REVIEW: Joy Clark “Tell It to the Wind”

Oct 2, 2024

Joy Clark – Tell It to the Wind

Honestly, I was shocked to see that Joy Clark’s debut album was just now (as of this Friday) coming out. I’ve watched her on the Americana scene for years now, featured in Allision Russell’s band, The Rainbow Coalition, as well as playing with Brandi Carlile. But, while the New Orleans-based singer-songwriter-guitar ace has had a number of singles and an EP released over the past half-decade, we’re finally getting a much-deserved, proper full-length from Clark. Tell It to the Wind, as expected, showcases her songwriting and guitar playing, but it’s her remarkably smooth voice that makes the record.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stacy ChandlerPosted On August 9, 2024

https://www.nodepression.com/bonus-tracks-a-gold-medal-idea-for-arts-in-the-olympics/

I always learn something new when I watch the Olympics. For five minutes, perhaps, I become a little bit of an expert on shot put, and suddenly I know the names of swimmers from countries I’ve never visited. But I learned something new about the Olympics themselves from Pharrell Williams recently: The Games used to have an arts component, with medals awarded in literature, architecture, painting, sculpture, and — yes! — music. These competitions were first introduced in 1912, but were discontinued by the International Olympic Committee by the 1948 Games. Williams, a musician (you surely have heard his song “Happy”), producer, and now fashion designer, is proposing that the arts competitions return for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Read more in this coverage from The Associated Press.

 

Life happens, even to rock stars. The elders among our beloved rock bands almost invariably are touring nowadays without at least one of their original members due to health problems, death, retirement from the road, or being super mad at each other. Some bands with big names, however, are performing with not a single original member. Rolling Stone has made a list of such “zombie bands,” explaining what happened, how credible the musicians currently touring under the band name are, and the potential for the real band getting back together in some way. Long story short, your vintage concert T-shirts are probably the closest you’ll ever get again to the real Foreigner, Lynynd Skynyrd, or Blood, Sweat & Tears.

 

If you’re the type of person who gets upset just reading the name “Taylor Swift,” avert your eyes and take a deep breath (probably several). Fan of her music or not, there should be unity in condemning the terror attacks said to be planned for the singer’s Vienna concerts this week, and relief in hearing that the plot was thwarted before it could be carried out. Fans who’d planned to attend the shows were understandably disappointed that the concerts were canceled, but, in true Swiftie form, they were … fearless. According to this story in Variety, they gathered in the streets of Vienna to be together and sing their favorite songs, with some writing relevant lyrics in chalk on the pavement (“Fuck the patriarchy (and terrorists),” “This is why we can’t have nice things”). Churches beckoned people inside to simply to gather and “sing your sadness away.” Sure, a canceled concert isn’t a tragedy. But that’s not the point. The point is music’s power to bring people together, and to drive out sadness and fear in favor of joy and strength. Taylor Swift fans get it, and a lot of roots music fans do, too. Hopefully any would-be terrorists likewise receive the message that whatever it is they’re trying to destroy is well beyond their reach.

 

WHAT WE’RE LISTENING TO

Here’s a sampling of the songs, albums, bands, and sounds No Depression staffers have been into this week:

 

Etran de L’Aïr – “Imouha,” from their new album, 100% Sahara Guitar, coming in September
Smokey Brights – “Save Us Sarah”
The Hanseroth Twins – Vera
Meshell Ndegeocello – “Trouble”
Alexa Rose – “Human”
Peter, Paul and Mary – “500 Miles”
Joy Clark – “Lesson,” from her new album, Tell It to the Wind, coming in October

 

Joy Clark, 39

Singer-songwriter

Joy Clark has had many milestone moments the last few years, like touring with Americana artist Allison Russell, signing to Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records and paying tribute to Tracy Chapman at the International Folk Awards. And the singer-songwriter is preparing to release her first full-length album, “Tell It To the Wind,” in October.

It’s been a real time of personal growth, she says.

This “period of transition is sort of coming to peace with the disparate parts of myself,” Clark says, “so my Christian upbringing, my queerness, and coming to peace with those things, bringing it together and presenting Joy Clark’s artistry.”

Born in Harvey and the daughter of a minister, Clark grew up with music at church. She learned to play guitar at an early age, finding influences in artists like Tracy Chapman and Lalah Hathaway, and started writing and performing at open mics while at the University of New Orleans. Over the years, she’s performed with Soulkestra, Cyril Neville, pianist Lilli Lewis and many others. She’s also led her own band local venues, on tour and at French Quarter Fest and Jazz Fest.

Clark, a queer Black woman, is among a growing number of Black musicians re-claiming the Americana genre, like Lewis, Russell, Lizzie No and Joy Oladokun.

“When I really got onto the scene, there were a lot of Black artists, women, who really took me in, because I was coming into my queerness, and there was a community there that allowed me to see what was possible,” Clark says. “I want to continue to be that for somebody that’s coming behind me, or somebody who isn’t out yet and is feeling like, ‘She’s integrating all these parts of her life, and the world has opened up.’” — Jake Clapp

With a show at Washington DC’s Kennedy Center and a new record deal, she’s on a roll

 

On a January night along Mexico’s Caribbean coast, New Orleans singer-songwriter Joy Clark glimpsed her potential future.

During Brandi Carlile’s Girls Just Wanna Weekend festival at the Hard Rock Hotel Riviera Maya, Clark performed as a member of Americana star Allison Russell’s band. As they unspooled a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” Russell beckoned for Clark to take a turn on lead vocals.

She wasn’t prepared for the sensation of several thousand voices singing along with hers.

“That hasn’t happened yet for me,” Clark recalled recently. “When you have that many people singing along. … I couldn’t act like I didn’t feel it. I had to just smile and step back like, ‘This is a huge moment.’

“I felt like it wouldn’t be my last. I felt like this is how it’s gonna be. I can visualize it now.”

To succeed in the music industry requires an elusive combination of talent, timing, tenacity, a good team and luck. It also helps to be both relatable and distinctive. Clark checks those boxes.

Her music, like that of Tracy Chapman, draws on folk, blues and Americana, but is uniquely hers. Her voice, like her tidy guitar solos, captures your attention without demanding it, then invites you in.

Onstage, her smile is contagious. She can cheerily announce that she wrote “Here” about going to therapy and make it sound like it applies to everyone. Intimacy, she likes to say, is her superpower.

After years spent in New Orleans clubs and on the road backing Russell, Cyril Neville and other bandleaders, the 38-year-old Clark’s national profile is ascendant.

She was featured on a recent episode of PBS’ “My Music with Rhiannon Giddens,” swapping stories and songs with the host.

On Thursday, Sept. 7, she’ll showcase her original songs during a solo acoustic show at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage in Washington, D.C.

And next year, Clark is slated to release an album via Righteous Babe Records, the artist-friendly independent label founded by singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco.

Meanwhile, she’ll continue spreading her brand of joy to an ever-expanding fanbase. During the 2023 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, she turned heads backing Russell at the Sheraton Fais Do-Do Stage and fronting her own trio at the Lagniappe Stage. Her manager, Michael Paz, says his phone rings constantly with inquiries from other festivals wanting to book her.

“Jazz Fest did feel like I turned a little bit of a corner in my identity as an artist,” Clark said. “I had the time of my life. As a performer, sometimes your mind is somewhere else, you’re thinking about the sound or how your voice sounded on a certain note or whatever.

“But none of that was going on. I wasn’t concerned with anything. I was in the moment. I was like, ‘I’m on this stage at this time of my life. I’m really grateful, and I love it here. I don’t want to leave.’”

Honing her chops in church

Joy Clark grew up on the West Bank in Harvey’s Woodmere neighborhood. She is the youngest of five siblings in a tightly knit family. She was home-schooled by her mother while her father taught English in Jefferson Parish schools and preached on weekends.

Music was a constant in her young life. Her brother Farren played drums. The father of a friend of his let Joy fiddle around on his Les Paul electric guitar. They eventually formed an informal band called the Shoeless Crew, named for their habit of removing their shoes before entering the house.

She picked out Boyz II Men, Celine Dion, Sheryl Crow and Chaka Khan songs by ear on a Casio keyboard. By age 14, she’d learned enough folk chords to start playing in her father’s nondenominational full gospel church, where congregants sometimes spoke in tongues.

“You play to support that moment,” she said of her church gigs. “It’s not about you. It’s about what’s happening. You create an atmosphere and foster that through music. You don’t step on anybody. You support their story and what they’re saying.

“Whenever I’m writing, I’m doing that with myself. Church is in there. I can’t take it out. It’s the best training ground.”

After years of home-schooling, she enrolled at the University of New Orleans.

“I rolled with it. I thrived in meeting new people from other countries. Finding my place, but not really knowing where in the world I was going to be — that’s college.”

Her interdisciplinary studies focused on sociology, history and English; she considered a career as a professor. She spent countless hours reading, writing and editing, learning lessons about brevity she later applied to songwriting.

“The type of songwriting I’m drawn to is subtraction. Take this word out, it doesn’t flow, you’re going to forget it.”