It’s this kind of fair rationalizing and other statements (“It’s nice when really lovely people can make amazing things. That’s a bonus. I don’t really need that. I just want, you know, really beautiful work to be made”) that could be the reason recent headlines summed up Clark as “against can- cel culture.” “I’m not against cancel culture or for can- cel culture or anything,” she says. “I think that’s a big conversation that not … I don’t know where that idea came from. Those aren’t really waters that I want to wade in.” One thing she’s clear on, when she thinks about her fellow North Texans such as her former Polyphonic Spree band members Toby Halbrooks and Daniel Hart, who are now a producer and composer who work with film director David Lowery, also her North Texan collaborator, supporting good people is far more personally rewarding. “They’re crushing it. And I love them so much,” she says of the trio. “I haven’t gotten to see [their film] The Green Knight yet, but I’m going to and I was just texting with Toby. Oh, so brilliant and again, just great dudes.” “I totally agree,” she says, returning to the idea of art that can be taken at its face value no matter the artist’s personal virtues, but those virtues — or their lack — can make a difference in how we feel about that sup- port. “You’re really happy for great people to succeed and it’s not obviously always the case,” she says with a laugh. Hart is now a well-established film score composer based in Los Angeles, but he’s never forgotten his early days playing Dallas clubs with Clark. “Sometime in 2001, back when Poor Da- vid’s Pub was still on Lower Greenville, I asked Annie Clark to open for my very me- diocre band at the time,” Hart remembers. “This was several years before she worked on anything that would resemble St. Vin- cent. But having both grown up in Lake Highlands with many mutual friends, I knew she was a total shredder on guitar, and the songwriting chops were already there as well. She might have covered ‘Beat It’ in her set? At least half the people there in a fairly full room were there just to see her/support her. She’s always had an unde- niable magnetism.” Hart says that later that year or in early early 2002, “I asked her to open another show for another mediocre band of mine at Red Blood Club. While we were setting up for soundcheck, Chuck Rainey walked in and sat down at the bar, to have a drink. An- nie and I both freaked the fuck out, because Chuck is a legend, and because we both have a deep, deep love for all the Steely Dan records he played on. You won’t find a kinder, warmer, more encouraging legend than Chuck, but him being there still made me nervous about performing music, even just for soundcheck. Annie, on the other hand, turned to me and said, ‘I think I’m gonna play [Steely Dan’s] ‘Josie’ tonight if Chuck sticks around.’ Even back then, she had the confidence to match her incompa- rable talent.” After answering the calls to contribute musically with seemingly everyone impor- tant, Clark thinks on those she’s yet to col- laborate with. “All those things came about really or- ganically, which is just kind of miraculous,” she says. “But I mean, I still have so much to learn, and there’s still so many great peo- ple to learn what I can from. And one thing I will say is that in my experience with working with the greats, they’re not cyni- cal. I mean, they might have obviously had their fair share of ups and downs, but they’re not cynical about music. And that is to me the biggest lesson I have taken away from getting to be in the room with the greats, you know, David Byrne, and have had the pleasure of getting to talk to Bruce Springsteen a time or two … like, they’re not cynical.” She doesn’t get particularly nervous through pressure or have any great fears that her style or ideas won’t line up with someone else’s. “I mean, there’s always a level or a degree of just ‘What’s going to happen?’” she says, “But I think ... the joy of collaboration is that it’s ... not a walk that you would go on alone. Your instincts are being challenged and vali- much,” she says of Dallas. “I love coming back and seeing my family. I live there part- time, like, I I love it. You know, and they have rejected a lot of the dogmatic side of the reli- gious things growing up in the South, but I mean, I think I took with me the good stuff. “What I love about Texas, it’s very unpre- tentious. People are friendly and there’s not a ... Maybe you’ll totally disagree with me and think I’m crazy, but it just doesn’t feel like a place ... you can’t get too big for your britches, like in in such a good way, you know? I go home and I’m Annie, I’m just, like, wrestling with my nephews on the trampoline, just chill, I’m going to Super Target, loving every minute of it.” Clark doesn’t keep up with the local scene much. “I don’t,” she says, “but I’m not great at keeping up with the L.A. or New York music scene, either.” There’s one name Clark knows, of course. A few years ago, a mutual friend gave her fel- low Dallasite and fellow music star Erykah Badu’s number. Clark says the neo-soul icon PAIR OF TICKETS! WIN A Rachel Parker dated and stretched. And that’s the way you grow, I think.” While other artists are scrutinized and critiqued, Clark’s work seems, in particular, to be subject of deeper analysis. But she hasn’t considered that. “I don’t feel super aware of that,” she says. “I mean, I think I’m glad for it. I haven’t thought about it that much be- cause I haven’t … I don’t have the context of living someone else’s life, but I think if people, whether they love it or they hate it, if there’s something in it that they are trying to unpack or understand, then that’s great, it means that they think there is enough there worth trying to under- stand, which is great. I guess I feel way less, personally, like inscrutable than I think I am perceived, but that’s fine, too. I’m not really here to manicure and miti- gate someone’s experiences.” In the past, Clark has talked about growing up under conservative Southern principles that clashed with her own. In The Nowhere Inn, both Texas and Clark’s large family are depicted as caricatures. The musician now spends her time largely in Los Angeles and New York, but Texas, she says, is still, well, just sweeter than stolen honey. “Oh, I love it so much. I mean, I love it so Clark performs at Austin City Limits. is “one a few people who I’m a huge fan of whom I’ve never really met.” But Badu never answered her text. “She never did, but I completely under- stand because it was an egregious thing,” Clark says. “I think, now, looking back on it, I might have had a couple too many margaritas. I should not have texted her out of the blue. I think that was an over- stepping on my part. So I completely un- derstand. But I mean, if she wants to hit me up while I’m in town, I’ll go shotgun in that Porsche that says, ‘She bad’ on the li- cense plate.” I suggest to Clark that it’s unlikely any- one would be annoyed to get a random text from her. “Again, I’m a Texan, like, I’m proper and polite over here. I’m not trying to overstep, right? It’s a small community. It’s like a hometown hero thing, as big as Dallas is. It’s good. I love it. I’m glad I grew up there. I’m glad I still live there part of the time, you know?” I also offer Clark my sincere wishes that she breaks a leg during her family Christmas performance and that her mother enjoys the show. She knows she will. “It will be a tour-de-force,” she says. 17 DALLASOBSERVER.COM/ FREE/MARCUSKINGBAND dallasobserver.com CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS DALLAS OBSERVER JANUARY 27–FEBRUARY 2, 2022
