Shaun Newman Podcast - #346 - Terri Clark

Episode Date: November 24, 2022

Country music start with over 5 million albums sold, 3 time JUNO award winner, 19 time CCMA award winner and in 2018 she was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Tickets to see Terri at the Vic Juba on November 28th: https://tickets.vicjubatheatre.ca/

Hey, everybody. This is Paul Brandt. This is Wayne Peters. This is Sean Baker. I'm Megan Murphy. This is Jess Moskaloop. I'm Rupa Supermonea. This is Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Thursday. I, you know, I think it was only a couple weeks ago. I was like, yeah, by the way, we're not going to be doing Thursday episodes for the

first, not the foreseeable future, but for, you know, upcoming times, you know, we're going to ease back off. And then what do I do like a week later, two weeks later? Well, you get Terry Clark happens to flop into your lap, and you're like, well, we're going to kick it out on a Thursday. It's a nice, short, sweet one. She's coming to town here to play live at the Vic Juba on November 28th. You can get tickets over at the Vic Juba, and I'll place a link in the show notes that way. If you're so inclined, you can. Either way, if you're liking what you're hearing, you're enjoying the podcast, please feel free to share along and leave a review, maybe like and share.

That's, man, you do what you got to do. Appreciate you all hanging with me on a Thursday, and I hope wherever you're at, you're smiling, the sun is shining, and hopefully, I hate to sound too optimistic, but hopefully this plus weather continues. I mean, I'm all four at minus 30. I mean, I've been joking.

I'm like, just get to minus 30 already. Go to minus 30. We can get rid of all this BS of up-down, up-down, up-down. But then you get like four days of like plus three, and you're kind of like, well, I mean, you know, if it wants to sit here or can, hey, what do I, Either way, let's go on to the tale of the tape, brought to you by Hancock Petroleum. For the past 80 years, they've been a leader in bulk fuels, lubricants, methanol, and chemicals delivering to your farm, commercial or oilfield locations.

For more information, visit them at Hancock Petroleum.com. She's sold over 5 million albums. She's a three-time Juno Award winner, a 19-time CCMA award winner, and in 2018, she was inducted in the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame. talking about Terry Clark. So buckle up. Here we go. This is Terry Clark and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast today. I'm joined by Miss Terry Clark. So first off, thanks for hopping on. Hey, thanks for having me, Sean. How are you doing today?

I can't complain. I tell you what. It's beautiful here in Lloyd Minster. Plus three. Whereabouts is Terry today? I'm in winter peg today. Actually, I'm, uh, I, uh, yeah, we came in from the U.S., and this is the first snow that I've seen so far this year. So we're on a day off in Winnipeg headed towards Moose Jaw for our first show there on Thursday. So I feel home. I feel like I'm home. Well, I tell you what, you come back to the north, you land in Winnipeg. Not only are they nursing their wounds from last night's loss in the Gray Cup, but of course you got all the snow to deal with and everything else.

Yes, we want to rub it in. I am born and raised in Saskatchew. I'm going to see a team lose in the finals. It might as well be the bombers. Oh, see, there you go. I can't disagree or agree because I'm playing in both provinces, so I don't want anybody to throw eggs at me on stage. I don't think.

A little bit of fun goes a long way. You know, I'm my background, Terry, you know, I wish, it's funny. Today, you know, on this side in podcasting, I always do it, you know, usually I get somebody in studio, or it's always, you know, video. So I got you via phone and I always chuckle because I've had two phone calls today. This is so I almost feel uncomfortable because I can't see your face and how you're reacting. Either way, it doesn't matter.

One of the things I love doing with the podcast and I know we don't have all the time in the world, but I love hearing how people got their start. I know you're an Alberta girl medicine hat, but I'm curious. How do you go from small town Alberta to Nashville? And please, as long or as short as you want to go, I'm just curious on the start of it, your career and how you go from, you know, there to hear. Well, first of all, I want to thank you for allowing me to do this via phone because then I didn't have to put any pants on. So I didn't have to put any pants on either. See, the pantless podcast. I like that.

