The Tale Behind The Tune: "LA Freeway"
by George Bancroft, The Texas Tunesmith
 Guy Clark’s “LA Freeway” wasn’t the song that changed the course of my life, but it was among a relatively small handful of songs that did, and they were all on eight LPs made by Jerry Jeff Walker and his cast of characters during the 1970s. My mom had a friend living in Junction, and she came to visit us in Big Spring for a few days. When she left, she forgot to pack a Jerry Jeff album she’d brought along for the visit. I wore that thing out, and then I hunted down and bought seven more Jerry Jeff records. I would have bought more, but seven was all I could find. “LA Freeway” was on one of the Jerry Jeff LPs, and it epitomized the attitude of all those records. I was delighted when so many years later I got to interview Guy Clark and have him tell me how the song came about. Here’s what he had to say:
I was living in Los Angeles, my wife and I, trying to get in the music business, pitching songs and working in the dobro factory, and I’d been playing in a little string band down in San Diego one night. We were driving back to LA, about three or four o’clock in the morning, and I’d fallen asleep in the back seat. I just kinda woke-up, looked up, and looked around, and it just popped out of my mouth - if I can just get off of this LA freeway without getting killed or caught. A little light bulb went off. I got my wife’s eye-brow pencil and a burger sack and wrote it down. I carried that around in my wallet for about a year before I actually wrote the song. That’s one of the things about writing. Everybody has those ideas, great little ideas, but if you don’t write it down, you will forget it.
I called Guy Clark to talk about all the songs on his Keepers CD. That recording was from a live performance of Clark’s in 1996 at the Douglas Corner Café in Nashville. “LA Freeway” is the lead track on the Keepers CD. I listened to that version of “LA Freeway” and the one I had on the old Jerry Jeff LP while I was writing this article. The words are slightly different in each, and they’re both different than what is printed in the liner notes of the Keepers CD, so I thought it best to just type out what I heard Guy Clark sing.
Guy is one of the Texas music pioneers. He and others like Jerry Jeff, Gary P. Nunn, and later, Robert Earl Keen were responsible for turning me into a tireless ambassador of Texas music. There are many of us who encourage others to listen to what, as a body of work, has so much more to offer than what is available from the mainstream.
You can chase your tail all afternoon trying to define for the unenlightened just exactly what Texas music is. It’s a noble effort, but it’s just impossible. I have a suggestion. If you really want to spread the Gospel of Texas Music and do so effectively, button your lip and just leave a copy of LA Freeway behind. Come back in six months. If they’re not converted by then, shake the dust from your boots and move on, and do so quickly or you might find yourself talking to a pillar of salt.
George Bancroft lives in Big Spring, Texas. He has s a local radio show called Texas Tunesmith and can be heard at KBST 95.7, Saturday and Sunday evenings, and on the internet on Wednesdays at 8:00 PM (CST) on tossmradio.com.
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