In the late 1960s, Clark joined the Joe Tex band. After forming several bands with various names, Clark formed the W.C. Clark Blues Revue in 1975.
“Modern Texas blues at its best…impeccable, soothing soul and flashy, jumped-up roadhouse blues…heartfelt emotion and sweet as molasses soul delivery…as a vocalist, he's untouchable.”
--Blues Revue
“W.C. Clark has it all…everything from good old rock 'n 'roll and gritty roadhouse R&B to strutting Memphis soul, second-line funk and contemporary blues.”
--Living Blues
“If the blues is played right,” says Austin, Texas native W.C. Clark, “it makes your soul feel clean.” Indeed, master guitarist/vocalist Clark – remembered as “The Godfather of Austin Blues” – played the blues from the east side of Austin to stages around the world for well over 40 years. He mentored countless young blues and soul players in the finer points of the music for almost as long. Blues stars from Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan to Angela Strehli to Lou Ann Barton to Marcia Ball all perfected their craft under Clark's tutelage. Clark's mix of modern Texas blues, searing guitar and heartfelt, Memphis-style soul vocals made him a favorite of blues and R&B fans alike.
The HOUSTON CHRONICLE said Clark was “one of Austin's most pervasive live performers…he is a powerful and poignant soul man with hard-earned blues wisdom.” The NEW YORK POST calls Clark “a legend of the blues world.”
Before he began releasing albums in 1986, Clark was often referred to in the local press as Austin's Best-Kept Secret. Between the overwhelmingly positive media attention, the popular notoriety, the bigger and better tours, the secret was out. The AUSTIN AMERICAN STATESMAN said its hometown hero was “one of the greatest modern blues performers in the world…blending rock with R&B, soul and a touch of funk.” The AUSTIN CHRONICLE describes his music as “Good rockin’, soul-drenched Austin blues. A potent combination of gritty Texas guitar wedded to devastating, gospel-rich Memphis vocals.” Clark has won several Austin Music Awards for the “Best Blues Band”. Thanks to a series of stellar albums (each accompanied by piles of passionate press) and a reputation as a powerful live performer, the man know as “The Godfather of Austin Blues,” is now among the best loved guitarists and vocalists in the blues world.
Wesley Curley Clark was born into a musical Austin family in 1939. His father played guitar and his grandmother, mother, and sisters all sang gospel in the church choir. “I had so much music in my soul,” Clark recalls, “all I had to do was pick up an instrument and play it.” He learned the guitar as a youngster and at age 16 played his first gig at the Victory Grill, where he was introduced to Texas blues legend T.D. Bell. Soon after, Clark switched to playing bass and joined Bell's band, The Cadillacs. In the early 1960s he began a six-year stint with Blues Boy Hubbard and The Jets at the popular Austin nightclub, Charlie's Playhouse. There he met R&B hitmaker Joe Tex, who recruited W.C. to fill the vacant guitar slot in his group. Clark toured the Southern “chitlin' circuit,” learning music first-hand from Tex and countless soul and blues stars along the way, including Tyrone Davis and James Brown. Along the way, Clark perfected his ability to lift an audience into a soul frenzy. When he returned to Austin, Clark found the musical landscape changing with a whole new crop of young white kids beginning to venture out to the blues clubs to learn how to play. The scene was completely transformed as future stars like the Vaughan brothers, Bill Campbell, Paul Ray, and Angela Strehli came to Austin and discovered the rich musical legacy of bluesmen like W.C. Clark.
In the early 1970s, Clark formed Southern Feeling along with singer Angela Strehli and guitarist/pianist Denny Freeman. He then met and befriended Jimmie Vaughan's firebrand guitarist brother Stevie Ray, who occasionally sat in with the band. After Southern Feeling dissolved, Clark took a day job as a mechanic, but was courted relentlessly by Stevie, who was determined to have W.C. as a member of his own band. Clark eventually quit his job to become the bass player in the Triple Threat Revue with Stevie, keyboardist Mike Kindred, drummer Freddie Pharoah and singer Lou Ann Barton. While playing in this band, Clark and keyboardist Kindred co-wrote Cold Shot, which became one of Vaughan's biggest hits and recently earned W.C. his first platinum record.
