About Joe Clark
“I just write whatever comes out of me,” says Joe Clark, vocalist and acoustic guitarist, “all I ever want with my music is to make that connection”. Joe has been building a steady following with his down-home, "come as you are" authenticity, releasing music that his fans call "relatable" and "just what the world needs".
While Joe's sound has evolved over the years, his approach to songwriting has remained the same. He's found life-long inspiration in artists like Chris Knight, Jason Isbell, and Chris Stapleton, and spends a lot of his time writing in the woods of Henry County, Kentucky. “It's a good place to escape, these particular woods have raised me and gotten me through the best and worst parts of my life so far” Joe says. “Some songwriters can make up stories for songs and tell them well enough to make you believe it. I’m just the opposite, I don’t do fairytales or make believe, I only know how to write about my life experiences, from my own point of view".
"The truth is that sometimes the reality of life is tough to put into words," Joe mentions about his recent release, "10 Years Too Late". He says he tried to capture "a feeling of the unavoidable passing of time we can all relate to, a personal account of life’s changes written in a relatable way we can all feel connected to. A sense of urgency and change. The ups and downs of time." Joe's followers often comment about how his music represents how we all live, feel and see ourselves. He has a very special knack for storytelling, which turns into music that you just feel in your soul.
Joe doesn't go at this music thing alone. He's joined on stage by guitarist and long-time friend Justin Dwayne Chappell. They've been playing together for the last ten years, a decade spent challenging one another and growing together, to make music that people can love and connect with.
It should come as no surprise that at this point, Joe and Justin have earned a plethoric local following, with show turnouts growing each day since the release of the album "10 Years Too Late", as well as the fan favorite single, "It Is What It Is". Now frequently featured on stages in Louisville and Lexington, the rest of the Bluegrass and surrounding states are starting to catch up to what Lockport always knew, that these Kentucky boys could be the next big thing. One fan on TikTok wrote "Blackberry smoke had a baby with Whitley Morgan, then bred with Cross Canadian Ragweed," while another shared "talk about putting a broken man's thoughts into a song".
Joe says his new song, Battlefield, is a huge step up from his previous album, Storyteller, claiming it to be the best music he's put together so far. These newer songs show so much growth from earlier releases, following major changes in Joe's personal life - with the support of his family, he's made it two years without alcohol, two years with a clear mind. "If my addiction to booze has given me anything it’s the fire underneath me to keep playing, to make sure I am heard, and to do it with a clear mind because I came very close to leaving this world at one time. If I hadn’t quit drinking my songs would have left with me…. Not only do I owe it to myself and my family, I owe it to the people listenin to keep pushin, to never step back into that lost world I was stuck in all those years but to put it into words that can be useful to someone, and I promise it to anyone listenin' that’s exactly what I’ll do."