Hi Minette.

How are you?

- I'm good.

Thank you for saying yes to this.

I really appreciate it.

- You're welcome.

This is fun for me because we've never had a conversation before.

And everybody loves your guy, loves you guys.

And they love your music.

And I wondered how long The Clarks have been together.

And did you think it would last this long?

40 years.

And no, I never thought we'd be doing it for this long.

When we started, we were just doing it for fun and one thing led to another.

And here we are all these years later, and you're playing out all the time.

I am very busy.

I do a lot of shows with the band.

I have a lot of solo shows.

Myself, Rob and Greg also do acoustic trio shows in the summertime.

So yeah, it's it's it's a busy schedule, but I love it.

I think the last time I saw you perform and it wasn't in person, it was in A Very Yinzer Christmas.

It's the hap, happiest season of all.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

At the Benedum Center?

- Yeah.

Oh, I love that show.

That's such a fun time.

And what a thrill it is to play on the Benedum stage.

Yeah, it's amazing to be in a space where you've recognized it your whole life, and then all of a sudden, you're there as a performer.

That must be, what a wonderful feeling.

- Right.

It's surreal.

The very first concert I saw was Tom petty and the Heartbreakers in that theater.

It was the Stanley Theater.

It was 1980.

So, you know, and I've seen many shows since then there.

And yet to be able to perform on that stage is a real thrill.

Yeah, I think I saw Elvis Costello and it was like.. - Oh, wow, all right.

We're dating ourselves.

Yeah.

Right.

The reason for this conversation is we're coming up on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and WQED is focusing on local experiences and stories of how we were impacted by it.

And Ryan, one of our coworkers, said, there's a great Clark song that you should listen to.

It might make a good interview.

So that brought me to Hey You!

So when you first listen to the song, I guess you don't really doesn't really immediately hit you over the head what it's about.

So can you tell me what the inspiration was for it?

Well, first of all, you nailed it because it is intentionally somewhat vague.

But once you know that it was written on 9/11, it becomes very obvious that it's about 911.

If youre going to jump, Hey, you.

hang on.

And if you feel like giving up, Hey, you.

Hang on.

I won't forget today.

So this bright sky is blue.

I'll give you a little background.

That morning, my best friend called me about 8:30 in the morning and he said, hey, turn on the TV.

So I got up and I turned on the television and all the guys in the band were coming to the Clark House in Highland Park that day.

We were rehearsing.

We were preparing to record our album called Another Happy Ending, and we were going to rehearse that morning and I was sitting watching TV, just sort of uncertain of what was going on.

The first tower had been hit, and then the guy started to trickle in and the second tower was hit.

And we immediately knew that this was not, you know, an accident.

And so we all sat and watched television for about an hour or two.

Everybody left to go back to their their wives.

And I was just sitting at the house alone, watched TV for a few more hours, and I just thought, I can't sit here and watch this all day.

So I actually went downtown and went rollerblading on the jail trail.

I just had to get out.

I had to get a little energy out.

So I did that.

And then I came back to the house, made some dinner and watched a little more TV and went upstairs, picked up my guitar without any intention of writing a song.

And I just it just sort of came out of me.

It didn't take long, maybe a half an hour, 45 minutes.

And I had, you know, the template for the song.

I switched a few lyrics around in the, the, the days after, but yeah, it just it just came out of me.

And sometimes the best songs are the ones that don't take any time.

Hey, you, rejoin.

I won't forget today.

The sun is bright, the sky is blue.

Yeah.

I won't forget to pray.

Day is night, moon is noon.

There are so many feelings that day.

People were angry and they were shocked and they were afraid.

But for you to go and write a song that was about hanging in there, we can get through this, was really thoughtful.

Why did you think that was the message that you needed to impart to people?

Well, I had the sense that as tragic and as life changing as it was for so many people, and it changed the political dynamics of, of, you know, the politics of the world.

I just I knew that in time we would heal.

And I just needed to find hope somewhere, somehow in that song.

And one of the lyrics references how beautiful of a day it was.

It was, you know, just a gorgeous late summer day, clear blue skies.

And so I felt that I needed to inject a little bit of positivity into it as well.

Yeah.

No, that's again, it was.

I thought that was such a thoughtful way for the song to go because there was just there were so many feelings that day.

And just even now, 25 years ago, to think about how everything just froze.

I don't think anything's happened like that since until Covid came again, that everyone in the country was just sharing this same feeling of not knowing what to do next.

Right, right.

And I think in the days and weeks and months after you saw how our country could come together and and regardless of political opinions, we could agree on, on our unity and the fact that we, you know, we have more in common than, than we have that divides us.

And I think for us here in Pennsylvania, too, I mean, it happened this was a shared experience for Pennsylvanians.

It was that kind of brought it home and made it closer too.

So yeah, 25 years.

I can't believe it's been 25 years.

It's amazing.

The passage of time is just incredible.

Yet to think that that was 25 years ago, it feels very for me.

It still still feels very raw.

I can I can picture myself in that living room on Jackson Street in Highland Park, watching the TV coverage.

And, you know, I have to tell you, the a couple days later, the Pittsburgh music community, we all got together, a whole bunch of us down a club cafe.

