by Ashley Brown
Editor’s Note: While a real musician, “Clyde” declined to allow his real identity on the record for our story. We present this, then, in the spirit of narrative.
I came to find Clyde as a source while I was searching for a musician to interview. I had been searching for a few weeks, with no luck. On a whim, I traveled a few miles to downtown San Antonio to a restaurant called Sam’s Burger Joint that my dad used to go to when he was in his twenties. He said they had the best live music around and that all you had to do was sit, look around and start a conversation to meet some interesting people. Knowing that was what I needed, I decided to go have a burger, bringing my journal just in case.
Clyde was already sitting outside when I got there, looking content. I ordered and went to sit outside. He was talking in a low voice to a group of people around his age. I didn’t pay him much attention until his acquaintances left and he pulled his guitar out of a worn case. He strummed a tune that I couldn’t put my finger on for a few minutes, then he hummed and sang in a low raspy voice that made you want to clear your throat. The song was “I love you because” by Buddy Emmons, and he wasn’t half bad. Gathering up my courage, I decided to go talk to him, hoping he wouldn’t think I was strange.
We started out talking about how my grandfather loves that song and where he learned to play. In turn, he asked about the journal, and the conversation flowed from there. Eventually, he agreed to be interviewed, but only if I kept his real name and identity a secret. He claimed he didn’t want to get any recognition from the article and that he didn’t want to take away from the music. I agreed and he decided on the name “Clyde” as a pseudonym, stating it was far enough from his real name but sounded realistic.
He had a dry personality that forced you to twice think over everything he said to make sure you heard him correctly, wondering the whole time if he was pulling it all out of nowhere just to fit the part better. Clyde spoke in this thick accent that added to his backstory very well — he claimed he grew up in Louisiana not far from the French Quarter, raised by his mother and uncle who loved to sing but didn’t do it well. He was the eldest of three and the only boy, and this caused him to mature quickly into his sisters’ protector. He always loved to sing them B.B. King and Etta James, loving the rasp and pure emotion.
Writing down his thoughts was a habit he picked up from his uncle, who was a man of few words. Clyde felt he never was eloquent enough to be a smooth talker but if he had a moment to think and plan his sentences, the words flowed better. Using this as a way to express his feelings, Clyde began writing songs to tell the story of his life.
Clyde avoided almost every other question I had about his personal life, background, song titles or places I could come to watch him play, stating he went where the music fit best and that it would give away his identity if I matched a song to this article somewhere down the road. But he loved to talk about the music. Clyde stated his love for blues came from the “raw emotion” that came with the genre.
“Nothing is sugar-coated, the words are exactly how you’re feeling right then, in that moment. There’s no subject off limits. You want to sing about losing your wife? Go ahead. Boss got in your face and you want to quit, but can’t cause you’re broke? Hell, I’ve been there. Blues is the embodiment of stress relief and personal sorrow. There is not one hardship out there that someone with a guitar or harmonica hasn’t sang about while drinking a beer. That may sound cheesy or overdone to some, but to me that screams unity.”
He told me that he didn’t rank the worth of songs like most people did. To him, the worth of a song came from how low or high in life you were when you wrote it. If you were in a place of bliss and sang about the way the sky shows the limit of how high your spirits could sail, that song ranked very high on the scale. Also, if you were currently living in your antique car with holes in the cloth seats, heating up soup with a magnifying glass, the words you hummed to calm the nerves inside was high on the scale as well. Clyde only cared about the emotion and story behind the melody, not the melody itself.
“Blues is unique in the sense that, you could sing about a hole in your left sock for three whole minutes and no one would care! As long as your heart and soul was in the croon of your voice they would listen and hum along. It’s all about the sorrow and the journey, the destination. Where you are right now will have no effect on you ‘til years down the road, when it’s all but a memory fading with time.”
That was all I could get out of Clyde. He told me he wished me luck with “all my endeavors” and went on his way. I’ve never met anyone quite like Clyde before; I don’t even know his real name, only his alias. I guess his persona was all part of the package, being a brooding musician and all. But one thing he said really stuck with me as I thought about the fond, yet pained look he got in his eye as he described the feeling he got when playing original songs. He said he felt “raw” but not exposed. He claimed he thought they were synonyms most of his life, but after a time, he began to understand that the words were very different in meaning — that with time, I would understand the difference as well. The more thought I put into it, the clearer it became.
To describe yourself as “exposed” is to feel bare, naked in the open with no shield or cover. As if you’ve been thrown into the streets stripped and unprotected. “Raw” is a completely separate emotion. The word itself all but implies pain, when spoken. The peeling back of walls, and the loss of innocence. To have nothing left to give but your own feelings, put together by the hope of a new tomorrow. To feel “raw” is to know pain but push on, by willpower alone. If that isn’t the essence of blues, I don’t know what is.
