Gary Clark Jr.

Gary Clark Jr.

Anyone who has listened to a Gary Clark Jr. album or watched the four-time Grammy Award winner perform live knows that he’s a gifted multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and performer. And never more so than on his last album, 2019’s illuminating This Land. But while This Land signaled a breakthrough in displaying his musical versatility beyond the blues, his latest album, JPEG RAW, represents a quantum leap.

“Blues will always be my foundation,” says Clark. “But that’s just scratching the surface. I’m also a beat maker and an impressionist who likes to do different voices. I’ve always loved theater and being able to tell a story. At home when I play the trumpet, I think Lee Morgan, or John Coltrane when I play the sax. I’ve even got bagpipes just in case I need them. So while this is my most honest and vulnerable album about relating to the human condition, it’s also the most freeing.”

At once powerful, insightful, and thought-provoking, JPEG RAW picks up where This Land left off. But unlike its predecessor, Clark’s fourth studio album was born out of an unprecedented two years during which the country was rocked by a global pandemic, coast-to-coast civil rights protests following the murder of George Floyd, and a political insurrection staged inside the nation’s capitol. As a Black man and father concerned about the future for his three young children in a still challenging climate, Clark found himself back in the studio recording a personal call-to-action that’s compelling both musically and lyrically.

“When the album sequencing was finished, the band and I realized that we’d made an album into a movie,” he recalls. “That’s what I was going for sonically because that’s how the whole writing process played out. First, it’s about angst and confusion, the unknown. Next, it’s about looking at ourselves internally. And then it’s about what comes after: the hope and triumph.”

And as you listen to JPEG RAW unfold, those three distinct transitions in tone, mood, and intention urgently resonate. The curtain rises on the 12-song set with the loud, chaotic “Maktub.” Named after the Arabic word meaning fate or destiny, the track outlines the first phase of the album’s mission statement as Clark’s aggressive guitar paints the picture: “So we gotta move in the same direction / We gotta move / Time for a new revolution / We gotta move.”

The album’s title track—an acronym for Jealousy, Pride, Envy, Greed … Rules, Alter Ego, Worlds—examines the role cell phone society plays in this chaos at the expense of real-life, one-on-one interaction. At one point in the song, he decries the fact that “my boy just can’t walk around in the store with the hoodie hoodie / They gon be watching you like lookie lookie.”

“I don’t love having a mobile device,” explains Clark of the song’s origin and the album’s overarching theme. “I miss being able to have more genuine interaction, looking someone in the eyes and learning something, getting a perspective. JPEG RAW is about showing the real and not the edit. We live in a world of edits, filters, and redos. We only get one shot.”

Before moving into the introspective segment of the album, Clark joins forces with electronic R&B/alt-pop artist Naala on the statement-making track, “This Is Who We Are.” Its marching cadence is in lockstep with the anthem’s chorus which starts: “This is who we are, go on and hate me / I’ve shown you all my scars …”

Among the songs embodying the aforementioned segment are “Alone Together” and “What About the Children.” The former features noted session trumpeter Keyon Harrold, whose horn perfectly complements the track’s slow jazz groove as Clark, in an aching falsetto, sings, “You don’t think my love is for real / I’m still here, so /Why do we feel so alone together.”

A demo that Stevie Wonder sent to Clark in 2020 led to the pair dueting on “What About the Children.” The funky-vibed mid-tempo track finds both gentlemen admonishing the world’s “heartless people” for whom children’s shattered lives in the wake of homelessness, hunger, and other struggles don’t matter. Of working with Wonder, Clark says simply, “I was a changed human.”

JPEG RAW closes its hope-exuding third segment with the nine-minute “Habits.” It’s about taking a hard yet empowering look at yourself before bad habits become problematic. As Clark shares on the chord-shifting track that showcases his mesmerizing guitar technique, life is about being strong enough to navigate the good and the bad.

“This was the hardest song for me to write lyrically because this is my truth, starting as a kid in the clubs growing up fast. So I’m trying to be better in all aspects of my life. I’m tearing up now because it’s probably the realest thing I’ve ever done. People, especially young kids, are being motivated by others’ false presentation of self. I want my kids to feel what it’s like to be a real part of this earth.”