We all just felt the need to, to be together to to sing songs and to to share our grief and to talk about, you know, how we all felt.

And so a bunch of us got together at Club Cafe a few days later and had a concert, and I played that song for the first time.

And I still think about those kind of things, how it brought a lot of people together.

Speaking of those first times when you first played out with the song.

Do you remember what the fan reaction was like?

It was very positive and we released that song.

We recorded it and it came out on that album that I referenced earlier, and I remember vividly being on the stage at Nicks Fat City the first time we played it live in front of an audience, and it was just an overwhelming reaction.

You know, a lot of people knew what the song was about.

I had done some interviews and so the word was out there.

But yeah, I remember the feeling of playing that live was was pretty special.

Well, I have to thank you again for allowing us to use that YouTube clip of you performing it live at Mr.

Smalls.

But if you haven't seen it and you're watching this interview, please go to YouTube and look up the Clark's Hey You performance live at Mr.

Smalls.

It's really it's really something special, I think.

Thank you.

Yeah, that's a really a great rendition.

And the audience that night was so receptive.

And it's a it's a really good version.

So I hope people can enjoy that as well.

Yeah.

Well, speaking of your fans, I saw on your website that your newest album is live from graffiti,?

- Right.

I cannot tell you how much of my youth was wasted at graffiti, so I'm excited about that.

That's right.

There was a recording we did a live broadcast on WDVE in 1993, and we sat on this recording for many, many years.

And this we're celebrating our 40th anniversary this year.

And we we thought it would be a great idea to to pull that from the vault and release it for our fans to hear it.

And it's a really great moment in time.

Captures the band at a really.

We were young and full of energy and and.

- Hope and vigor.

And and determination to make our mark in the music world.

And I really love the sound of it now.

We've really evolved over the years, but I think it's a really good representation of where we were at that time period that was early 90s were very formative.

Did it, like immediately strike any memories when you started listening to the tracks again?

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

I could feel myself back in that, that place again.

And I, as you mentioned, graffiti was one of my favorite venues to to play and to watch shows.

I saw some incredible shows there over the years, The Replacements and Richard Thompson and the Rave Ups, you know, originally started in Pittsburgh.

So, so many good memories of of that venue.

What is your favorite thing about doing what you do?

Is it the creativity or is it the emotional exchange with the audience?

Like what is it that makes you love it?

Well, I think both of the things that you just said, first of all, the creativity, the the ability to sort of put your emotions into, into your art, to be able to write songs and to convey what you're going through in your life, good, bad and everything in between.

To be able to use that as, as a, as a tool to just, you know, it's therapy in a way.

The other thing, too, is the connection that you build with your audience.

When we first started this many, many years ago, you know, we sort of like I said before, we were in it just to have fun and go out and play our songs and play music for people.

But as the decades went by, we would start to have people come up to us and say, hey, this particular song really helped me get through a very difficult point point in my life.

And you realize the the positive impact that you have on people.

And so that's that's just an extraordinary thing and something I never take for granted and I'm very thankful for.

She's waving goodbye to 17th.

From a long white limousine.

What else should people know about The Clarks?

What are you doing?

What's coming up in your lives?

Well, we're celebrating this whole year.

We're celebrating our 40th anniversary.

You know, this, this year started off with a bang.

We.

Our song Better Off Without You was featured in the season two premiere of the medical drama The Pitt, which was huge exposure for the band and just such a really cool thing, and it's really a family affair sometimes.

Our drummer son Noah will play with us and my daughter Ava will sing with us and it's really special.

I looked at your discography.

22 albums.

Is that is that accurate?

Well, that sounds close.

I think that that's probably includes.

I think we have maybe 11 or 12 studio albums.

There's a couple recordings of outtakes and B-sides.

We have a few live releases.

I have three solo releases and an EP, Greg has a solo release.

So I would imagine all told, yeah, it's probably around that number.

Yeah.

In The Clark's family, that's that's really prolific.

Not too bad.

Not too shabby.

The other thing, I think it's so cool that the Pitt goes to the trouble to really connect with Pittsburgh based people.

I agree, they really lean into the Pittsburgh thing.

I could use a few more yinzer accents in the waiting room.

Well, yeah.

You could go buy one day.

You can throw it.

I could do that.

But yeah, it was it was such an honor and really a thrill to hear our song open Up that that season two premiere, to hear Dave's drums and then the guitar and my vocals as the as the camera panned across the skyline of Pittsburgh as the sun was coming up and.

Oh, what a thrill.

I was standing in my living room with my arms up in the air.

Yeah, man, it was pretty cool.

Yeah, you must have got chills, I would have.

Oh, it was.

It was a thrill.

You know, it's funny.

It's a lesson in perseverance, I suppose, too of 40 years of doing this and.

And a song that's 26 years old.

That was probably.

I mean, we played on Letterman and a couple of big things in the past, but that was probably the biggest single exposure for the band's music that we've ever had.

Well, I can't thank you enough for saying yes and hanging out with me for a few minutes.

I just am very happy about this whole conversation, and I think people are going to be really pleased to hear from you.

So thank you so much.

Thanks, Minette.

It was a great talking to you.

- You too.