Sound and Sight: Jamie Clarke

Jamie Clarke: Avoiding the mainstream

Every great songwriter starts hearing something in the world that surrounds them at a very early age⁠—pulled instinctively to forms of expression that fill their ears with joy, listening ever more carefully to those select few who become beloved heroes.

Through time and experience and endless midnight jams, an artist with his or her own insight begins to emerge. Few, if any, get to work closely with those who shaped their early sensibilities. Jamie Clarke, better known as the main songwriting force in the band Myrle, has managed to work closely with a few of his, and in so doing has produced three remarkably distinctive and outstanding recordings that have delighted his numerous fans and influenced many aspiring musicians in the Huntsville music scene.

Like so many kids of his generation, Clarke’s first influences in high school, when he picked up guitar, came from classic rock. He was obsessed with guitar wizard Jimi Hendrix.

“I probably thought, at that time, that I would be the next Jimi Hendrix, but I was never really that kind of player,” he says. “I was never really a lead guy but you know you’re obsessed with it. I was always the guy who doesn’t like the mainstream, almost as a rule. And when I was in high school, in the early nineties, when grunge took off and everybody was into the whole grunge movement, that was like popular, like mainstream. I wasn’t going to listen to it. I kind of really got into the independent Canadian music scene. So that is how I sort of stumbled onto Ron Hawkins and Lowest of the Low and bands like that. Like the Watchmen, Blue Rodeo, Thirteen Engines.”

Discovering these early independent post-punk bands shaped Clarke’s approach and soon inspired him to write his own songs. The independent music scene was more articulate, literary, and intelligent to Clarke’s ear, especially Lowest of the Low who for a short period from 1991 through to 1994 dominated the indie-touring scene, doing upwards of two hundred dates a year.

Ron Hawkins wrote the kind of lyrics that college kids understood: smart, savvy, in touch with a broader worldview. Hawkins’s aspirations and accomplishments, as a writer and painter, have shaped the way Clarke thinks about writing and the purpose of a song. “When I write songs,” Clarke says, “you got three minutes to say something and I try to get as many words in as humanly possible.”

One of the distinctive stylistic elements of Clarke’s writing is his sophisticated use of chord structure and passing chords, which allow him to dramatically expand the storyline and melodic reach in his tunes. Not only is this interesting for the listener, it’s exciting for his bands to support and play behind.

Bands are an important part of Clarke’s overall development as writer and player. As a bandleader, Clarke has played with many of Huntsville’s more astute and proficient musical talents. Along with his work as a solo acoustic performer and his ongoing, ever-evolving band, Myrle, Clarke was part of an exciting duo with Lewis Hodgson known as Lewis and Clarke, he worked with his friend and powerful guitarist and songwriter R.W. Haller, and led an extraordinary configuration of Myrle with cellist Meagan Ballantyne and Bronwyn Boyer, which for anyone who had the privilege to hear them is a memory to be long cherished.

Clarke’s recording career began in 2012 with the initial release of his album Myrle, produced by folk rock legend Shannon Lyon. It was named after his grandfather, Myrle T. Woolman, who served in the legendary First Special Service Force, known famously as The Devil’s Brigade, during the Second World War. The album was an introduction to a tunesmith of incredible breadth and intricacy.

Rocking on one track and soulful the next, Jamie Clarke mapped a journey through his long travels and sojourns across Canada, while reflecting on the heartbreak of loves lost and won. The album is a true testament to the gathering of friends and family who made the music, aimed at the ambitions and love they all had for getting together to play.

Naming his band and album after his grandfather reveals a great deal about the intrinsic values that Clarke honours—family, loyalty, bravery in the face of daunting odds, the north, and making music in a small town.

In 2015, Clarke joined forces with Ron Hawkins to produce his second album, A Dozen Hearts. Hawkins brought another dimension to Clarke’s work and their collaboration resulted in a brighter, crisper-sounding realization of Clarke’s newer tunes. It also cemented a growing relationship with the established Toronto artist, allowing Clarke to share dates and the stage with a musician he had long admired.

A Dozen Hearts also became the foundation of the working band Myrle and particularly Clarke’s connection to bassist and multi-instrumentalist Brandon Joseph Munday, with whom Clarke has shared the stage ever since. Together they are a kind of perfect combination.

The release and subsequent touring behind A Dozen Hearts also introduced audiences to an annual fundraiser that Clarke championed, the Rock and Roll Black Tie Fundraiser, which not only featured Ron Hawkins but several local favourite musicians such as Gina Horswood and up-and-coming acts like Julian Taylor.

The fundraiser was founded in 2016 by Clarke and Mike Shaver after Clarke’s father died and they recognized Hospice Huntsville’s need for private funding. The event has since raised tens of thousands for the non-profit organization.

With the pandemic, Myrle’s busy tour schedule was shut down and Clarke spent that time finishing the house that he built himself in Huntsville. A skilled carpenter, builder, and renowned chef, Clarke has lived a career as a tradesman in highly creative professional endeavours. More recently he has started work with furniture maker Cirvan Hamilton, choosing, as always, to pursue excellence by working with his hands and heart, and as his life indicates, “avoiding the mainstream”.

Donate to Hospice Huntsville here.

Learn more about Jamie Clarke and hear some of his music:
On Instagram @myrlemusic
On Facebook
On Spotify

Don’t miss out on Doppler!

Sign up here to receive our email digest with links to our most recent stories.
Local news in your inbox so you don’t miss anything!

Click here to support local news