The Clarks Online

The Clarks' Road Trip to Longevity

By Steve Knopper
Steve Knopper is a freelance writer.

October 4, 2002

Fifteen years is forever in rock and roll. It's enough time for a good band to form, struggle in smoky nightclubs, break through with a smash album, fall apart and disappear. Or, in the case of the Clarks, an unheralded quartet from Pittsburgh, it's enough time to slowly, meticulously build an audience.

Since the Clarks formed in 1987, they've watched the Gin Blossoms, Matchbox Twenty, Dada, Toad the Wet Sprocket and Barenaked Ladies make various trips in and out of stardom. Or at least on and off rock-radio playlists. But the Clarks, who specialize in the same brand of smartly written guitar rock, just keep growing.

"It is frustrating when you see bands selling a lot of records and you think you're as good or better than them. That's hard - I won't lie to you. You want to be there, too," singer Scott Blasey says, by phone from his Pittsburgh home. "On the other side of the coin, we've seen so many bands come and go that I feel fortunate to still be able to do it and make a living. The Gin Blossoms - what are those guys doing now? But there are definitely times I turn on VH1 or MTV and say, 'What's the problem here?'"

Actually, the Clarks open for the Gin Blossoms Wednesday at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill, but you see Blasey's point. The band's fifth release, "Another Happy Ending," deserves a hit single. It's a tight little heartbreak record, with cheery guitars subverting bitter lyrical twists. "On Saturday" is about a woman moving out while her lover is "losing friends, losing face, losing weight"; "This Old House Is Burning Down Tonight" is from theperspective of a boyfriend from hell who doesn't bother rescuing the cat.

"That was inspired by Tom Waits. In this song he does called 'Franks Wild Years,' the guy burns his house down with the wife in it," Blasey says. "I only killed the cat. I didn't kill the wife, too.

"I had to challenge myself to write that kind of thing. That was one of the ones I crafted. I try not to overthink things too much," he adds. "I usually go with what comes out right away - instead of going back a month later and say, 'That's kind of corny.' I trust my gut instinct. Most of the time it works."

"Another Happy Ending," the Clarks' second CD for the small label Razor & Tie, came out in early summer, designed as a conscious attempt to expand the band's regional following. (Their album-release shows at a Pittsburgh amphitheater sold 12,500 tickets for two performances.) Rather than writing, rewriting and polishing before recording, the Clarks - Blasey, guitarist Robert James, bassist and co-songwriter Greg Joseph and drummer David Minarik Jr. - rushed into a Nashville studio and wrote songs on the spot.

"We had a meeting with the record company and everybody said, 'Let's do it sooner rather than later. Let's capitalize on the album before ['Let It Go'],'" Blasey recalls. "We said, 'Great, let's do it.' And they said, 'OK, how many songs do you have?' And we were like, 'Uh, one.'