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Gary Lee Clark Jr. was born on February 15, 1984, in Austin, Texas. He grew up on the East Side — the predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood east of I-35, the highway Austin uses as an unofficial dividing line. The Eastside of the 1980s and 1990s was where he came up, and the sounds he found there would eventually travel to Grammy stages and White House performance rooms.
He got his first guitar as a Christmas present at thirteen: an Ibanez RX20. He taught himself to play the way resourceful teenagers teach themselves things — checking out how-to-play-guitar books from the Covington Middle School library, and listening to records. Green Day. Nirvana. Jimmy Reed. And Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Austin guitarist whose shadow falls over every serious musician this city produces.
Austin’s Own
Clark played small gigs through his teens and eventually found his way to Antone’s nightclub and its owner, Clifford Antone, who recognized what he had and introduced him to Jimmie Vaughan and others in the Austin blues community. By seventeen, Austin had already proclaimed May 3, 2001 as Gary Clark Jr. Day.
Dr. Charles E. Urdy Plaza in East Austin features a public mosaic called “Rhapsody” depicting Austin musicians — a tribute to the musical identity of the neighborhood that shaped Clark. The East Side that produced him has never stopped producing musicians, and Austin has never stopped celebrating what it gets from them.
Gary Clark Jr. has since won four Grammy Awards and toured with the Rolling Stones. He grew up here on the East Side of Austin, teaching himself guitar from library books, listening to Stevie Ray Vaughan records, and figuring out what he wanted to say.
