Slaid Cleaves
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Performing on Sunday July 27, 2008 from 12:00 - 1:30 PM the GRANDSTAND STAGE
Slaid CleavesAustin, Texas
Doing roadside van repairs, hauling equipment in and out of venues, answering a dozen e-mails a day, planning and booking tours and their financial details, these are not things Maine-raised songwriter Slaid Cleaves envisioned when he said goodbye to a string of day jobs and became a musician full time. But perhaps these mundane tasks ground him, for he is revered for turning out rawneck songs that capture the essential struggle of the Everyman within the resin of a fine melody.
That the man still writes and records with his Grade 3 pal Rod Picott hints at the core of values that inform his characters’ wisdom. While Cleaves was once an English major and began busking while attending a semester of university in Cork, Ireland, he has also worked as a janitor, ice cream truck driver, film developer, groundskeeper and even as a human lab rat for a company testing drugs. When he finally went for broke and moved to Austin nearly two decades ago, he put the same humble work ethic into songwriting. In 1997 he hooked up with Rounder Records, where his skills as a songwriter attracted the support of Lucinda Williams’ producer Gurf Morlix, who rounded up the cream of the Austin crop to appear on Cleaves’ national debut, No Angel Knows.
By the time his breakout 2000 album Broke Down was released, Cleaves said he had lost money in music every year he’d been in it. Well, all the better to turn out those songs filled with people who know that their rainbow is just around the corner. His other knack is for picking out songs that compliment his. He has noted that Hank Williams didn’t write all of his own hits but really had an ear for finding great songs; in the same manner, Cleaves is a connoisseur of covers, punctuating his sets with the best songwriters you’ve never heard.
The characters that traverse his open sky songs are down but never out, forever waiting on something better, something earned. You don’t know whether to feel sorry for the poor saps for their lot in life or envy them their indefatigable hope. Be they race track dreamers, heartbroke gamblers, or barroom fighters, all yearn for a better deal but accept their fate with resignation and even the wisdom of those who can see things for what they are. Cleaves is skilled at summing up the whole drift of their lives within their midlife revelations while tightly wrapping the package with sing-along melodies.
Mary-Lynn Wardle
Calgary Folk Music Festival
August 2007
For more information about this artist visit their website at: http://www.slaid.com/
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