Clark left Vaughan in the late 1970s and formed his own band, The W.C. Clark Blues Revue, and self-released his first recording, Something For Everybody, in 1986. The band became stalwarts on the Austin scene throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, playing regular gigs at legendary venues like Antone's and opening for the likes of B.B. King, James Brown, Bobby “Blue” Bland and Albert King. Clark's star – at least locally – was rising.
As his celebrity increased, the critically acclaimed PBS television show Austin City Limits celebrated Clark’s 50th birthday in 1989 brought Clark together in front of a live audience, with his disciples Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimmie Vaughan, Kim Wilson, Lou Ann Barton, Angela Strehli and Will Sexton all taking part. The broadcast, one of the series' most popular, brought Clark to the attention of a national audience for the first time. In 2000, AUSTIN CITY LIMITS aired an extended jam between W.C. Clark and Stevie Ray Vaughan as part of a Stevie Ray Vaughan special.
In 1994, Clark's friend Kaz Kazanoff introduced him to Hammond Scott of Black Top Records. Impressed by what he heard, Scott released Heart Of Gold that same year. Texas Soul followed in 1996, exciting fans and critics alike. “Honey dripping soul, the toughest of Lone Star Blues,” hailed THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE. With the accolades building and the reach of his music extending, Clark won a coveted W.C. Handy Blues Award for “Soul Blues Album Of The Year” for Texas Soul.
His next release, 1998's Lover's Plea, found Clark singing and playing stronger than ever. Lover's Plea earned him another W.C. Handy Blues Award, this time for Artist Most Deserving of Wider Recognition. Another televised performance, (as part of The Best Of Austin City Limits), hit the airwaves in 1998, setting the stage for a national tour in support of Lover's Plea. Once again, critics and fans went wild. The Chicago Reader called Clark “a veritable superstar.”
On his album, From Austin With Soul, Clark made his Alligator Records debut, he forcefully carried his soul-drenched blues to heights he's previously only hinted at. Clark wrote five of the album's 13 songs (Bitchy Men, Let It Rain, Got To Find A Lover, I'm Gonna Disappear, I Keep Hanging On), and included well-chosen covers from a variety of artists, including Clarence Carter (Snatching It Back), Gatemouth Brown (Midnight Hour Blues), Bobby Bland (Got Me Where You Want Me), Albert King (Get Out Of My Life, Woman), and Johnny Adams (Real Live Livin' Hurtin' Man). Clark's emotional duet with Marcia Ball, on Don't Mess Up A Good Thing, is only one of the album's many musical highlights. Recorded at Arlyn Studios in Austin and produced by Mark “Kaz” Kazanoff, the album features a stellar cast of the city's best musicians, including bassist Larry Fulcher, drummer Frosty Smith, guitarists Derek O'Brien and Pat Boyak, keyboardist Riley Osborne, and Kazanoff himself leading a punchy horn section. BLUES REVUE declared, “With From Austin With Soul, Clark has painted his masterpiece. Few artists rival Clark’s ability to sing as soulfully as Al Green and play guitar with such tasteful precision.” BILLBOARD celebrated the release, calling Clark “Superb. He’s a soulful vocalist and a tasty guitarist with an enormous amount of talent.”
Clark won the 2003 W. C. Handy Award for “Blues Song of the Year” for his composition “Let It Rain” and was nominated for the 2004 W. C. Handy Award for “Male Soul Artist Of The Year”.
Clark’s Alligator release, Deep In The Heart, is another slice of stunning soul mixed with contemporary electric blues. With wrenching, heartfelt ballads to celebratory, horn-fueled Texas stomps, Deep In The Heart is a blistering ride through sinewy Memphis soul and foot-stomping Texas roadhouse blues. With friends Marcia Ball and Ruthie Foster duetting on three songs, Deep In The Heart is the most fully realized and soulfully intense album of Clark’s long career. Deep In The Heart garnered more attention from the WC Handy Awards with nominations for “Blues Album of the Year” and “Soul/Blues Album of the Year”. Clark was nominated for “Soul/Blues Male Artist of the Year”.
