Cowboy Jack Clement – Singers are a pain in the ass if you want to know the truth about it. Most of ’em. Well, all of ’em: A conversation with Cowboy Jack Clement

ND: So what caused you to really want to work at music again?

JC: I guess it took awhile before I found the people I wanted to hook up with, people that would inspire me to want to go to the trouble to go out and book shows and stuff. People like Shawn Camp and Billy Burnette. Once I did that, we played some shows at Douglas Corner and at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Then Dualtone started saying they’d like to do an album with me. So, OK, I’ll do you an album. And here you are. And here it is.

ND: Has having close friends die encouraged you to step up your pace?

JC: No, I think it was coincidental. To some extent it may have prompted me, since I’m one of the last of the breed, or whatever you want to call it. I’ve always thought if I really wanted to I could cut a hit record. Well, I want to now. Go on the road and chase girls. Get me a bus. Go to Hollywood and find Salma Hayek.

ND: You seem proud of this album.

JC: I’m pretty happy with it. There’s some good stuff on it, and I think it’s entertaining. I tried to keep it where when you hear it you can see things. You can visualize circuses and drinking carrot juice, things like that.

ND: It’s been so long since you made a record, I would think you’d just go with new material. Why did you decide to bring older songs onto this album?

JC: I thought it would be commercial. I thought people would want to hear it. Both songs I’m doing with Cash are different from the way he did them. “Guess Things Happen That Way”, my inspiration was “Memories Are Made of This” by Dean Martin. A calypso beat. Cash did it a totally different way, which was great. But the way we’re doing it now is closer to the way I wrote it. About a year ago, we got him to come in and do that, and he fell right into it.

Cash used to come over here a lot. He used to have a key to the place. Sometimes at night you’d hear someone clomping around upstairs. What’s that? Oh, that’s just Johnny Cash, up there pacing around. He’d pace around awhile and then he’d split.

ND: Do you think about what you’ve meant to this town and this music?

JC: Not much. I appreciate the attention and stuff. But it’s not my driving thing, you know.

ND: But things would have been different if you hadn’t come around. Surely you see that.

JC: Oh yeah. I think so. There might not have been a Charley Pride, for one thing.

ND: Would rock ‘n’ roll have happened in the same way?

JC: Well, there might not have been a Jerry Lee Lewis. He’d auditioned for people in Nashville and other places, and nobody saw it. I don’t know how they couldn’t see it. That baffled me. I saw it the first time I heard it.

ND: You’re a fine evaluator of singers. Do you like your own voice?

JC: When I’m in pretty good shape I do. I smoke too much and everything else, but most of the time on this album it’s in good shape. But sometimes it mystifies me a little bit that people actually like my voice. Why would they? I’d like to be able to sing like Merle Haggard. [Folk singer] Gove Scrivenor is a guy with a beautiful voice. And that kid from Texas, Gene Watson. Now there’s a guy with a beautiful voice. If I had my druthers I’d sound like a combination of all three of them guys, but with my phrasing. I do like my phrasing pretty well.

ND: In Peter Guralnick’s chapter about you in Lost Highway: Journeys And Arrivals Of American Musicians, you’re depicted as someone who sometimes didn’t get much accomplished amidst all the hubbub of your home and studio. Was there truth to that?

JC: One time, I got into this game of asking myself in a really tough situation, “What would the smartest man in the world do in a case like this?” The answer would come back, “Nothing.” He’d do nothing. He’d wait ’em out, you know? I still do that. What’s 20, 30 years to me? I’ve always avoided it when people try to get me in a hurry about things.

ND: You waited on the space thing.

JC: Well now, the idea wasn’t that far-fetched. At one point it looked like we might really put this record label together and everything. If I hadn’t forgot to sign a certain guy [Don Williams] to a contract we might have done it. And we could have amassed $100 million or something, and if you can amass $100 million maybe you could get a billion.

I always figured it would take at least a billion dollars to start any kind of meaningful space program. So you know, I did have it in my mind that we might could get enough shit going and actually get a billion dollars, invent an anti-gravity device and start a space program. I was telling people then it was a 30-year program. Still got a couple years left. But hell, I’m down to my last million right now. But I’m about ready to stop waiting on everything. I’m going to get right on my next album. I like to put one out every quarter-century.