{Takin A Walk Crossover} Clint Black Reflects on His Journey: Authenticity and Connection in Nashville's Music Legacy

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Taking a Walk buzz night. Here Sarah Harrelson is letting me crash her feed right now. This is my conversation with Clint Black from Taking a Walk, and given how central he is to Nashville's story, it felt right to share it with you here too. We talk career, songwriting and the stories behind the music that made him a country icon. If you enjoy it, come find the rest of Taking a Walk over six hundred episodes, including selections archived in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame wherever you get your podcasts, and keep listening to Sarah Harrelson here on Taking a Walk Nashville. She's got more great Nashville conversations coming.

00:00:45
Speaker 2: Taking a Walk.

00:00:46
Speaker 1: Clint Black, Welcome to the Taking a Walk podcast, Sir.

00:00:50
Speaker 3: Good to be here, and I can do it sitting down even better.

00:00:55
Speaker 1: That's right. So, Clint, you came up playing the Texas clip circuit before anybody knew your name. What did those years teach you about performing and connecting with your audience?

00:01:09
Speaker 3: Oh? Lots of things. Get the money up front, get that fifty dollars in advance, you know. I think one of the things that came out of it was appreciating anyone who shows up. There were times no one showed up and I was playing to the bartender who was cleaning glasses and trying to ignore me. Probably how to be comfortable on stage. You know, it's not a natural thing for us to get up there and you know, hey, here I go with my thing. So just being comfortable on stage, being ready for anything, whether it's someone coming up on stage and trying to take my harmonica, or a fight breaking out and the sheriff's coming in and dragging someone off of the dance floor. Being being ready for just about anything, and knowing when to stop playing and when to keep going. But the most important thing would be thank you for showing up, being grateful for.

00:02:22
Speaker 1: That, congratulations on killing time. I want to ask you what was that process like for you? It was going deep, certainly into your life and your career and your great legacy. But what was the process like for.

00:02:38
Speaker 3: You writing the book? Yes, it was a lot of talking with Craig Shelburne and him transcribing that for me. He did a lot of research and put that on a document for me, and then you know, help me with the structure, you know, organizing chapters. From there, it was really me taking what I had said or what we were writing about, and putting it in my own words and telling the story the way I would tell it. Eventually I would have to decide what to leave in and what to leave out. Took his input on that, and my editor at HarperCollins, and the exploration of those memories for me was cathartic, fun funny, laughing at my life at times and at times very emotional, reliving this thing that is no more, feeling the loss of that past, and then eventually getting to the point of fatigue and headaches from just ten twelve hours a day sitting at the computer trying to hit my dead line and not being able to walk away from it, becoming so immersed in it that even when I decided to take a break and get away from it, it was like a magnet and it would pull me back, and I'd be right back at the computer working on it and getting headaches and eventually calling it finished, and then having my editor call it not.

00:04:31
Speaker 1: Have a way of doing that.

00:04:32
Speaker 3: Huh Yeah. And I loved it. Though I knew before we even started this how lucky I was going to be to have an editor helping me make it better. So I was all in on that, but I didn't realize how many times I would have to reread, rewrite, look for errors and typos, and just go over and over and over and over the book again and again, to the point where it took a lot of focus just to read it carefully and not skim along on the surface of what I had written, but to really stay focused on it. And when I was at the end of it and doing that, that's when I was most impacted by my own life and things like losing my dad and things that just just broke me and made me sob all over again. Reliving a life well lived is an emotional ride.

00:05:44
Speaker 1: Well you have always had as a hallmark to your life and career, authenticity and truth and a genuine resilience, and that comes shining through in the book so brilliantly on so many levels, even at very difficult dark periods. I'm gonna kick out a few elements here. First of all, so that moment when that that writer from it was Variety, wasn't it.

00:06:18
Speaker 4: Who Yeah, one of those Hollywood reporter at Variety wrote the story about about you and Lisa living a part and not being together and you reached out to him, let's just say more than once to really confront that story.

00:06:37
Speaker 1: I don't want to give the whole background of it away, but do you still call that guy every year?

00:06:43
Speaker 3: He's passed away a good while back, but I called him every year for a while until I realized nothing would come of it. I wanted him to confront the dishonesty that he was presented with and consider the source. And the other part was, you know, see how untrue it is. You know, we're still together now nearly thirty five years. I had already experienced, you know, people saying things about me that were cruel or untrue, unkind and all that didn't provoke a reaction or a response from me. But when you start talking about my marriage, then it's time to become proactive.

00:07:33
Speaker 1: But I think in the long run, too, you even though you had continue to reach out to him to kind of say, look, we're still together, you ultimately, if I have it correctly, respected the fact that he did not give up his source as well.