That's got a nice ring to it, too. To answer your question, I just became obsessed with country music when I was living in Medicine Hat. My mom and I moved there when she remarried my stepfather and he owned a house there. And we, my sister and myself and my mom, he moved us all to Medicine Hat. And I want to say the year was 1981. And, you know, shortly thereafter, I started to become really obsessed with country music, Reba McIntyre, the Judds, Ricky Skaggs. I started to play in some local bands that were, you know, playing at the Legion and local events and such.

on some local TV shows. And they kind of took me under their wing. These local bands really believed in my talent. And I started getting better and better and, you know, learning more on the guitar and started to write my little songs. And just, you know, kind of immersed myself in the local music community there in Medicine Hat. And I won a few talent contests at a local level. And then I went on to some regional and some provincial and wound up at the Dick Dammer

in Brooks Cattle Country Jam Provincial Talent Contest that eventually led me to the CCMA sponsored contest that took place. So I made it to the national country music talent show basically and I ended up losing that. I didn't even place in that one

because what I didn't realize, I found out 10 years later that I didn't place in that national CCMA sponsored event because it was also sponsored by Budweiser. was underage. So they disqualified me when they found out I was only 17. So that was a bit of a heartbreak

at the time it happened, but I didn't really find out until 10 years later at the CCMA Awards, Tompkins, came up to me and he said, I have to tell you something. He said, I don't think you realize what happened that night, but you got disqualified. You won the contest technically, but we had to disqualify

you. They didn't tell you that that night? No, nobody told me that night because I think they were kind of, I slipped under the radar. I don't think they realized that I got that far and probably shouldn't, I wasn't supposed to. So I didn't find out until 10 years later. But that night, my mom and I were so heartbroken that I had lost when people were placing bets backstage I was going to win and we just couldn't figure out what was going on. And she said, I'm going to take you to Nashville when you graduate from high school. So your mom said this.

Yeah, she said, we're going to Nashville. We're just, we're just going, it's going to take longer. It's going to be harder. There's going to be a lot of competition. It's going to be really difficult. I mean, I didn't even have a green card at the time. You know, we just on a wing and a prayer and a lot of faith and a little naivety. We went to, she took me to Nashville.

She stayed for about a week. I found a place to live. I got some cash paying jobs and I wound up singing for tips at Tootsie's Organ Lounge for Cash $15 a day took the city bus downtown every day to my shift to play at Tootsies and that's that was kind of the start of it and I spent eight years trying to get a record deal and you know eventually I wound up getting married and you know we I was waiting tables and attending bar and selling cowboy boots and hats and Western apparel and anything that I could do.

And then I got a publishing deal writing songs with Sony Tree in 1993 and wound up on Mercury Records in 1994 and 1995. My debut album came out but it was a long way from it was a long way from the Dick Damron

Cattle Country Jamboree in Brooks, Alberta to that moment. I'll tell you there was a lot of in-between time. No kidding. I think, you know, one of the things I love, talk to a lot of different, you know, I'm a hockey player by trade, and I know my audience hates hearing this, but I've stumbled my way into some interviews with some country music legends, and I certainly put you in that category, but I got to sit and talk with Paul Brandt multiple times and his journey. And, you know, you think everything

is just like you flicked a switch and you were there. But, you know, like listening to eight years of basically doing whatever you had to do, and then, you know, one day it's just like boom, and here it is, did I hear correctly you said $15 a day? Is that your performance rate for Tutsi? It was. $15. Yeah. And this is back in 1987, 88, and Lower Broadway in Nashville, which has now become like,

it's like Marty Graw now down there. It's Bachelorette parties and pedal taverns and everything's neon. And, you know, it's a whole different vibe that it was then. Back then, half the street was shut down. It was boarded up. There were peep shows and pawn shops and, you know, nobody went down there. It was a very forgotten area of Nashville at the time. And there was a lot of seedy stuff going on.

And I think once the hockey arena came along and then things just, the convention center and everything started to turn around like in the early to mid-90s downtown. And it's just now it's a whole different scene. And I think I know if people just there are people that are sidebushed. musicians that'll go down to lower Broadway and make more money down there in one night and they could make out playing for a national act. And that's the truth because it's just so much going on down there. But at the time, it was just, it was not that. And I played the 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. shift. So I was there at 10 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon because it was too dangerous to be down

there at night. And, you know, it was just, it was a very character-building experience. Let me say that. I wouldn't trade it for the world. Yeah, character building is a good way to put it. You know, I'm curious in those eight years, did you have a few moments where you went, what the hell am I doing? And did you ever think of packing up, or you just had a belief that it was going to work out at some point you were going to catch your big break? Oh, a little bit of both. I would go back and forth a lot between really believing that it was going to happen and just thinking,

I can't just, you know, I can't. live on $95 a week forever, you know, or whatever it was I was making 90. I would, I would play there three days a week and average anywhere between $17 and $30 a day or $35 on a good day because it just, there just weren't, there wasn't the traffic that there is now. Every once in a while, like one of those buses with people, like a bunch of old people on a tour. One of those bus tours, they would all file in. You're just foaming at the mouth. I'm like shady acres.

