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Opry North

Name: Terri Lynne Clark

Age: 32

Birth date: August 5, 1968

Birth place: Montréal, Québec

Home town: Medicine Hat, Alberta

Resides in: Nashville, Tennessee

Pets: N/A

Group name: N/A

Instruments played: Guitar, drums, piano and cow bell.

Started performing at age: Nine, learning how to play guitar.

Most memorable performance: N/A

What do you do to relax: Rollerblading, watching videos and collecting guitars as a hobby.

Finished CD's: 4

Cd's for sale: - "No Fear" - release date September 19, 2000

"How I Feel" - 1998- Mercury Records, A Polygram Company

"Just The Same" -1996- Mercury Records, Inc.

"Terri Clark" -1995- Polygram Records, Inc.

Management: AGF Entertainment Ltd.

30 West 21st Street, 7th Floor

New York, NY 10010-6905

U.S.A.

Ph: (212) 366-6633

Fax: (212) 366-0465

Record Label: Mercury Records

66 Music Square West,

Nashville, TN 37203

U.S.A.

Website: http://www.terriclark.avana.net

She has been described by one reviewer as "...an Amazon...", perceived as a tough cookie due to her taller-than-average frame and no-yes-woman lyrics and applauded for her humanitarian efforts and charity work yet what Terri Clark is really is a woman who is just like us. She was born in Montréal, raised in Medicine Hat, moved to start her career, married, divorced, worked toward what she wanted and, due to her tenacity, succeeded. She loves her family, has many friends and is known to be a cut up at times. How she isn't like us is well known. She makes her living by songwriting, producing and performing in front of some of the biggest audiences known to country music. That she is still the same Terri she's always been should come as no surprise, take away the stage props of boots, guitar and hat and you get the girl who grew up 'jamming' at her grandparents house, who was selected as 'most likely to' by her high school buddies and who has described herself as "...the biggest wimpy going". This is Terri Clark, an international country success who has never forgotten where she comes from or who she is. As a result she has risen, right to the top.

For the little girl who started her guitar playing at nine, country was always a pre-occupation even before she decided at 19 to pack up and move to the Country Music City, Nashville. She comes by her talent naturally due to her maternal grandparents, Ray and Betty Gauthier, who had quite a career going in the 60's, opening shows for Johnny Cash and George Jones in Québec. While she was expecting Terri her mother, Linda, played her guitar constantly giving the pre-natal teaching theory a big "maybe". At the age of 11 Terri was given a guitar of her own for Christmas by her mother and embarked on the road to country artist that she would follow for good. Throughout high school, when you had to fit in or be cool, Terri went her own way and was country clean through. She sported the jeans, western shirts and big belts she wanted and no one denied that she would get where she was going. She waited until she was finished high school and moved the following year to Nashville, with her mother in tow to help her settle in. After 10 days her mother left her there and went home, to Medicine Hat, to be the support whenever the long wait got to be too much and Terri would call home.

It took 8 years in Nashville before Terri would come to the attention of Mercury Records. In that time she found a place to live and a series of jobs to keep her going, from selling boots, delivering Chinese food to eventually working as the house singer at the legendary Tootsie's Orchid Lounge. Tootsie's was interesting, she related how she would help the bartenders toss people out when things got too rowdy. The Chinese food job was interesting too, she acquired the nick-name of "Big Woman" in Chinese due to her height and her tendency to munch as she waited for the orders to be ready. And when she wasn't working at something she was writing songs, playing songs and biding her time. That time was up when someone passed a tape of Terri to Woody Bowles, who would become her manager. Woody contacted Terri and worked with her for a while, until she came to the attention of Mercury Records. She auditioned, just herself, a stool and her guitar. And they signed her.

For Terri, the work had just started. She began to learn about the latest job she had and began to make many new friends who would help steer her in the right direction when she encountered something new. Never afraid to ask for help, she turned to the more experienced artists whenever she was confronted with a problem. As her success built and the albums were released to much fanfare from her fans she still stayed true to her way of doing things. She toured, she recorded, she grew older and she began to evolve, both in her music and the way she thought. Each successive album has been a little different, a little different because Terri at 26, at 29 and at 32 is growing too. But she's still Terri and on her tour with Brooks & Dunn and Reba she would turn to Reba for advice when coming to a crossroads. And she knows that you can't be good at something without learning how to do it, as she embarked on producing in the last few years. Deciding that she and Woody Bowles would form a company together they also decided that she would find new management to free up Woody's time for the company. And so, in 1998 they formed "Bowles/Clark New Artist Development", and Terri began to learn how to produce by working on demo tapes for their clients.