00:07:51
Speaker 3: Well, yes I did. I H I think it's a it's a mixed bag because he didn't give up his source, he also didn't acknowledge that they lied to him, that they were purposely trying to spread false information about my marriage, and so the respect was not widespread, let's say.

00:08:18
Speaker 1: And then the difficult moment where you had that terrible accident is just such a jocking piece to read in that detail there. That must have been really hard for you to go deep into that because that one was not only your physical and mental well being, but that was also about your career too, right.

00:08:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was harder to go through it than it was to revisit it because I've been through through so many surgeries since then that I'm marvel at it. You know, I'm like the six thousand dollars man. Now, you know so many surgeries, and I was. I was one of what I'm told is the rare bird who wanted to know exactly what was being done in detail. I actually had pestered my surgeon for video and he finally sent me a video of one of the surgeries on my neck, and I watched it like like this for the first five minutes and then settled in and got used to the gore of it. And but I wanted to know every detail and understand what was happening. Symptom wise and what the corrections were going to be. And so to me, it was just this marvel of modern technology and gratitude for having this happen at this time and human history when they did have some pretty good remedies for it. So to me, it's a it's an a incredibly fascinating and marvelous story to tell. So what I really had the trouble with was was getting the details right. And I talked to my surgeon, doctor Bray, and got more details so I could be accurate. But what you see in the book is about a third of it all, and so when anyone likes to talk about that stuff, I love to tell it.

00:10:27
Speaker 1: The other element that really struck me in the book was your very particular description of what an artist faces with their record label and how difficult and challenging that is to stand up for what you believe and to kind of keep strong throughout it. I can't help thinking about artists of today who might read this and gain some insight, because it hasn't gotten any easier for artists. It's only gotten more difficult, don't you think, Well.

00:11:05
Speaker 3: It's gotten easier for artists like myself who really want to write their own songs. That's more in favor now than ever before. You know, for me, I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. I was willing to throw it all away in order to be as full an artist as I could be. If everything went away because I insisted on being an artist and writing my own songs, then so be it. There wasn't meant to be. And I don't think that's for everyone. I think it has to be according to each his own convictions and what's most important. I think financial security can easily be more important to people, especially who have the families to support than being the creator of your own work. Confronting your biggest advocate is not I don't I would not push that idea on anyone, but I do like the idea of young artists being able to see it cost me, and so it should be considered, you know, and you know, get some cancel on it, because you know you're you're making a choice that could that could hurt you in the long run. Ultimately, I walked away from the major label system entirely because I wasn't willing to give up my day job writing songs just to be able to sing on my nighttime job. It's not for everyone. It's not for the feint of heart. And I think the only reason I was so adamant about it is because the artist I respected most I wrote their own songs. And I loved all the songwriters, all the Harlan Howard stuff and Dean Dillon and you know, Don Schlitz, you know, you name all of the writers who wrote and weren't known.

00:13:14
Speaker 1: To most of us unsung heroes.

00:13:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, I knew who they were, and I appreciated them, of course, but I gravitated to the singer songwriter. That's who I wanted to be. I didn't want to be a star, although I knew stardom was a necessity, but I wanted to be like them. And if I can't be like my heroes, then I'm not just going to do it for the money. And if I had it to do all over again, knowing what I know now, I might have taken a different tact, a different approach to resolving the issue. But I drew a hard line and that was that. And I do credit the record company in the book for at least releasing the albums I gave them. I may be one of the few artists who just made albums and turned them in. There were a lot of controls on everyone else's albums, and there was one instance where someone at the record company called the producer the co producer and once I think even the engineer to have something changed. I mean I was there for every minute of the playback and overdubs and recording and everything. And to think that someone wanted to step in and tell an engineer to change something without me there was abhorrent. And so anyway I turned in the albums, they released him. In almost every instance, they promoted him, and so I have to give them that. Ultimately, bad things were said about me because of my stance. You know, my reputation was sullied a bit because I was considered the problem child. But the problem was the record company didn't get to make my records. So I thought, not a bad problem to be, but it was at a cost.

00:15:20
Speaker 2: We'll be right back with more of the Taken a Walk Podcast. Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.

00:15:31
Speaker 1: The Class of eighty nine. You, Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, that moment genuinely changed country music. Did it feel historic to you when it was happening, or did you only understand the magnitude of that later.