The rest home is filing through the front door. And I'm sitting up there going, oh, my God. And, you know, it was just, it was that, that was the, that was kind of the vibe down there, especially during the day when I was playing. So I did. I often, you know, my mom talked me out of it. I'd call her collect and I'd be like, what am I doing? And I was homesick.

And, you know, medicine hat. is a long way from Nashville. And to be there alone without anybody and be 18 years old and from the prairies, it'd be in a southern city, culture was very different. There was so much that was very different. The climate, oh, my God, I was melting all this time. It was just like, I was like, this isn't summers. This is like hell.

This is like I'm burning. So there was a lot of adjusting and a lot of things to get. get used to when I moved down there. It wasn't like I could go home for Sunday dinner. So I'd call my mom and collect and be like, am I making, am I making a mistake by being here? And I miss everybody. She said, Terry, you don't want to look up at 50 years old and wonder what would

have happened. Had you really given this a shot? And she was right. And I'm so glad she talked me out of leaving. When you tell your story, Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers comes to mind. Because I want to say in that book, there's a story of the Beatles playing. I forget what it is, 12 hours a day or something silly like that, where they kind of fine-tuned their craft.

When you're playing for $15 a day, $18 a day, that type of thing, did you, I assume those days, those eight years, really fine-tuned who Terry Clark really was? Oh, definitely. You know, and not just that, but just being immersed in Tennessee and the lifestyle and being going to bluegrass jams and playing music with bluegrass pickers and befriending other musicians and having people throw requests at me and having to kind of riff and and play through songs I barely knew and just and the repertoire that you have when you're when you're playing and I played solo was just me and my guitar and that honed my guitar playing skills too

and just you know the song list that you've got to have all the cover you've got in all the Patsy Klein and all the Loretta Lynn and all the Judds and all the Rieba and all the Janie Fricky and all the Roseanne Cash and all of the stuff that was Randy Travis, the stuff that was just so popular at the time. You know, I play the same 15 songs every night now or 20 songs, you know, because they're my hits. That's what people want to hear. But when I think of my versatility when I was 18, 19, 20 years old, I wasn't just playing

my 15 or 20 songs. I was playing everybody else's too. So that was a real formative time. No kidding. I mean, you want to talk about being flexible. Yeah, I mean,

like, was there a song that you got requested? Like, did you ever just say, I don't know how to play that, or that wasn't what you did? You're like, oh, yeah,

sure, I can play that song and away you went. Well, I think people, it's kind of like when you go to a foreign country, as long as you make an effort

to speak the language, people appreciate it. So I would make an effort to play the song. I'm pretty good at playing by ear. And I, uh, so I, I can, I can, I can, I can, I can, I can, I can, I can, I can, I can make it sound like I know it, um, as long as I have a lyric.

Uh, but I'm not, I'm not, I don't have any formal training. And it's interesting because, you know, this Christmas tour that we're about to embark upon, my, my band is, they're all formally trained musicians. A couple of them have a master's in music and I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I, and I can't believe they work for me. And they, they, they know more than I do. You know, I, I can listen to a record. I, you know, I can listen to a record or a country record or country song and you can say well play a verse and a chorus of that song and I can probably do it because I'm self-taught but I play by ears so I'm just in awe of people that can that can write down notes and play that theory and write something on a paper and that that represents this thing you're doing on this instrument the Beatles didn't read music either not a note nothing so I just find it I find it but I find it amazing that people can just write down numbers and notes and know what to do with that.

