“I can talk and do all of that, but I don’t really feel like it,” said Gary Clark Jr., to the nearly 150-person crowd in New York City on Tuesday, March 19. “Let’s just do this.” Clark Jr. and his band set up the floor-level stage inside a Soho loft, running through the entirety of his forthcoming fourth album JPEG RAW, out March 22, for the tenth installment of the bi-monthly Soho Sessions music series, which also live-streamed via Veeps.
“There’s really not an artist out there that we love more than Gary Clark Jr.,” said Greg Williamson, co-founder of RWE Partners, the entertainment company behind the sessions and the annual Love Rocks benefit concerts in New York City, before welcoming Clark Jr. “To be able to have an artist of his caliber in a space like this is quite a special thing.”
Within the intimate space, designed by fashion designer John Varvatos, Clark Jr. rolled through JPEG RAW switching up some of its beginning sequence. Opening on “Maktub,” Clark Jr. skipped the title track and welcomed the first of two special guests, Memphis, Tennessee singer, and songwriter Valerie June for “Don’t Start.” When recording the song, Clark Jr. recalled saying “There’s gotta be one person,” and added “and she [June] was gracious enough to respond and record on the song with us.”
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Backed by his sisters Shawn, Savannah, and Shanan, Clark Jr. ran the 13-song set, adding on the title track before Naala joined him onstage for “This Is Who We Are.”
“Oh yeah, So I got a record coming out,” said Clark Jr. after slipping in outlier track, “Feed The Babies” from his 2019 album This Land. “On this record [‘JPEG RAW’] I have a song with a very special guest, who’s not here, Stevie Wonder.” Giving his best impersonation of Wonder, Clark Jr. joked “He hit me up and said—he says my name real funny, he said ‘Gary, I got a song for ya.’ So this is what came out of it,” before going into “What About The Children. “This is featuring Stevie Wonder,” he added, “but without Stevie Wonder tonight.”
JPEG RAW also features trumpeter Keyon Harrold on “Alone Together” and Parliament-Funkadelic’s George Clinton on “Funk Witch U.”
Clark Jr.’s performance benefited Music Will, formerly Little Kids Rock, a non-profit music program within the U.S. public school system that has impacted more than 1.7 million children by providing music teacher training, curriculum, and instruments to more than 6,000 schools across all 50 states. Produced by New York City real estate broker Williamson and global events producer Nicole Rechter from RWE, and publicist Dawn Kamerling of The Press House, the Soho Sessions continue to benefit various charities spanning mental health, education, and more.
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Several music teachers, who benefitted from the program were in attendance along with Music Will founder David Wish, who started the program in 1996 in East Palo Alto, California, by giving free guitar lessons to students.
“I was a first-grade school teacher in a school that had no music program and it bummed me out because I’m a music maker,” said Wish before Clark Jr.’s performance. “So I started. free guitar class for 36 kids and that was my whole goal. I could have stopped there but the problem was those kids started doing what people do with music—making their own, falling in love with it, writing their own songs. We started releasing CDs of 6-year-olds releasing their own music just because they can.”
Wish continued, “I left teaching because I realized that this was something that could go to many more schools. Since 2002, Music Will has brought the transformational gift of music education to over 1.7 million school-age children across the United States. That’s just one of the magical things that music will do.”
Along with regular guests Paul Shaffer, Rickie Lee Jones, and more, the music series is typically led by the Soho Sessions house band’s guitarist and vocalist Larry Campbell, who has worked Levon Helm, Bob Dylan, and rounded out by Saturday Night Live drummer Shawn Pelton, bassist and singer Adam Minkoff, keyboardist Eric Finland, and singer and Teresa Williams.
Since its inception in 2021, previous Soho Sessions have also welcomed a collection of surprise guests including Steve Earle, Taj Mahal, Joe Bonamassa, Marc Cohn, Larkin Poe, Brittney Spencer, Lukas Nelson, Lucius, and more.
In June 2023, Soho Sessions moved to Stephen Talkhouse for a Hamptons Edition in Amagansett, New York, featuring Marcus King and multi-instrumentalist Celisse.
Clark Jr. ended the night on his nine-minute-plus JPEG RAW close “Habits,” and jammed out with the band one more time to Tears For Fears‘ 1985 hit “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” before taking his leave.
Gary Clark Jr. Soho Sessions Setlist, March 19, 2024:
1.”Maktub”
2. “Don’t Start”
3. “JPEG RAW”
4. “This Is Who We Are”
5. “Feed The Babies”
6. “Till The Ends of The Earth”
7. “Alone Together”
8. “What About The Children”
9. “Hearts In Retrograde”
10. “Hyperwave”
11. “Funk Witch U”
12. “Triumph
13. “Habits”
14. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” (Tears For Fears cover)
Main Photo: Tina Eves; Additional photos by Kim Mancuso Photography / Courtesy of The Press House
