William Clark Green

William Clark Green from Flint, Texas is a country music band leader with a rock-and-roll heart. Not recycled Top 40 rock made into country music with a violin and a string of clichés for words. Green’s music is no-frills four-on-the-floor roots rock. What makes it country is Green himself, and his intention. Consider the various shapes of country music, from Hank William’s agonized plainness up through the signature guitar drawl of Bakersfield, ending at the painted glamour of Big Nashville. William Clark Green is a critic of much of that. Fans of country music, he once told a reporter, “They hear the same damned words in every song. They’re just packaged different.”

A 32-year-old with gravel in his voice and a sunburned farm-boy face as round as a moon pie, the word is that he took time out while attending college to record his own songs on the side. Eventually, that collection more or less became his unofficial debut album. The sales were good enough to convince him to keep at it. Five years later came his breakout song, “It’s About Time,” this from his album Rose Queen. The year was 2013: It’s about time I broke somebody’s heart / they’ve been breaking all of mine from the very start.

While Rose Queen was not Green’s road to country music riches, it sold enough copies to buy him more and better studio time. And, as he has matured as an artist, his music has gotten simpler. Green’s core sound today is an offspring of the work that Eddie Cochran did back in the 1950s, or Delbert McClinton, or even John Hiatt. Simple melodies and words that make you think. Thanks to emerging artists such as Green and his peers (and the rock clubs that book them,) it’s almost cool to like country music.