Guy Clark is a storyteller, someone who crafts words as carefully and meticulously as another man might craft wood into a chest or glass into a vase. Over his fifty years in the music industry he has become a standard by which other songwriters measure themselves. But like a true craftsman, Clark's joy comes in the craft and not in the accolades. This modesty is evidenced on his latest album, Songs and Stories. Within the 14 tracks he still finds room to pay homage to other songwriters and space for two of his close friends and writing partners. Guy Clark is a master, and, as such, he appreciates passing his knowledge on. Songs and Stories is his way of including all of us in the ballad of his life and times.

The album opens with “LA Freeway” and closes with Dublin Blues, two songs that remind the audience of Clark's love of home and family. It enhances the feeling of the album as a good old fashioned, living room jam session. Towards that end, Clark has a band that is made up of close friends, Kenny Malone on drums, Bryn Davis on upright bass and Shawn Camp on vocals, guitar and mandolin. Verlon Thompson who is credited as a storyteller as well as for his work on vocals and guitar. The album contains two songs written by Camp and Clark, and Clark allows Camp to take the lead on telling the story behind “Sis Draper.” Thompson gets two of his songs on the album, “Darwetta's Mandolin” and “Joe Walker's Mare,” and he gets to tell the stories behind both of them. He tells the story of the morning house guest Townes Van Zandt came downstairs with a song he had written in his sleep the night before, a song called “If I Needed You.” Apparently, Van Zandt woke up, scrawled down the song, and fell back to sleep. “Suspicion confirmed,” Clark says, with a laugh. Friends whether present or not have a strong bearing on the album, and nearly every song covered has at least one co-writer. Often the co-writers get as much or more of a story than the songs, with the longer tales coming out as result of a conversation and rarely as the result of a monologue. Which is not to say that the album is devoid of emotion or sentiment. In fact, Clark often expresses more emotion with a simple “I wrote this song with my good friend Rodney Crowell” than with an entire history of that friendship. Clark is a craftsman, and he knows how to give word like “friend” weight. The whole album feels like it is building to Clark's strongest track, "The Randall Knife." “This is a song I wrote for my father on the occasion of his death,” Clark reminisces in a dry growl before breaking into the epic sweep of the song.

Songs and Stories is not quiet the album of stories that the Johnny Cash/Willie Nelson issue of VH1-Storytellers was. Guy Clark is a somewhat more modest performer than either of them. He focuses more on the music, giving credit to those around him and teasing stories out of them. He is a quiet bandleader, the kind who mentors rather than bosses. Because of this, Songs and Stories becomes another kind of story album. It tells the story of a man who is an inspiration to most of the songwriters who know him, and the love respect that they have for him. And it is a story that is told in a quiet, intimate setting, the kind of setting that reminds the audience of the love they have for Guy Clark.

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