensibility produces something that prefigures the Americana sound by a decade.

No Other (1974) is the masterwork and the commercial failure. Produced by Thomas Jefferson Kaye with elaborate arrangements, it is simultaneously the most ambitious record Clark made and the one that most clearly demonstrates what he was capable of. It sounds like nothing else in the catalog of the period. It failed commercially and was deleted quickly. It has been rediscovered repeatedly in the years since.

The mixtape sequence

• "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better" — the Byrds recording, the prototype of a specific kind of country-rock feeling
• "Set You Free This Time" — the song where Clark's melodic gift is most audible
• "Tried So Hard" — from the Gosdin Brothers album, the solo debut's finest moment
• "She Darked the Sun" — from Dillard & Clark, the bluegrass-folk synthesis
• "The Virgin" — from No Other, the record's opening statement
• "Silver Raven" — from No Other, the country-pastoral side of the record
• "Kansas City Southern" — the train song, the geography of the American plains in the melody
• "Gypsy Rider" — late career, the song that shows the voice was still fully present

What Clark means

The Gene Clark Goes Twang mixtape is an argument for taking seriously the artists who were doing important work outside the mainstream. Clark's career is a history of records made with total commitment and received without the attention they warranted.

This is not unusual. It is, in fact, the normal condition of serious music-making. But in Clark's case the gap between the quality of the work and the recognition it received is particularly large.

Full Mixtapes archive.