Terri Clark was 18 years old in 1987 when she, her 5-year-old brother, her mom, and a family friend drove 20 hours from their home in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada to Nashville for Clark to launch the rest of her life.
They stayed at Days Inn on Trinity Lane, and Clark remembers looking out the window at the city in the distance and realizing she didn’t know a single person in town outside of her family. But she wanted everyone to know her name.
“I’ve got to conquer this,” she thought.
The family spent the next several days visiting Nashville landmarks, and Ryman Auditorium was at the top of her list of places she wanted to see.
Terri Clark Will Headline Ryman for the First Time
More than three decades later, Terri Clark is preparing to headline Ryman Auditorium for the first time on Aug. 29. And that’s not 2024’s only milestone. Clark celebrated her 20th anniversary as a Grand Ole Opry member in June, performed at Nissan Stadium during CMA Fest, and released two new albums—”Terri Clark: Take Two” and “Greatest Hits”—at the end of May.
“It’s reimagined, reinvented, re-hashed versions of my older hits,” Clark told American Songwriter of “Take Two.” “It’s a way to honor where I’ve been in my career, remind people of these songs, and also have new people come along that haven’t even heard them because they’re fans of the other artists’ but may not even be familiar with these songs.”
Artists on the duets project include Cody Johnson on “I Just Wanna Be Mad,” Lainey Wilson on “Poor Poor Pitiful Me,” Ashley McBryde on “Better Things To Do,” Kelly Clarkson on “If I Were You” and Carly Pearce on “Girls Lie Too.”
Clark self-produced the album and often contacted potential duet partners with the request. Getting a yes was just the first step. Then they had to figure out which song, decipher the parts, and work out the logistics. Johnson’s choices were more limited, given that most of Clark’s hits are from a female perspective.
Clark Collaborates with Cody Johnson
They settled on “I Just Wanna Be Mad” and transformed it into a conversation between two people. They changed the melody and gave the song more of an edge. Clark said Johnson called it “a banger.”
McBryde and Ben Rector came into the studio for the tracking sessions. Clark and Rector returned “Now That I Found You” to its pop roots.
“I think the ones that we reinvented to be something a little bit different and new were the right ones, and the other ones, we just left them alone,” she said.
Honoring the song was important to Clark, who is thinking about her country music legacy at this point in her career.
Clark, also a country radio personality, explained that her catalog of songs is important. She’s creative and will always write new ones, but she wanted to have fun with some of her past hits.
“It’s not about protecting my legacy, but it’s kind of about revisiting it, and you look back on everything you’ve done and what you want people to remember,” Clark said. “I’m not finished touring. I’ve got lots of gas left in the tank, but I also realize that people are digging back and really wanting to hear those old hits a lot.”
Clark Wants to be Remembered as a Trailblazer
When she considers what she wants people to remember when they think about her, Clark pauses for a few seconds before she says, “Somebody who blazed a trail for women to not be cookie-cutter, to step outside of the box and be an individual.”
Clark didn’t have a pop flare in her music. She was influenced by The Judds, Reba McEntire, and Ricky Skaggs, and it was essential to Clark to have steel guitar, fiddle, and electric guitars in her music.
She also wants to be remembered as a hard worker, as a songwriter and a guitar player.
“I want people to remember me for that, too, because I don’t know that that’s been talked about all that much,” she said. “I wrote most of the four records. Then, I started cutting more outside material just because I got so busy, and you’re just on the road so much.”
She also wants people to recognize that she was an integral part of her touring band on guitar. But most importantly, she hopes she made a difference in someone’s life who saw her perform.
“The letters and the comments you get, you want to leave that behind,” she said. “You want to leave behind the legacy of bringing joy, and that’s why I still do it. That’s the only reason to still do it and making a difference. You don’t realize how much meeting somebody backstage or handing them a guitar pick at the end of a show, what that kind of emotion can leave with them. It’s so simple and such a random, small act of kindness, but just being good to people. They remember that.”
Photo by Terry Wyatt/WireImage
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