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Even though the offers were there, none of them felt right, and Black delayed signing on the dotted line. Instead, he immersed himself in writing songs and was content to have more time to spend with his family.
Clint and Lisa recently moved to Nashville from Los Angeles, a decision they made after Lily Pearl was born, because they felt that Nashville would be a great place to raise their daughter. Without a deadline for producing an album, Black had time to concentrate on the move and what he really wanted to get out of a new recording deal.
The home is gorgeous, done in colonial style on the outside and down-home friendly on the inside. While it is tastefully furnished with great furniture and wonderful art, it is not pretentious. It’s a very comfortable place for Clint, Lisa, and 3-year-old daughter Lily Pearl, plus it houses a state-of-the-art recording studio so that even when he’s working, Black is never far from his two favorite ladies. He’s even gone so far as to install special buttons on the recording console so Lily will have something to play with that make lights flash and blink when she comes in the studio while he’s there.
Recording Artist
Black’s entrance into Country music came in the late 1980s, when the genre was looking for something new and fresh. Fans found it in songs that sprang from the pen of this young native Texan—songs that offered a slice of life from the perspective of this young man who was so driven to succeed that he quit high school to play in his brother’s band. His songs had a lot of Country, a hint of the Blues, and were filled with the heart and soul of a man who loved what he was doing. He hit the ground running with his first singles, “A Better Man” and “Killin’ Time,” and never looked back during the 15 years he was with RCA.
“I’ve always made the record I wanted to make, even though there were periods where RCA was more involved [with the recording process],” Black says. “I wrote the songs and just made the kind of record I wanted to make. My relationship at RCA was one of artistic freedom. But after my second ‘Greatest Hits’ CD came out, it just felt like it was time to move on.”
His new deal allows him even more freedom, since Black is a partner in his new label, Equity Records. The label is artist friendly, in that it lets them retain ownership of their masters—something virtually unheard of in the music business today. The label also pays 100 percent of what Black makes on album sales, not the usual three-quarter rate paid by most labels when a performer is also a songwriter. (Major labels use the one-quarter royalties they hold back for what they say is “promotion” of the record for the songwriters.)
The new album, Spend My Time, has just been released, and initial reviews indicate that it will put Black right back in the Country spotlight.
“Clint has built a successful career on writing and recording great songs that really strike a chord with his audience,” acknowledges Deborah Evans Price, Country reporter for Billboard magazine. “Clint has delivered a terrific new album with Spend My Time and is moving into an exciting new chapter in his career. Between the new record and the joys of fatherhood, he sure has a lot to smile about these days!”
Black is excited about being a label executive as well as a recording artist, and he’s quick to point out that the head offices for the new label are in Nashville, not New York City, Tokyo, or Berlin. While he may not participate in the day-to-day operations, he will keep up with what the label is doing, and he doesn’t discount the idea that he might produce some of the other artists who might be signed by the label.
Family Man
Overall, though, Black is doing what he’s done throughout his entire career—he’s trying to keep things in perspective.
“It’s all great,” he admits, “but being a dad is the best part of it. I think getting on track with Equity is just the icing on the cake.”
And while “Killing time” is a great idea for a song, sometimes taking time off can kill a career. Black says he’s not worried.
“Not really. I just wanted to be able to enjoy the luxury I had of being a mostly at-home dad, having that bonding time with my daughter. That’s really what my priority was,” Black says.
“I did work a little, went overseas after 9/11 and played for the troops and went out and played maybe 25 dates a year to take care of the band. I also produced (Nashville Star winner) Buddy Jewel’s record. I stayed busy, but it was mostly at-home stuff.
“I think that as an artist, one needs to go on their instincts and if you are worried about the business side of it, you are in the wrong job. One of the luxuries that I get for being someone who travels as much as I do and has the financial security that comes with it, is that I can take these periods at home like a lot of dads can’t. I don’t take that for granted.”
SongWriter
Being off for five years allowed Black to have time to write some great songs. The downside of that is when it came time to record, he had to choose which songs were the right ones to record.
“I had about 35 songs I would like to have put on this album,” Black says. “I narrowed it down to 20, and from there I just had to start thinking about song keys, tempos, and themes. It’s not easy to pick some songs and leave others out. Every song I write, I can’t wait for people to hear.”
One song on the new CD, “She’s Leavin’,” took 22 years to record. “It was always in the running when I would go in the studio to do a new album, but it’s always been one of those songs that got eliminated,” Black says. “I’ve always loved it and there’s never been a reason that it wasn’t recorded other than it just didn’t fit in with the other songs we were recording at the time. The theme—she’s leaving in the morning—I always thought people would love it. It’s a good singer’s song; it’s going to be the new vocal challenge in my concerts because it’s the most challenging vocal arrangement that I have on this album.”
Black’s approach to songwriting is very simple, yet it has given fans a variety of songs from the prolific writer, who says he’s now reached his goal of recording more than 100 of his own songs.
“I’ve always got a notebook full of ideas, some fleshed out a little more than others, sometimes just a line,” Black says. “I look at each idea to see if it is profound enough to inspire the other ideas that have to come around it. Is it an essential idea or is it just a starting point? Can it inspire an entire song or support something stronger?”
One example of a song going through various stages of writing is “What Ever Happened,” a song on the new album penned with frequent cowriter Hayden Nicholas.
“This song took several different shapes on the way to its final musical style,” Black says. “Hayden and I used to get a cabin in the Colorado Mountains, hide out, and write. For this song we just put ourselves back into that cabin as a heartbroken shut-in who just isn’t going back out in the storm. The snow and mountains are metaphors for trying at love again. It was a lab experiment in many ways, and usually I don’t have time to do that. I thought it was a nice complement to the album, but wasn’t really expecting anyone else to go for it. But it’s kind of become a favorite in my camp.”
Standard-Bearer
Black acknowledges that there was pressure on him while doing this project, not only because he hadn’t had any new music out in a while, but also because he is the flagship artist for the new label.
“I really want it to be successful on more than one level,” he admits. “Not only did I have to make the best record that I could make and be successful on my own, just for my own personal satisfaction, but the success of the company is riding on it as well to a degree. We know we have a little bit of a battle. You can’t establish a label without a lot of hard work and without a lot of talent. Management has already lined up some great talent to follow in my footsteps.”
Mike
Kraski, who heads Equity Records, says the fact that Black has not had new material in five years is irrelevant.
“Great is great whether you’re away six months, five years, or 10 years,” he says. “Clint Black is a great artist by any standard of evaluating an artist. In this town [Nashville] we throw that word [artist] around a lot to describe people who are not true artists. Clint is the standard-bearer of what an artist is about… He’s a songwriter, stellar musician, one of the best live performers in any genre of music, a tremendous singer, and distinctive stylist. He’s a producer, a video director… what more can you say about the guy? He is an artist’s artist.
“I always like to compare contributions to Country music as thread interwoven into the tapestry that makes the music. Every songwriter who writes a song has contributed a thread. Well, multiply those threads by the contributions Clint makes on one song, and you have to say he’s one of most influential forces in Country music in the past 15 years.
“The Equity creative model is all about signing artists who have a single-minded vision of who they are, creatively, and what they want to say, and when that’s your criteria there is no better standard-bearer than Clint Black.”
Black describes as humbling the experience of handing over his new CD to Equity when it was completed.
“It’s a very humbling experience to hand somebody your CD and say ‘this is as best I can do at this point in time.’ No matter how much somebody loves your music, loves what you are doing, you are still saying it’s the best I can do and hoping everybody applauds it. If they don’t, then you are stuck with the idea that the best that I can do didn’t amuse anyone, didn’t entertain anyone.
“But with that said, I’m very, very proud [of the new album] and I know it’s the strongest album I’ve ever made. As I grow and learn, I find new ways to build in the opportunity for creativity to flourish. As far as the grouping of songs on an album, I think it’s probably the most diverse album that I’ve made. I can still listen to the album and enjoy it without hearing things that I would have done differently or changed a little, and that’s hard to accomplish. I listen to the record and nothing makes me tense up. All I can do is make music I love and hope that other people love it too.”
Vernell Hackett is a freelance journalist based in Nashville, Tenn., who writes about music, art, the West and Southwest, interesting people, and travel. The native Texan has written for American Songwriter, Billboard Magazine, and Country Weekly.
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