Texas singer-songwriter Guy Clark has been a patriarchal figure to many in the Nashville songwriting community for decades. Artists like Rodney Crowell and Steve Earle studied under the watchful eye of Clark during their early years. Like friend Townes Van Zandt before him, Clark is a master storyteller, a dream weaver blessed with the ability to match ear-catching melodies with poetic lyrics that aim for the deepest part of the listener's soul. Somedays the Song Writes You, Clark's eleventh studio album, is a well-crafted collection of compositions that rank among some of his best. Clark's tobacco-and-whiskey-stained voice has never sounded better than it does on such tracks as "The Guitar," a fiery number about a wayward musician and the pawnshop guitar that causes an unexpected awakening in him, and "Hollywood," a slow-grooving cut that takes a sideways look at the world-famous district of Los Angeles, CA. Clark, as he has on previous albums, covers a Townes Van Zandt tune on Somedays the Song Writes You.
Guy Clark's first album in four years is a wonderfully rough, tough, tender, wise, and gracefully resigned testament to a life lived, a craft followed, and regrets considered, weighed, and given due. Now 71 years old, Clark has been a world-class songwriter for decades, and as My Favorite Picture of You shows, he still is. He's as sturdy, honest, and truthful a songwriter as you're ever going to get. Clark's voice has grown rougher and more wearied, but it perfectly fits the songs here (Clark wrote or co-wrote everything on this album except for his fine cover of Lyle Lovett's "Waltzing Fool"), songs – some sad, some not so – that look back and remember, and yet that voice still has some hope left in it for a better future, or at least some kind of a future, even if it isn't better.