BLUES REVUE says “Clark conjures the vocal power of Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett and the guitar of Steve Cropper and Albert King.” LIVING BLUES calls him “a first-rate and funky, passionate and powerful performer…a singularly skilled leader among modern blues artists.” “Armed with a powerful, gospel-approved voice, Clark delivers his songs with God-fearing intensity.” – GUITAR PLAYER
Clark toured relentlessly for years including performances at the Chicago Blues Festival, European Blues Festivals, Ottawa and Toronto Blues Festivals, various festivals in Europe, Russia and Turkey. Along the way he has met up with old fans and friends and undoubtedly gained new ones everywhere he played. The rest of the world is now in on what the city of Austin has known for decades: W.C. Clark was an innovative and creative artist whose soulful singing and tasty guitar playing reached out from Austin, with soul, to all corners of the music-loving world.
With his 2011 release, Were You There?, Clark compiled songs from his live performances that have been requested again and again by his fans.
In 2018, he self-released a self-titled album.
Official Website: W.C. Clark
Lover
W.C. Clark Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Lover's Revenge
Better as friends
Better as
Lover's Revenge
Lover's Revenge
Better as friends
Better as
I got plans for revenge
Killed our plans
It's alright cause I'll go after your friends
When you're chasing after love and end up lonely again
When you're chasing after love
Then you'll feel lover's revenge
Love is like
Love is like a drug
And I need it from you
You had me
Hooked up on yo love
I was feening for you
How bout we
How bout we just take it from the top
No
How could you
Treat me like somebody that I'm not
Scars
Flipped them bitches
Turnt them into bars
Love
Lust
Sometimes I can't tell the two apart
Them or us
Why the fuck you choose up every time?
Killed my heart
Time to pay the prices for the crime
Killed our plans for the future
I got plans for revenge
Killed our plans
It's alright cause I'll go after your friends
When you're chasing after love and end up lonely again
When you're chasing after love
Then you'll feel lover's revenge
Fuck you thought?
Thought you broke my heart?
We don't take none of that
I'm going after your friends
All of your friends
Whichever one calls me back
If it ain't no us
Ain't no you and them
But it's them and me
This Hennessy
Fuck up memories
And kill my money trees
Scars
Flipped them bitches
Turnt them into bars
Love
Lust
Sometimes I can't tell the two apart
Them or us
Why the fuck you choose up every time?
Killed my heart
Time to pay the prices for the crime
Killed our plans for the future
I got plans for revenge
Killed our plans
It's alright cause I'll go after your friends
When you're chasing after love and end up lonely again
When you're chasing after love
Then you'll feel lover's revenge
Kill em with space
Kill em with all my love
Give em a chase
Kill em with all my love
Lovers revenge
I love you more than them
Lovers revenge
I love you
The song "Lover's Revenge" by W.C. Clark tells the story of a failed relationship where the plans for the future have been ruined by one person's actions. Despite the hurt caused, the first person has plans for revenge and is willing to go after the other person's friends as payback. The lyrics touch on the idea that love can be addictive, and when chasing after it, one can end up feeling lonely and seeking revenge. The song also explores the difficulty in telling love and lust apart and the pain caused by a relationship that has gone wrong.
The chorus repeats the phrase "Lover's Revenge, Better as friends" which could suggest that the idea of revenge is not the answer, and it's better to separate amicably as friends. The use of the word "Lover's" implies that these two people were once in a romantic relationship, but now the focus is on seeking vengeance. The verses outline the feelings of hurt, anger, and betrayal felt by the first person, and the desire to make the other person pay for the harm done.