Working once again with longtime collaborator and co-producer Jacob Sciba, Clark traverses a landscape of musical influences encompassing R&B/soul, hip-hop, blues, jazz, country, and African chants. The latter, says Clark, stemmed from conversations in the studio about the history of music and African music in particular.

“A lot of the scales from African music went into folk music, blues, and country,” says Clark, whose influences and collaborations range from B.B. King, the Jackson 5, and Muddy Waters to Alicia Keys, Dave Grohl, and Childish Gambino. “And we were playing African music in the studio. So that’s where the inspiration came from to go global as we talked about what was next after This Land.”

Clark also tapped singer-songwriter Valerie June and funk master George Clinton as additional guests on JPEG RAW. And the celestial harmonies backing several of the album selections belong to Clark’s sisters Shanan, Shawn, and Savannah. Tying the whole project together are photographs that Clark took of himself and a fallen tree outside his studio that double as cover art for the vinyl package.

“I was able to be that weird kid that I knew I was in sixth grade,” says Clark with a laugh about his audio/visual mindset. “[But] we were working through the pandemic and a big freeze happened. The tree fell, but by spring leaves were still growing. To me it symbolizes resilience.”

Growing up in his hometown of Austin, Texas, Clark initially played and sang with his sisters at family events, performing songs suggested by their dad. Fast forward, and he’s a teen guitar prodigy getting co-signs from Eric Clapton among others. Making his major label debut with the 2011 Warner Records EP The Bright Lights, Clark has since released three studio albums: 2012’s Black and Blu, 2015’s The Story of Sonny Boy Slim, and 2019’s This Land. His four Grammy wins include Best Traditional R&B Performance for Blak and Blu’s “Please Come Home”) and Best Rock Performance, Best Rock Song, and Best Music Video for title track “This Land.”

As he prepares now for the release of JPEG RAW, what does Clark want listeners to take away from his forthcoming album? “Breathe,” he urges. “Then go outside and listen to the birds as you look up at the sky. Appreciate the things you do have. Hopefully, the album resonates with positivity and hope. It’s really not about me, so take me out of the equation. This is yours now.”

Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears

Black Joe Lewis is the realest motherfucker there is. When COVID-19 sidelined his touring this past year, he started laying concrete to help support his baby mama and his kid. That’s fuckin’ real. When Joe and his band, the Honeybears, popped onto the national stage over a decade ago, many critics embraced him but still, there were some that maintained that they hadn’t paid their dues. Joe’s still here. Still going. Still cashing checks and snapping necks. The dues of hard work; the delirious heights of the industry as well as the disappointments and low hanging fruit. Through this all, Joe’s only honed his mastery over gut bucket blues guitar and his true voice. It’s a vital and distinctly American voice that never anticipated the attention he wound up receiving, never went looking for it either. It just started happening. The garage, the blues, the propulsive and synergistic live performances that inhabit the spaces of James Brown, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and the MC5…those things happened naturally from the very beginning and could only be accurately communicated in the live experience, not a press release or a slick brand campaign.

Sharon Jones, Charles Bradley, Cedric Burnside and Lightnin Malcolm, The Dirtbombs, Detroit Cobras, the Strange Boys; these are some of the artists that Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears shared countless bills with; almost a roll call of the most influential soul and garage bands of the last twenty-five years. Has the soul blues garage explosion from that era been commodified or worked into the overall template of pop rock? Sure. But the ground floor was a vital space for people that like guitars and grease and at this point Black Joe Lewis is one of the last standing that was there. Last of a dying breed. Or maybe a missing link. Does this make him a throwback? A throwback to a throwback? It’d be tempting and easy for Joe to go along with that but nah, we don’t think so. We know that Joe Lewis is genuinely doing his thing and that he’d do it regardless of what’s coming down the pipe. A stone-cold original and a veteran at that.

If you like whistling in your music and some floppy hat, quaky kneed dudes cloyingly singing at you, then you might not “get it” but whatever…there are enough intrepid, degenerate weirdos that do. Those are the folks Joe cares about. Not the glad-handing set. Not the fair-weather friend set getting down with the flavor of the month. Like the title of his last album says, “the difference between me and you” is Joe defining for himself that there’s the belabored wannabes and then there’s dudes that actually “HAVE the blues”…whatever the hell THAT is! Joe’s concrete pouring boss is gonna miss him.