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The Clarks look toward new album
By John Benson
There’s good news coming out of The Clarks’ camp these days.
Though the Pittsburgh-based act isn’t officially recording an album, which whenever released will mark the follow-up to the group’s 2010 EP “Songs in G,” The Clarks bassist, Greg Joseph, says there are rumblings about moving in that direction.
“We’re starting to work on some new material, writing some new songs,” Joseph said. “We’re in the planning stages and hopefully getting a project started within the next year. We’re really looking forward to that. That’s significant. We’re going to kind of get our paints out together and say, ‘Let’s just start painting and see what it turns into.’”
When a band celebrates 25 years together, which The Clarks did in 2011, the notion of record-tour, record-tour is no longer de rigueur. In fact, there are some bands that feel releasing an album in today’s crippled record-industry market is just bad business sense.
In case it’s not too obvious, that’s putting the bottom line ahead of creative expression. Sure, The Clarks want to make prudent financial decisions, but overall, this band is about something else.
“The last CD usually holds us over for a couple of years to fully promote it and have fun with it,” Joseph said. “And then after the initial period of that progression, you sort of realize that the process has come to an end, and those songs become old. They become just a mainstay in the set, and you need something to keep you excited and keep you going.
“We all looked at each other and said, ‘The only way you keep this thing fresh from show to show is to get some new material out there and get a new project.’ That’s what makes the fans excited, and that’s certainly what makes the band more excited than anything else.”
What’s currently making the band members excited is the group’s revolving set list featuring older nuggets from The Clarks’ catalog. This not only surprises audiences but also keeps the band members on their toes playing material that has to be dusted off and sometimes relearned.
The walk-down-memory-lane experience has left the group either wowed by their keen songwriting or, well, red-faced regarding simplistic tunes that the group wrote more than two decades ago.
“There are some moments where you think, ‘Oh my God, this writing is certainly not as mature as what I do now,’” Joseph said. “There’s an endearing quality to that, but on the other hand, I look at some of the older stuff and the energy with which we approached some of the older songs, it’s a lot of fun to go back.”
Youngstown fans can see the band in action once again Saturday at The Cellar. Considering The Clarks have been around for more than a quarter of a century, Joseph said the outfit has become familiar with a certain scenario regarding fans who followed the group early on but have since lost touch.
With those folks in mind, Joseph offers hints as to what it’s like seeing The Clarks in 2012.
“With the addition of a keyboard player who also plays electric guitar and another musician who plays 12-string electric and pedal steel, there are six of us on stage,” Joseph said. “So it’s a bigger sound. It really breathes new life into the band with different instrumentation.”