00:15:48
Speaker 3: Now, as it was happening, and it took a couple of years for it to really spin up, and I knew what was happening. I saw Nashville go from six major record companies to twenty six, So, you know, crediting myself for that, I didn't think that way. I just thought there were so many of us who were influenced by all the country greats as well as our pop greats. But we were making country music. But a lot of us, our musical heroes included the Eagles and Jackson Brown and James Taylor and Buffett and Seals and Croft and you know, Loggins and Messina and Seeger and skinnerd and you know, I call a lot of that rock. But you know, it was considered the more popular front of music until Sandscan came out and showed the world just how popular country music really was. So I saw it happening, and I attributed it to all of the talent who had been fighting to get in suddenly had the record companies out of of you know, New York and LA really funding these labels in Nashville because it wasn't you know, twenty six brand new record companies. It was affiliates and subsidiaries of the six major record companies, but they were funded to go out there and create more companies and sign more artists ten fifteen to twenty artists. So there was such an influx of talent who were getting a chance that that was the historic movement. I saw how I saw it, and the reason for it was just so much, so much great talent who were given the opportunity.

00:17:46
Speaker 1: Let's play a little game called fast five here. First concert you ever attended.

00:17:53
Speaker 3: That would be Merle Haggard.

00:17:57
Speaker 1: First record.

00:17:59
Speaker 3: That was as a child. When I grew up and started going to concerts. I'd been listening to rock and roll and my brothers had brought it home when I was really young. So the first concert I went to that I bought a ticket to was Ted Nugent and the Aboy Dukes. So he still had the and Boyd Dukes there attached to him. And the opening act was head East.

00:18:25
Speaker 1: Wow, journey to the Center of your Mind and never been any reason. I'm sure we're part of that.

00:18:30
Speaker 3: Phil, Yeah, big hit and it was a great show.

00:18:34
Speaker 1: Wow, that's great. First record you ever bought with your own money?

00:18:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, I tell the story in the book. I used to find money on the ground and I found a twenty dollars bill and my brother Brian said, let's go to the record store. And so he took me to the record store and helped me pick out an album he really wanted, and it was Uriah Heap Look at Yourself. I liked it because it had a quasi mirror on the cover, so look at yourself, and you know, you could see yourself in the reflection, and I thought that as an eight year old, I thought that was cool.

00:19:18
Speaker 1: First song you ever wrote, and what was it about?

00:19:22
Speaker 3: First song was called time Machine, and it was about just going into the future, going into the past and it being you know, mind blowing and all of this, nothing good, nothing to keep. It ended up in the trash bin, so I thought. And then I found it in an old notebook a few years ago. It's nothing I would ever share with anyone, but at the time I sang it in the talent show at my high school, Katie High School, and I got a great reaction. I was h harmonica and guitar and at the same time, so pretty novel to a bunch of kids, and got a great reaction. And took second place, and a bunch of them were throwing you know, nickels and dimes at me, you know, like you know, hey, here's some money. We like this, and I'm like, ouch, ouch, thanks ouch.

00:20:28
Speaker 1: First car and what was always playing in it?

00:20:32
Speaker 3: First car didn't have a radio. It was a sixty four Plymouth Ford Fury three. It was like the B fifty two song, you know, big as a whale, and it lasted two weeks. It broke down in front of a U Totem convenience store, and by the time my brother Mark and I got back there to get it running, the owner had had it towed. Wouldn't tell me, couldn't tell me who the towing company was so that I could find the salvage yard. I looked and looked and looked at all through all the salvage yards for it. Never found it. It cost me three hundred dollars, by the way, so it was a big loss to me as a teenager, but I would drive again.

00:21:22
Speaker 1: First moment you thought I can actually do this for a living.

00:21:27
Speaker 4: I was.

00:21:29
Speaker 3: Seventeen, I think, and I was trying to make a decision for my career path and wanted to be an astronaut and thought the way into that is through the Air Force, and there's no way the air Force would have taken me. And I kind of knew that. So I decided music was it, and whatever kind of a living I made at it would be good enough.

00:21:56
Speaker 1: Clint Black The Hard Way on Purpose opens at the Great Country Music Hall of Fame. What is it like walking through an exhibition about your own life?

00:22:09
Speaker 3: Well, it's I had gone through my storage lockers and pulled a bunch of stuff out for the for the hall to look through and pick what would they could tell the story with. So I had seen some of it, but I hadn't seen it on display, you know, standing in the Hall of Fame and museum. So I think what was most striking to me was seeing it with my wife and daughter, and knowing that my fans could see it, my friends who were all there could see it and follow the story. It wasn't all that new to me because I had just written the book and I'd seen a bunch of the artifacts. For me, it was more about marveling at the display of it and seeing how they approached laying it all out, because that was not told to me. I didn't have a sense of what the display would be like, and it was fun to see it with Lily especially. She hadn't seen so much of my career as Lisa had, so it was a thrill. It was especially moving to hear the introduction introductory speech with Kyle Young introducing me the CEO of the Hall of Fame, and hearing him talk about my career and who I was as an artist and a writer. That was I think the most moving part of the evening for me.

00:23:51
Speaker 1: I can't wait to see it. I love the Country Music Hall of Fame. They do such an amazing job. You've been described as someone who refused to follow trends, who insisted on doing it the hard way on purpose. That's sort of how the exhibit kind of lays it out. Was there ever a moment where that pressure to inform sort of got to you?

00:24:16
Speaker 5: No.

00:24:16
Speaker 3: I think the frustration that when I learned what it was about, the disappointment. It was real letdown to me to know that it wasn't about the songs, it was about the politics that the record company played in For me, it was a it was a very clear choice. I felt I didn't have a choice. This is who I am and if you don't want me, then let me go. And if you're not going to let me go, then you know, here's my next piece of work. I was a piece of work and now I I just rolled with it. I took the blows and counted my blessings and not my curses.

00:25:09
Speaker 1: You must be so excited about the back on the Blacktop tour, getting out there with your fans. What does live performance still give you to this day.

00:25:21
Speaker 3: Well, it's you know, I always say, you know, every night is a world series game. To me, I want to be at my best. I'm striving for excellence and what it gives me is a chance to entertain people. It's all I've ever wanted to do. But doing it all my times, I'm not running around swinging from ropes and all that. There's no iro explosions or anything. It's really about the music and a little bit about the comedy. You know, depending on how intimate the venue is, we we get lots of laugh in the show. I did all the stage video screen content myself, So that's another chance to present something that I think compliments the music and the show doesn't detract from it. It's a chance to put myself to the test. You know, I still practice just about every day. I'm pushing myself to get better and better on my instrument, more knowledgeable about music and the technology and the way we present and how it sounds, and every show is a chance to do it to the highest level of excellence we can achieve.

00:26:42
Speaker 1: So Clint, tell me about the Lifetime movie and what that means to you and how folks can look forward to it.

00:26:50
Speaker 3: You know, Lifetime it had approached me a couple of times for the song when I said I do my duet with my wife Lisa, and I didn't pay close enough attention or dig in deep. It didn't appeal to me when I first heard about their what I heard about their idea at first, and then I took a meeting and learned more, and I'm so glad I did, because it wasn't what I thought. It wasn't what I thought it was. It was so much more. And it was a fantastic opportunity for me and Lisa to help shape a love story that pulled from our values and our principles and our idea of relationships. And so we got to be involved as executive producers. You know, sometimes that can be a privilege, that is, it doesn't require as much involvement, but in this case, we got to be really involved, which made it much more rewarding as a couple and also just creatively to have that palette to work on. I got to come up with the idea of how Lisa and I would appear in the movie. Although there's a lot of collaboration there, I loved. I loved being able to think about that and come up with ideas and present them and have people who can do this without us helping to make it even better. So to have that with a song as special to us as when I said I do, and knowing that we were able to shape what the love story is just made it the best experience, top notch people, great Network, Lifetime. It comes on May twenty third. We're excited for everyone to see it, and you know it's a pretty big audience that sees these Lifetime movies, so we're hoping for some great feedback.

00:29:08
Speaker 5: Well. We always like to close the Taking a Walk podcast with this question, if you could take a walk with anybody living or dead, who would it be and what would you want to talk about?

00:29:20
Speaker 3: Clint Black, I would take a walk with someone both living and dead, and that would be Jesus Christ. I'm trying my best to walk with him, at least on the path that he wants for me, and I feel the greatest joy I have is when I feel close to Him, close to God. I listen for his voice, you know, whenever I really need help. Every night when I pray, I try to get closer. And said something in the book about always feeling like you know, it would be arrogant to think the hand of God is president in my life, but I don't think I would have survived and been the man I am without his hand in my life. It makes me more and more emotional to say that, because I'm trying harder and harder to get there, and I never feel close enough. So I thought about that knowing the question was coming, and he is always the first name I think of.

00:30:33
Speaker 1: Boy, there are so many moments I pinch myself with gratitude when I'm doing this podcast, and this is one of those moments. Clint Black, it's really an honor to have you on the back on the Blacktop tour the new book Killing Time. It's so fantastic to have you on taking a walk. I wish you all the best and good health.

00:30:55
Speaker 3: It's my owner. Thank you, Thanks buzz.

00:30:59
Speaker 1: That's my conversation with Clint Black. Thanks to Sarah Harrelson for letting me share it here on taking a Walk Nashville. She'll be back with a new episode coming up soon, and I'll see you back on taking a Walk,