BLACK MOUNTAIN, N.C. Clem Britton leans over a wheezing fuzz pedal at the White Horse, smacking it like an old Philco that has lost its picture. “Humidity is the devil,” he mutters. One more whack and a bruised-peach chord blooms from his forty-five-year-old Ibanez Hummingbird copy. He grins, half Blue Ridge calm, half Bourbon Street mischief. “Told ya.”
Raised a mile from Mount Mitchell, Britton grew up in a house where linseed oil and claw-hammer banjos shared the same air. His grandfather, an art professor at Black Mountain College, believed in happy accidents. “If paint dripped, lean into the drip,” the elder Britton told him. When the pandemic shuttered galleries, Clem took that advice to music. “I would rinse a brush, hit a G-minor, and a melody would wander in,” he says.
One of those melodies became “Ode to Tennessee Williams,” a humid shuffle that drifts past magnolias and Bourbon Street while a boulevard beauty named Maggie turns heads. “Every woman in New Orleans is Maggie,” Britton says with a shrug. The chorus stakes its claim with, “Life’s last walk is easy, I ain’t afraid to die.” He nods. “Williams wrote about beauty crumbling in slow motion. I’m just scoring the film in my head.”
The newest cut to pass that test is “Dreamers,” which Britton drafted after watching news coverage of migrant crackdowns. The lyric centers on an undocumented drywall hanger who fled gangs in Tijuana, toasts tequila on the Fourth of July, and scrubs floors at a Texas café to keep the lights on. The hook drives home Britton’s point: “Shouting at a dreamer don’t make dreams go away.” Asked what sparked it, he does not hesitate. “I wrote this after watching all the BS happening around. I have had enough blue-collar jobs to know they are not easy. I cannot imagine heading off someplace with no real money, just trying to make a better life for my kids. Jesus talked about that kind of grace. Some days it feels like the cruelty is the whole point.”
Those steel parts belong to Cal Zimmerman, who joined after hearing Britton’s rough demos online. “Clem lets me treat the steel like a keyboard,” Zimmerman says. “I get to run it through echo, drift almost out of tune, then pull it back. It keeps the song breathing.”
For gear watchers: Britton’s main electric is a Franken-Tele with a Strat body and Lollar pickups, while a pre-SE PRS NF3 handles backup duty. Both feed a battered 1965 Deluxe Reverb. The acoustic spotlight goes to the lawsuit-era Ibanez, a copy of a Gibson Hummingbird that “sings cheap wood, big soul,” he laughs.
The road is where these songs stretch out. A shoestring tour begins 15 July in Athens, Georgia, weaves through living rooms from Birmingham to Baton Rouge, then jumps to backyard shows in British Columbia and Alaska. Britton shakes his head. “Didn’t know mosquitoes get that big up north.” By late August he will be back in Black Mountain to mix Bright Counterpoint, the nine-song debut set for release on 26 September 2025. The album blends mountain ballads with Gulf Coast grooves, and features the still-unreleased “Drunk On Love,” a ragtime shuffle that pivots into almost Beatles style pop. “I wrote it in the van between Mobile and Biloxi. It’s about falling in love in a way where they still own your bones,” he says.
Streaming numbers remain modest, though “Ode” passed fifteen thousand plays after landing on a small Americana playlist. Britton shrugs. “If ten people dig it, I am good. Promotion feels strange.” Word travels faster than algorithms, though; one Delta club recently introduced him as “Townes Van Zandt meeting a French Quarter brass band,” a tag he carries with a smile.
Photo: Mel Clark - Britton inside his grandfather’s former studio he took over in Black Mountain, June 2025.
Back at sound-check, the fuzz pedal obeys, coating an untitled waltz in rough velvet. The room smells of beer lines and old pine. When Britton bends a blue note, the air turns sticky with honeysuckle, and even the barbacks pause their work. He chuckles. “Keep the faucet open, folks. You never know what will pour out.”
If that faucet keeps running, expect the next wave of Americana to arrive with river mud on its boots and Clem Britton’s name in the liner notes.