Premiere: Charlie Clark, ‘Don’t Have a Cow, Man!’

Kevin Bronson on January 21st, 2021

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Scottish singer-songwriter Charlie Clark spent 10 years living in Los Angeles. Though releasing solo tunes, as well as songs with the projects Broken Arrow and Majestic 12, Clark enabled more music than he made, owing to his gigs as a talent buyer (including seven years at Harvard & Stone) and host of songwriter nights.

But it wasn’t until he returned to his homeland in early 2019 to look after his terminally ill father that he began to process his experiences into what one might consider his “Los Angeles” album. (The move also coincided with Clark and boyhood pal Willie Campbell rebooting their late ’90s/early ’00s band Astrid and releasing the comeback album “Fall, Stand, Dance.”)

“I honestly had no intention of making an album, but when I moved back from L.A. permanently, I wrote 11 songs that told a story like a journal,” Clark says. “Ten years of living in California, the breakdown of a relationship, losing my father, relapsing after a decade of abstinence, working for seven years at Harvard & Stone in L.A. — the only venue I’ve worked at where the staff are more rock ’n’ roll than the bands. The songs told that story, and there’s a very positive message underneath it all of hope and love.”

Clark invokes Bart Simpson’s mantra for the title of his single “Don’t Have a Cow, Man!” No laughing matter, he also rattles off some demons in the chorus: “Caffeine / Nicotine / Cocaine / Norco / NyQuil / They’ll bring me down.” He explains: “I wrote the chorus of ‘Don’t Have A Cow, Man!’ just before moving back to Scotland from Los Angeles and finished it in [his hometown of] Stornoway. … I came home to help care for my father who was terminally ill, so I had some serious shit to get together.”

The song is pure indie gold, ’80s/’90s-style, chugging along with bright, jangling guitars and warm vocals that create an upbeat veil for the serious stuff in his lyrics: “I don’t wanna die / or be a junkie my whole life.”

“Don’t Have a Cow” (officially out Feb. 5) is the first single from Clark’s forthcoming solo album “Late Night Drinking,” which will be released on It’s Creation Baby, a new venture from the legendary Alan McGee of Creation Records. McGee’s most recent project Creation 23 is a singles label. Clark’s full-length will the new imprint’s maiden voyage.

The music certainly fits the Creation roots; it was that label which released Scottish greats Teenage Fanclub’s breakthough album “Bandwagonesque” 30 years ago this fall. Clark has a single worthy of that lineage.

||| Stream: “Don’t Have a Cow, Man!”