“Yeah, I guess I was maybe five or so when I saw the film La Bamba,” he ponders. “I was obsessed with this music. I was given a cassette tape with that song, along with Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis and a bunch of others on it. It also had this cover of these bad-arse looking greasy hoodlums on the cover. I was obsessed with the look of these guys and the music. It wasn’t something that was around me – my folks weren’t hip to any of that old stuff. I just stumbled across it.
“I was and have always been crazy about guys like Muddy Waters, and Snooks Eaglin, Blind Blake, Arthur Cruddup, basically anybody with Blind in their name,” Clendening continues. “Rockabilly and rock’n’roll instantly made sense to me because I could hear this same stuff in what these goofy, white hillbillies were doing. Clearly they were listening to the same stuff and loving it as much as I was.”
It goes without saying that Clendening is passionate about rockabilly. What is it about the genre that does it for him?
“Well I don’t think it speaks to everyone,” he reflects, “but for me it’s the spirit and energy of the music. It’s fun, it’s not taking itself too serious, it’s (mostly) well played, and when it isn’t, it has the spirit of the blues so ingrained in it that you get caught up in the conviction of the performer and forget about the lack of musical ability. It’s the punk rock spirit that has existed in the young since the beginning of time.”
Indeed, it’s the spirit that Clendening has embodied since he was young. There’s this great story about him going to a local bar when he was 12 to listen to rockabilly great Deke Dickerson play. Obviously not allowed in, Clendening perched outside the bar window to catch a peek when Dickerson noticed him and opened the window so that he could hear better.
“Yeah, well that was a club that had a lot of great acts playing quite often,” Clendening reflects. “I saw all sorts of bands through that big window. Occasionally when it was real cold they would open the window or let me sit by the cash register at the door. I usually got to meet the bands because the window was right by the loading door, occasionally people would try, in vain, to get me in. Deke was kind enough to try every time.
“I think he respected my passion for the music and that I’d do whatever it took to see it played. My parents did too, because they were often the ones dropping me off at the bar and picking me up if I couldn’t tag along with pals. I love those memories. I usually wasn’t alone at the window and a lot of times the better party was with us outside, and the booze was cheaper too.”
As fate would have it, Clendening went on to play with Dickerson. In fact, Dickerson probably saved him from enlisting.
“I’ve worked more jobs then I can remember: candle maker, truck driver, in a BBQ sauce factory, at horse and cattle ranches, and every sort of good service job you can have, but it was always a means to an end, to afford to be able to live while I worked on music or thought about music or whatever.
“I was pretty damned close to joining the army, or the Marine Corps. Both were offering some very nice things, then old pal Deke Dickerson called me to work a tour with him as a guitarist and singer and also as his opening act. Without knowing it he probably saved me from a one way ticket to Afghanistan or Iraq. Guitars over guns for me any day of the week.” Right on!
BY MEG CRAWFORD
