After 19 years, the Clarks get ready for Letterman
Scott Tady, Times Staff - 08/30/2004

Assuming Farrah Fawcett doesn't gab too much, the Clarks will get national TV time Tuesday as guests on "The Late Show with David Letterman."

The Clarks hope to put a gap-toothed smile on Letterman's face by performing "Hell on Wheels," the first single from the local band's latest CD.

Actually, the Clarks had wanted to play their second single, "Shimmy Low," but Letterman's producers insisted on "Hell on Wheels," which has a quicker tempo.

"We don't want to look a Letterman gift horse in the mouth," said Clarks guitarist Rob James. "We've done so many things over the years, but obviously nothing to this level," James, an Industry resident, said. "This is like a dream, really. It's almost surreal."

After Letterman gives his monologue, chats with bandleader Paul Shaffer, does a comedy gag or two, and recites his Top-10 list, the CBS talk show host will interview his primary guest, Fawcett, the "Charlie's Angels" actress who once suffered an emotional meltdown on his program.

If Tuesday's show is running on time, then at about 12:30 a.m., a few hundred thousand American TV viewers will get their first glimpse of the Clarks.

"Will this open doors for us? I don't know," James said. "With the way this business is, where you're here today and gone tomorrow, who really knows? "Obviously, I'd like to think this will stimulate record sales and help get the band's name out there," James said.

And so, 18 years into its existence, a Pittsburgh-based band braces for what's arguably its biggest break.

"Good for them. They've worked so hard over the years, they really deserve it," said Liz Berlin, who as a member of another Pittsburgh rock band, Rusted Root, can attest to the career boost a Letterman appearance can provide. "We played on Letterman in probably 1995," Berlin said. "It was great, and I'm sure it was helpful. Things were moving so fast back then, and it was another big thing pushing us along. "The two things I remember most, as you usually remember the most bizarre things in retrospect, are that it was extremely cold on the set and that David is insanely tall," Berlin said.

Fortunately, Clarks' singer Scott Blasey is rather tall, too, so he won't be dwarfed if Letterman deigns to stand next to the band after their network TV debut.

The Letterman gig resulted from two members of the show's production staff being Clarks fans. It helped that the band's current CD, "Fast Moving Cars," debuted June 15 on Billboard magazine's Top-200 Mainstream Chart. Though landing on the bottom-quarter of that chart, "Fast Moving Cars" reached No. 11 on Billboard's separate New Artist Chart, a list that recognizes up-and-coming bands - the type of bands that attract the youthful demographic favored by late-night TV talk shows.

Of course, the Clarks are hardly an overnight sensation. Blasey, James, bassist Greg Joseph and drummer Dave Minarik formed the band in 1986 when they were students at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Slowly, they have cultivated a local fan base through extensive local gigging.

That fan base started to spread as western Pennsylvania college kids and other young adults from the region moved elsewhere but continued to boast about their hometown rock heroes.

As the band's songwriting swiftly matured, radio stations supplied support, notably Pittsburgh's WDVE-FM (102.5), WXDX-FM (105.9) and WYEP-FM (91.3), which collectively added into steady rotation Clarks' songs like "Cigarette," "Penny on the Floor" and "Better Off Without You."

"Cigarette" ended up in "Boys," a forgotten 1996 movie starring Winona Ryder, who reportedly dug the song. In 2001, the modestly successful Freddie Prinze Jr.-Jessica Biel baseball flick "Summer Catch" featured a prominent slice of the Clarks' song "Let It Go." The Clarks still get royalty checks whenever "Summer Catch" airs on cable TV.

Like Prinze's character in that movie, the Clarks seemed destined for the big leagues in 2000 when their CD "Let It Go" sold 40,000 copies in western Pennsylvania alone. The band toured as an opening act for Grammy-winning, platinum-selling Steely Dan and in support of singer-songwriter John Mayer as he was blossoming into a star.

But the Clarks lost a little momentum with a 2002 follow-up disc "Another Happy Ending," which debuted on the Billboard Top-200 before quickly fading away.

The Clarks persevered, bolstering their industry clout by covering "The River" on a Bruce Springsteen tribute CD.

Meanwhile, the Clarks continued to reign over the Pittsburgh music scene, drawing nearly 10,000 fans to back-to-back shows at Chevrolet Amphitheatre last year. When faced with lagging ticket sales, promoters of the 2003 Rolling Rock Town Fair at Heinz Field quickly added the Clarks to their lineup, placing the band in a time slot between nationally known hard-rock acts Trapt and Saliva.

Midwest and East Coast tours followed for the Clarks, including a road trip this summer that took the lads to New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Memphis, as opening acts for Fastball, the Austin rock band that found fame with its 1998 hit "The Way."

On the eve of Tuesday's Letterman show, the Clarks will perform a club date in Hoboken, N.J. The group will play next Sunday at Conneaut Lake, followed by a Sept. 10 show at the 6,000-seat A.J. Palumbo Center in Pittsburgh.

Whether they return from New York as conquering heroes won't matter, according to Blasey, the lead singer, who is satisfied with his band's current stature.

"This is what I love to do," Blasey said. "We've got the best of both worlds. It's not like I wouldn't want to play in front of big crowds around the world, but I don't particularly care to be recognized. "I'm not into celebrity."

Yet thanks to the coast-to-coast exposure of television, Blasey soon might find himself famous.

Especially if Letterman keeps Farrah in line.

©Beaver County Times/Allegheny Times 2004

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