L
ike so many properties these days in East Nashville, the white stucco house that stood at 1307 Chapel Ave. in the early ’70s is no longer there, razed a number of years ago to make way for a new and larger structure. There was nothing particularly special about the tiny, two-bedroom house that sat one property west of the intersection with Douglas Avenue — nothing except Guy Clark wrote the song there that launched his celebrated career. Oh, yeah, and the incomparable Townes Van Zandt wrote one of his best-loved songs there, as well. For six or seven months at the end of 1971 and the first half of 1972, decades before East Nashville had an internationally recognized music scene, Clark and his wife, Susanna, lived on Chapel, along with their friend Van Zandt. Van Zandt was already a legend in songwriting circles, but Clark’s career was just getting
“They moved to Nashville in November of ’71, and they lived on Mickey Newbury’s houseboat [on Old Hickory Lake in Hendersonville] for a few weeks,” Saviano continues. “Then a secretary at Sunbury Dunbar found them the house on Chapel, and they moved in there in December of ’71 before Christmas.” The couple decided to tie the knot about a month after they moved to Chapel Avenue (on Jan. 14), and Clark asked Van Zandt, who was in New York City at the time, to be his best man. After the ceremony at the Sumner County courthouse, and a raucous reception on Newbury’s boat, the Clarks and Van Zandt went back to the East Nashville abode. The house had four small rooms (two bedrooms, living room, kitchen) and a bath. With the arrival of Van Zandt, the second bedroom would double as Susanna’s art studio and his bedroom. In her book, Saviano describes how they found a mattress discarded behind a neighborhood grocery story that night and dragged it home for Van Zandt to sleep on. Although he came up with the hook for
‘‘
So I called Guy back and got the lyrics over the phone, and then we went in and I cut both ‘Old Time Feeling’ and ‘L.A. Freeway.’ — Jerry Jeff Walker
started when he moved to the little house on Chapel. It was where he wrote “L.A. Freeway,” as well as where he first played the song for Jerry Jeff Walker, who would release it as his first single for MCA later that same year. Clark’s time in East Nashville is covered extensively in writer/producer Tamara Saviano’s new book, Without Getting Killed Or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark (Texas A&M University Press). “Guy and Susanna and Townes were in that house very briefly, but it was a pretty creative few months that they were there,” Saviano says during a recent interview with The East Nashvillian. While living in Los Angeles in the fall of 1971, Clark signed a songwriting contract with Sunbury Dunbar, the music publishing arm of RCA Records, and they gave him the option of continuing to live in LA or relocating to New York or Nashville, where the company also had offices. He chose Nashville, in part because his friend Mickey Newbury was here. 68
THEEASTNASHVILLIAN.COM November | December 2016
“L.A. Freeway” while living in California, Clark didn’t write the song until he got to East Nashville. “Guy had written on a burger sack with Susanna’s eyebrow pencil, ‘If I could just get off of this L.A. Freeway without getting killed or caught,’ ” Saviano says. “He carried that little piece of burger sack in his wallet until he got to Nashville, and he wrote the song in the house on Chapel.” “L.A. Freeway” wasn’t the first song he wrote at the little house next to the alley between Douglas and McKennie. That was a song called “Old Time Feeling,” and it was the one Clark played first for Walker during Walker’s fateful visit to East Nashville. Walker and Van Zandt both knew Clark from the days when they all were playing the folk clubs in Houston. “Guy was basically a folk singer,” Walker says from his home in Austin. “He came through folk music, he knew the tradition, that’s what he was before he became a songwriter. He was the first one