Taking her new skills into the studio for the latest album, "No Fear", co-producer Terri worked with producer Steuart Smith and got to record the album at home in her pajamas. For the title track and "A Little Gasoline" the pair brought in producer Keith Stegall from earlier albums and described by Eric Heatherly as having 'golden ears'. He would send them in the right direction, with "No Fear" already receiving much praise before it's even released. As she enters her thirties Terri has shown that she has the determination to take her career wherever she wants to go without forgetting where she's been. And that's staying true to form.

Terri Clark has described herself on her official website as 'loyal, driven, real, honest, daring, motivated, observant, brave, what you see is what you get, like it or not'. Well hundreds of thousands of fans can't be wrong, so they must like what they get when they buy her recordings, attend her shows and tune in whenever she's on some television program. For Terri being true to herself comes as naturally as breathing and her typical Canadian candor and 'I can have a bad hair day too' style is a breath of fresh air when she's compared to some of the heavily hair-sprayed, couture garbed, won't see me without my make-up types of performers out there. Terri is not afraid to say what she thinks, do what she wants and will be the first to admit that she has a lot to learn sometimes. This all proves that while you can take the girl out of Canada you can't take Canada out of the girl, in spite of the drawl that she's acquired from those years of living down south. She's still 100% our Terri and we wouldn't want it any other way.

If you're like me you can think of at least four things about Terri Clark that stand out, either from the news or seeing her in concert or watching her on television. It'll be something about what she said, or did, or wore or the like and not about her music most likely. Being taken away from the musical part of her public life has had her worried at times and she has said, " I'm doing this not to be cute and funny all the time and it's good that people like my personality but I'm striving not to become a giant caricature of myself ". A very real concern for a woman who has worked hard to succeed at her career and doesn't want to be known just for her off-stage antics, as innocent or as newsworthy as they may be. The woman that I saw sing her own version of a George Jones song to George Jones himself and had both he and Charley Pride laughing so hard they had tears streaming down their faces is the same woman who said " I have to learn as much about producing and take the time working on that as I did learning to be an artist. It's not something you just jump into." She can cut-up with the best of them but she can also roll up her sleeves and get to work, with results that dare anyone to think she could be a caricature. She trades her boots and trademark hat for baseball caps and runners when not performing and has admitted that when it comes to life and music " There's so much I don't know." How could you not like someone like that, someone like us who wants to be known for doing good work, being a good friend and not just for how many awards she has or who she's dating now.

I do wish that she wouldn't get hurt so often though. It's probably something that her mom, Linda, and I have in common. Describing herself as 'daring' was no idle threat as her roster of injuries has grown in recent years, with the purchase of a motorcycle resulting in a broken arm (the bike went the same day it came), the softball (yeah right!) to the face during the Fan Fair Celebrity game in '97 and the dislocated shoulder and subsequent surgery due to an overenthusiastic fan who grabbed her arm during a parade and forgot to let go. Luckily none of that has hampered her performance or ability to work on her music. I guess 'brave' would fit this particular tendency too, as the kid gloves approach to life has never been Terri's style although she has said, " I'm not the most graceful person in the world, so I think I need to find things to do in my leisure time that aren't quite as dangerous." Even after the softball incident she made her appearance at the CMA awards, complete with sunglasses and make-up. I'd call that brave.

In concert she is a dynamo, giving her all to the fans who know the songs so well they sing them back to her as the first bars are played. She runs around, she gestures, she makes faces and she reaches out to them as they reach out to her. She tells stories between songs, she lets them in on little secrets and she tells them how she feels about things as they occur to her through the show. When you see one of Terri's shows you can see most of the attributes she's used about herself at different points. Loyalty, between Terri and her fans. Drive, how she got where she is and what keeps her going. Real, from her hat to her boots she's pure Terri. Honest, this is a girl who says what she means without sugar coating it, even if it may make her look too human. Motivated, that's what she is and that's why you'll always get 150% from her. And observant, she may not remark on something at the time but you can bet she doesn't miss a trick and it will be remarked on later. And as the lady said about the Canadian music situation, "I think Canadian artists are starting to make some really good music, not that they haven't in the past, but it's starting to get noticed down here (Nashville) a lot more and I'm proud of that. I think it's great." Like I said, the lady doesn't miss a trick. And we love her for it.

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