At 36, he’s been heralded as one the best guitarists in a generation, and recently won three Grammy Awards for his album „This Land“
This story originally aired on January 12,2020.
There’s a certain confidence when Gary Clark Jr. takes the stage, and from the first riff, it’s clear why; he wields his guitar like a man possessed.
„I’m not, like, a religious person,“ he said. „I quit going to church a long time ago. But, like, music is my religion, I guess you could say. It’s calming, it can hype me up. It’s everything.“
His mastery of the six-string won him a Grammy in 2013, and it’s earned him three more this year. He’s played the White House, and even toured with The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, who said he’d never seen a flow like Clark’s on the guitar since Jimi Hendrix.
„Oh, damn,“ Clark responded when told by correspondent Kristine Johnson. „Pressure!“
This 36-year-old is still allowing comparison like that to „sink in,“ as he told us, when he sat down with „Sunday Morning“ on his ranch in Texas. „It doesn’t really resonate until I’m at home, and I’m goin‘, ‚Wow, this is real,'“ he said. „You know what I mean? Like, all those dreams and hopes and aspirations I had as a kid and I thought were silly and I was scared to share with people because they might think that I’m, you know, out of my mind?“
Clark is from Austin, Texas, the son of Gary Clark Sr., a car salesman, and his wife, Sandi, an accountant. Mom still does his books, and says her son’s life changed forever at the age of 12: „He got the guitar for Christmas, and then, checked out a couple of books, and was just totally self-taught.“
„He was upstairs in his room playing,“ his father recalled, „and I told her, ‚Come here. Come here and listen to this!‘ We open up the door and there he is, he was hitting [Jimi] note for note.“
Johnson asked, „So, is that the day you realized…?“
„He’s got a gift,“ Gary Sr. replied.
His wife added, „Yeah, and he said, ‚Sandi, he’s really good.
