“I’ve been associated with the blues guitar guy thing, and that is a major part of what I do,” Clark explains to Billboard. “But I was influenced by and love all sorts of music. So for my first major label album, I wanted to just put all that out there and write and record that and experiment with all kinds of sounds rather than play straight-ahead blues or whatever single genre and then bring in the weird stuff later. I think I might as well introduce myself as a weirdo first and get it out of the way and see what happens. It doesn’t sound like people expect, which I think is cool.”
“Blak and Blu,” produced by Clark and Mike Elizondo and recorded earlier this year in California, certainly shoots wide, including the brassy psychedelic soul of “Ain’t Messin’ ‘Round,” the Prince-like R&B flavors of the title track and “You Saved Me,” the rock ‘n’ roll boogie of “Travis County” and the rustic, front porch, lo-fi feel of “Next Door Neighbor Blues.”
Clark says shooting wide is actually “easier” for him than sitting in one musical place.
“The R&B and soul stuff kinda came first,” he recalls. “I was into Curtis Mayfield stuff, Otis Redding, Motown, Stax type of albums and then Prince, Ready For The World, stuff like that. Those melodies, those sounds were in everything I was listening to. I started diving into the blues when I got to be about 12. I don’t really think of it as one thing being easier or harder to approach than the other; it’s just all part of my musical influence, kind of a natural progression.”
Clark says Elizondo was a perfect fit to collaborate on such an eclectic album. “He had really cool ideas without being overbearing, and it was a really laid-back, chill environment to make music,” he recalls. And Clark plans to push the musical envelope…
Read more: Billboard