Yeah, that is pretty cool. I got to be honest. And you're talking about your tour. You're at the Vic Juba here in Lloyd Minster on November 28th. So if people are looking to get tickets to see Terry here in the Lloydminster area, Vic Juba is where you're going to play, which is a great facility here in town. You know, I'm curious, I listened to an interview of you where you talked,

this is a few years back, this is before COVID. And he said, I haven't taken more than two weeks off since your career started. Now, I believe this was about, now it's probably about five years ago, he said that. I was wondering how hard was COVID for Terry? Because if that's what your life was, where all you did was go on the road and play shows and get in front of people, I know from an extrovert sitting on this side who loves to sit across from somebody and talk and everything else, how difficult COVID was on me. I'm curious for a lady who goes around the countryside

singing to different crowds here, there, everywhere. How hard has the last stint been? And then the second question I'd tag into that is, where did you do your first show back? Oh my gosh. You know what my first show back was? It was the Calgary Stampede, Grandstand show. No kidding.

That was the first show back. those were my first shows back. I played the grandstands show, I think, five days. And I had to use Dallas Smith band because mine couldn't get into the country yet. So, but COVID for me, I mean, I love people. I love to play. I love to entertain. But I'm a bit of an extroverted introvert.

I actually like, I'm fine by myself. I go out and eat by myself. I go shopping alone. I spend, I'm good being alone. I like my alone time too. But it, you know, it was interesting because I think all of us thought that it was going to be three or four months, you know, of this little thing that was going around was going to. But I, nobody had any idea we would be shut down for, well, it's been longer in Canada, but in the States, you know, it was, I went from March through the following March into July before I did a show. It remained huge.

That was 16 months. I went 16 months without playing a show. And I'm not a fan of virtual shows. I just don't think they have that same energy exchange and conversation and connection. It's impossible. It's no different than sitting here having a phone call with you. I think the phone call is amazing. Don't get me wrong.

And I think it's pretty cool that technology allows us to do this. But there's something about being in person, the exchange of body language, which is, you know, energy and everything else, being in the same room as people is electric. And as a guy who got to stand on stage multiple times over the past eight, nine months, being in front of people is wonderful. And having people enjoy your music, I'm sure there's no other feeling on the planet quite like that. It's amazing. And coming back after being off that long, which I will say, like, I really, I, I do. took the opportunity to just do nothing

and just be a normal, just be cooking and be at home and you know, and just you know, be with my dogs and family and just you know, get off the hamster wheel for a minute because it's been everything since

1995 has been about staying on the road and touring and then in between touring tour dates it's writing for another record and then releasing that record and the minute that record comes out, you're writing for another one and just constant right up until, you know, right up until this happened pretty much. And then everything just stopped. And I just took it after I realized that I had to settle in, this wasn't going to be over anytime soon.

I think it was just an acceptance, you know, and you know what? I'll be all right. Everything's going to be okay. And, you know, and everything was okay. And now we're back and now we're having a great time. And there was a bit of a reset button pressed. And I think, you know, a new fresh outlook on everything and, you know, a chance to recharge your batteries, even though it wasn't an intentional chance.

And I think there's a deeper appreciation for it now than there was before. Well, I appreciate you giving me some time today. Before I let you out of here, we always finish with the same question. Well, I guess I should say it's been the same question. here for several months, but it's a crude master final question. It's his words. He said, if you're going to stand behind something, then stand behind it absolutely. What's one thing Terry stands behind?

Oh, my goodness. Truth. Be true to your word. Someone's word means everything to me. If you say something, do it. If you say you're going to do it, do it. One additional to that, Terry, and I'm just curious. Have you played in, I'm sure you've played this country.

side 10 times over. Have you played in Lloyd before and have you played in the Vigjuba before? You know, that's a really good question. Now, you're asking me to go back over 27 years of tour. Come on. You remember all the places, don't you? I have a feeling I have. I know I've played the Lloyd before, but I don't know about that particular venue. Maybe somebody out there listening can chime in who's seen the show there. But yeah, I'm not absolutely positive. I've been in venue, but it sure sounds familiar, and I've heard wonderful things about it from everybody. Right. Well, appreciate you giving me some time today, Terry. I tell you what, the next time I get you on the show, we're going to give you the full podcast experience and maybe some

picture to go along with it so we can see one another. Heck, maybe we'll even try and stick you in the studio if time ever permits while you're rolling through on your tour bus. Either way, appreciate you giving me some time today and look forward to having you're here in Lloydminster. I can't wait to see everybody. Thanks so much for you. taking the time, Sean.