Overall, the song explores the complexities of relationships and the emotions involved when things go wrong. It's a story of heartbreak and revenge, but also a reminder that it's important to choose our battles and think about the consequences of our actions.
Line by Line Meaning
Lover's Revenge
The song is about seeking revenge after a breakup.
Lover's Revenge
The song is about seeking revenge after a breakup.
Better as friends
The singer suggests that the couple should remain friends after the breakup.
Better as
The singer repeats that the couple would be better as friends.
Lover's Revenge
The song is about seeking revenge after a breakup.
Lover's Revenge
The song is about seeking revenge after a breakup.
Better as friends
The singer suggests that the couple should remain friends after the breakup.
Better as
The singer repeats that the couple would be better as friends.
Killed our plans for the future
The breakup ruined the couple's plans for the future.
I got plans for revenge
The singer vows to seek revenge after the breakup.
Killed our plans
The breakup ruined the couple's plans for the future.
It's alright cause I'll go after your friends
The singer plans to get revenge by going after the ex's friends.
When you're chasing after love and end up lonely again
The singer suggests that chasing after love will only lead to more heartbreak.
When you're chasing after love
The singer suggests that seeking love leads to heartbreak.
Then you'll feel lover's revenge
The revenge will be painful for the ex-lover.
Love is like
The singer compares love to a drug.
Love is like a drug
The singer compares love to a drug.
And I need it from you
The singer desires love from the ex-lover.
You had me
The ex-lover had the singer's heart.
Hooked up on yo love
The singer was addicted to the ex-lover's love.
I was feening for you
The singer had a strong craving for the ex-lover.
How bout we
The singer proposes a solution.
How bout we just take it from the top
The singer suggests starting over.
No
The ex-lover rejects the proposal.
How could you
The singer is hurt by the rejection.
Treat me like somebody that I'm not
The ex-lover doesn't treat the singer with the respect they deserve.
Scars
The singer has emotional scars from the breakup.
Flipped them bitches
The singer turned their emotional scars into a source of strength.
Turnt them into bars
The singer turned their emotional scars into lyrics for a song.
Love
The singer reflects on the differences between love and lust.
Lust
The singer reflects on the differences between love and lust.
Sometimes I can't tell the two apart
The singer is uncertain about the difference between love and lust.
Them or us
The singer challenges the ex-lover to choose between them or their friends.
Why the fuck you choose up every time?
The singer is frustrated with the ex-lover's constant choosing of their friends over the relationship.
Killed my heart
The breakup hurt the singer deeply.
Time to pay the prices for the crime
The revenge will be the ex-lover's punishment for breaking the singer's heart.
Fuck you thought?
The singer challenges the ex-lover for thinking they could hurt them without consequences.
Thought you broke my heart?
The ex-lover believed they had power over the singer's emotions.
We don't take none of that
The singer won't tolerate being treated poorly.
I'm going after your friends
The singer plans to get revenge by going after the ex's friends.
All of your friends
The singer plans to go after all of the ex's friends.
Whichever one calls me back
The singer will go after the friend who responds to their advances first.
If it ain't no us
If the ex-lover won't agree to a relationship, the singer will seek revenge.
Ain't no you and them
The singer challenges the ex-lover to choose between them or their friends.
But it's them and me
The singer plans to go after the ex's friends as revenge.
This Hennessy
The singer is using alcohol as a coping mechanism.
Fuck up memories
The singer hopes that drinking will help them forget their painful memories.
And kill my money trees
The singer is spending too much money on alcohol.
Kill em with space
The singer will give the ex-lover space as part of their plan for revenge.
Kill em with all my love
The singer plans to seek revenge with love, rather than violence.
Give em a chase
The singer plans to make the ex-lover work for their love.
Lovers revenge
The singer repeats the concept of revenge from the perspective of a lover.
I love you more than them
The singer still has feelings for the ex-lover.
Lovers revenge
The singer repeats the concept of revenge from the perspective of a lover.
I love you
The singer still loves the ex-lover.
Lyrics © DistroKid
Written by: Christine Chambers
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind