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Slaid Cleaves | Bio
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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
"Cleaves tells gorgeously compact stories in a voice packed with Texas trail dust." -- Entertainment Weekly
". . . one of the finest singer-songwriters in Texas." -- Neil Strauss, The New York Times
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