Brandy Clark arrives at the 59th annual Grammy Awards at the Staples Center on Sunday, Feb. 12, 2017, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
It takes a lot of of turns to navigate from Morton to the bright lights and red carpet of the Grammy Awards. It just so happens the route that Brandy Clark bushwhacked runs right through Nashville.
On Sunday, Clark was in attendance at the Grammys as a nominee for the fourth straight year. This year, she was nominated for Best Country Album and Best Country Solo Performance. In 2016, she was nominated for Best Country Song for “Hold My Hand,” and in 2015 she was nominated for Best New Artist and Best New Country Album for her release, “12 Stories.” In 2014, she burst onto the scene when she was nominated for Best New Country Song for her lyrical input on Miranda Lambert’s smash success “Mama’s Broken Heart.”
“It never gets old hat,” said Clark, a 41-year-old Morton native, during an interview with The Chronicle last week. “It’s an exciting thing to be a part of.”
Although her work has garnered attention in the past, this year was particularly meaningful because the content of her record — “Big Day in a Small Town” — was inspired in large part by her experience growing up in rural Lewis County. The album even featured local archive photos from the East County Journal as its cover art, including a shot of the Morton-White Pass football team celebrating a touchdown beneath the blazing Friday night lights.
”When I made this record, and when I wrote the song ‘Big Day in a Small Town,’ I thought, ‘Wow, that would be a great record to pay homage to my small town,’” said Clark. “I love small town America and I think it’s because I grew up in a small town.”
Clark, who graduated from both Morton High School and Centralia College, said that when she first left the security of Western Washington for the uncertainty of neon honky tonks and Nashville she was slapped with a bit of culture shock. At first, the difference stuck out like a sore guitar picker’s thumb. Eventually, though, she began to notice the similar backgrounds of the folks populating transient cities like Nashville or even Los Angeles.
“When I moved to Nashville, I felt like I had moved to New York City when I first got there, but one thing I’ve learned is that most people are from a small town. What I learned is every place is the same really. Small towns revolve around the sports teams and I love that, and everyone knows each other and is helping each other out,” said Clark, who has been pleasantly surprised by the wide-ranging warm welcome that her ode to Morton has received.
“Not only in America, I’ve been amazed by how much ‘Big Day in a Small Town’ has resonated with people in the UK,” said Clark, who told of driving through pastoral sections of countryside in Scotland and England on a recent tour and thinking to herself, “Oh my gosh, this reminds me of Lewis County.”
Since she was just a young Morton resident, Clark has been immersed in the classic twang and drawl of country music. She remembers soaking in the hickory-stained sounds of Alabama and Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” early on in her development. She began playing guitar at the age of 9, taking lessons at Lewis County’s only mall.
“My mom loves great singers and I remember she loved the great country singers, but also, I love Linda Ronstadt and I feel like that came from my mom. And my grandparents lived next door and they loved Merle Haggard and George Jones and that era, and everyone loves Dolly Parton,” explained Clark, who says her first live concert was Ronnie Milsap at the Puyallup fair when she was about 5 years old.
Clark even played in a band with her well-rounded musician of a mother for awhile.
“She plays almost everything. That’s definitely where I got my musical interest from. She didn’t play guitar when I was growing up but she played piano and harp,” said Clark. “We always had music around.”
Although Clark grew up surrounded by and helping to create the heart plucking sounds of country music, she did not set out to top the charts right from the get-go. Coming from a small town, there were other pursuits that came calling first.
“When was young I was big into sports, and that monopolizes everything. It taught me great discipline,” explained Clark, who went to Central Washington University on a basketball scholarship. As these things happen, though, her focus slowly began to shift, and eventually she left Ellensburg and returned to Lewis County to attain her associate degree in music from Centralia College.
“I’m that kind of person who always needs a big passion. When I quit playing basketball, I just transferred that to music,” said Clark.
While she was already well-versed in tapping into her passions, when Clark first struck out on the bumpy wagon wheel trail that leads to the country music scene, she was unsure of how far her determination would take her. Asked if she had ever envisioned her current level of success, Clark still sounds a bit conflicted.
“I did and I didn’t. I always say your dreams are about 9 years old,” said Clark. “I definitely imagined myself up there, but as you get older and more realistic you think, ‘Well maybe that part won’t happen.’ Right about the time I thought that some of that wouldn't happen for me, it started to happen … My reality has exceeded my dreams in a lot of areas.”
She first began breaking into the industry thanks to her first-rate ability to convey compelling stories through her lyrics. Her words have been performed by big timers like Lambert, Sheryl Crow, Reba McEntire and Kacey Musgraves many times over. She considers Lambert’s rendition of “Mama’s Broken Heart” to be one of the favorite projects. She olds out hope that it will be a country radio and jukebox staple for years to come.
“It’s because I have gotten so many texts in the middle of a Saturday night, coming into a Sunday morning, of people drunk and karaoking that song. I think that song could be a classic.
There’s some staying power in that,” said Clark.
Clark and her strong knack for evocative storytelling are an integral part of a new wave of sound that has been washing over the sometimes stagnant world of country music in recent years. For evidence of that sound, just listen to Sturgill Simpson’s “Sailor’s Guide to Earth,” which includes a cover of Nirvana’s “In Bloom” that bested Clark’s “Big Day in a Small Town” on Sunday for Best Country Album of the year.
For Clark, that revolution is not so much about what she can change about country music, but about returning to the strong, time-tested traditions of its past.
“I think there was a bit of a rut as far as the majority of what people were hearing on the radio. And that’s where I got most of my music as a kid was on the radio,” explained Clark. “It is a bit of a movement and I’m proud to be a part of it, and I think it’s a lot of artists that want to keep the traditions of country music alive. To me it’s even more than sonically, to me I love to keep the art of storytelling alive in country music. In my opinion country music has the best songs ever that tell the stories of everyday life and everyday people.
Clark likes to refer to the recipe for a good country music as “three chords and the truth,” although, she added that “it can have more than three chords.” To her mind, it is no wonder that country music resonates so well in blue-collar backwaters of Washington.
“I think it’s because it’s about working class values. I really do. I think that’s why I loved it,” said Clark. “I remember hearing the Alabama song ‘40 Hour Week’ and the Ronnie Milsap song ‘She Keeps the Home Fires Burning.’ I thinks there’s a lot of hard working people who listen to the radio to help them get through their 40 hours on the job.”
Although she came up short in her bid to bring home Best Country Album and Maren Morris wound up with honors for Best Country Solo Performance over Clark’s “Love Can Go To Hell,” she doesn’t harbor much in the way of hard feelings. She’s just happy to be a part of a strong wave of musicians who are helping to establish country music as a serious genre that reflects a slice of the American experience. She notes up-and-coming country musicians Charlie Worsham and Ryan Kinder as artists she is excited to keep an eye and an ear on going forward.
“Those are people that the majority of the world hasn’t heard from yet, but I think that they will,” said Clark. “I think we’re all just doing what is really honest to us and not trying to fit a mold.”
Find additional information on Clark and her album Big Day in a Small Town at www.brandyclarkmusic.com.
