THIS BOB MEHR ARTICLE IS REPRODUCED FROM THE COMMERCIAL
APPEAL:
Memphis musician Clay Hardee has died. Known for recent
string of albums released under his stage name Clay Otis, the 35-year-old had
been staying with friends in Atlanta when he was found unresponsive early
Thursday morning. The cause of death is unknown.
News about Hardee – an ebullient and much-loved figure about
town – sent a shock through Memphis' music community, particularly among the
core of players and producers from Crosstown’s High/Low studio, where he worked
regularly.
“Clay lived life to the fullest. That’s how he approached
it,” said High/Low owner and longtime Hardee collaborator Toby Vest. “He was a
true Memphis original and a true believer in the mystical power of this city to
transform people. He was a force of nature who pushed everyone around him to be
a better person even when he was struggling with his own demons.”
Hardee grew up in Panama City Beach, Florida, "where
it's spring break forever," he recalled in a 2014 interview with The
Commercial Appeal (his stage moniker was not a reference to former Hi Records
soul singer Otis Clay, but rather a childhood nickname). He attended film
school at the University of Central Florida before getting kicked out. Hardee
came to Memphis in 2007, originally to make a documentary on local indie-rock
band Snowglobe. That project fell apart, but he began writing a script and
sourcing money for another film. In the process, he soon fell in with brothers
Toby and Jake Vest, the musical siblings behind bands such as Augustine,
Bulletproof Vests and Tiger High and local recording studio High/Low.
“He would hang out at the studio and watch us do our thing,”
recalled Toby Vest. “He came in one night and was like, ‘I got this song, I
wrote this song.’ And so Jake said, ‘Let’s record it.’ That was in 2010 — and
that pretty much started it. It definitely became an instant passion for him. He
wasn’t the most naturally musical person, but he knew how to put people in
place to make the things he wanted to make — it’s an impressive skill.”
Over the next several years, Hardee would release a
succession of solo records and band projects ranging from party-pop to cutting
rock: “Clay Otis and the Showbiz Lights”; “The Overachiever”; “Citizen Clay”;
and “Clay Otis and Shadow Brother.”
“He basically made five records in five and a half years,”
noted Vest. “A guy with no ambition to do this six years ago was making records
with serious musicians, and nobody took him any less seriously. That was how
strong his vision and passion were.”
Otis' songs were often ruminations on love and death
delivered in a darkly comic manner. "As a songwriter, I'm blunt and
direct. I like to think I'm like a Chuck D for white people," Hardee
noted, citing the stentorian frontman for rap group Public Enemy. "There
are these things going on in the world that are discussed in the news, but only
in an abstract way. We don't get any sincere stories about that stuff.”
Just a week ago, Hardee had celebrated the release of his
latest album, “ADDults,” with a show at Bar DKDC in Cooper-Young. Addiction was
another frequent topic for Hardee, particularly the epidemic of prescription drug
abuse rampant in his native Florida.
“A lot of the stuff he talked about was based on his own
experiences, but also came from watching people he grew with up fall into that
Panama City party lifestyle and fall apart,” said Vest. “That really informed a
lot of his writing. His sensitivity towards other humans is what’s really
reflected in his music and his lyrics — and how deeply he felt those things.”
For a couple years, Hardee had been splitting time between
Memphis and Northern California, where he’d gotten a job working for a wine
brokerage in Napa. More recently, he returned full time to the Bluff City,
where he continued to write film scripts and songs.
Funeral services for Hardee — which are expected to place in
Florida — are pending. Vest says he will try to organize a Memphis remembrance
of some kind in the next week.
“He really knew how to prop up his friends and encourage
them, and encourage them to be their best," Vest said. "That was
something that really came through in the way he worked with people in the
studio and on stage. I’m just glad to have known him and glad to have made
those records with him. Because they’re gonna be here for years, even though
he’s gone.”
I met Clay in a Gulf Coast Community College (as it was
called back then) screenwriting class in Panama City, Florida.
Our spirit guide, Lynn Wallace, had a hell of a lot of
madness with us on his hands during that course—this was the classroom that
brought my orbit in phase with Clay and Aaron Bearden. Our projects were a bizarre amalgamation of
the sum of his students:
I was penning the first draft of what would become CONVERSION
PARTY, a screenplay where a club kid is deliberately attempting to contract and
spread HIV in the party scene.
Aaron's script followed a musician who falls in love and runs
away with a woman in a successful chick rock trio outfit.
One student (whose name escapes me, sorry) wrote about a paraplegic
using their disability to hustle people.
Clay was writing a modern blacksploitation flick,
unapologetic for the language or the subject matter.
Brother Lynn must have thought us all crazy.
Clay, Aaron, and I started the movie nights at my
apartment. Later dubbed ENDLESS FALL, we'd
meet once a week, spin flicks and talk about what made them work or not. Ripping apart the acting, shot compositions,
costumes, and dialog, we planned on making our own films.
None of us have.
A few years later, I was struggling with terrible depression
and drinking my way through guitar licks, pages of fiction, and deep house
mixes on the turntables. My phone rang one fall afternoon as
I'm pouring a cognac for a Kurosawa flick.
It's Clay.
He called me the "man with a writing plan and a bottle
in his hand"—slick wordplay from a great writer, poetry spoken into the
lines. We talked about addiction, music,
film. He told me he has one of my poems
pinned on his wall.
This one:
The conversation picks me up. A little light during a dark age. Although we made plans to watch a film together, it never happened.
This one:
Epicurean feast;
Red wine waterfalls
Chase rum cakes and ham
Dim
flickering candles
light large, round tables
mood swings as we reminisce faded
times
accordion player invokes old
Italian melodies
hot suites inside
a foot of snow outside
cousins I don't know crying
nibbling carrot sticks and cookies
doily's freckled with crumbs
flowers—
Lilies—
Everywhere…
Grandma's not eating much today
Uncles having cigarettes
Dining at the funeral party
The conversation picks me up. A little light during a dark age. Although we made plans to watch a film together, it never happened.
I lose touch with the man, catching whispers of his
movements through friends.
Aaron and Clay see Cory Branan in Tallahassee.
Clay is in Memphis, making music under the moniker Clay Otis.
Aaron runs into him and gets a few CDs. Aaron says, "One
is so damned good that I damn near wore it out."
And then this morning, the news that he is dead has crept
into my facebook feed like the chilly air that's come from the north and
swallowed New Orleans. The first cold
front of this upcoming winter couldn't come at a more fitting time, don't ya think?
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