To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Guy Clark‘s thrilling debut Old No. 1, his estate has announced a forthcoming tribute album — Old No. 1 Revisited — featuring a who’s who of exciting young songwriters. The initial list of artists slated for the project includes Margo Price, Sarah Jarosz, Erin Rae, Brennen Leigh, Rodney Crowell, Andrew Combs, and Caroline Randall Williams, with several more artists to eventually join the project.
The lead single is a tender rendition of “Desperadoes Waiting for a Train” by Combs featuring Clark’s old friend Crowell. “I kept telling [producer] Dan [Knobler]… ‘if you were to tell 18-year-old me that one day I’d be recording a Guy Clark song with Rodney Crowell, I’d have lost my damn mind,’” Combs said. “To this day, whenever I sit down to write, I think about [Guy].”
There’s no set release date yet for the album-length cover of Old No. 1, which is still in the works, but the project is expected some time in early 2026.
It’s been almost a decade since Clark, a legendary and eternally influential songwriter, died in Nashville, and the re-recording is just one of a few projects the estate has planned for the 50th anniversary of Old No. 1. Throughout the fall, there is an “Old No. 1 at 50” show touring the country with artists like Crowell, Radney Foster, Rosie Flores, and many more performing Clark’s music. And next week marks the release of Old No. 1 at 50: A History of Guy Clark’s First Album, a book written by Peter Blackstock, with interviews conducted by Natalie Weiner and edited by Tamara Saviano.
When Old No. 1 was first released, the album received a lukewarm reception and did not become a commercial success. “His voice is not comfortable,” Rolling Stone wrote in its original review of the album, “but it is extraordinarily expressive and the production showcases it well.”
In the ensuing decades, however, Clark’s debut has become a touchstone for several generations of country-folk sing-songwriters, with nearly every song on the record, including “L.A. Freeway” and “That Old Time Feeling,” having since become a standard.
