Column: Author's new creative outlet is writing songs, made into music via AI

Chicago Tribune

5 hours ago

Roll over Stephen Sondheim, tell Chuck Berry the news: Champ Clark has gone into the music business.
There is little that surprises me about this creative man, who has had a career that has included writing for People magazine for decades; acting on local stages; writing a one-man play about Marlon Brando's ill-fated son Christian that was performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe; writing in 2005 'Shuffling to Ignominy,' the first biography of Black film actor Lincoln Perry, known by the stage name as Stepin Fetchit; delivering singing telegrams and on and on.
Most recently, he has been writing novels, creating four fine books with a protagonist named Drake Haynes, a slightly jaded former news reporter now writing an advice column and solving crimes.
Clark reminded me that he has some musical background, that he was again taking accordion lessons and that he has seven of the instruments. He also has banjos and says, 'If I add bagpipes, I'd have a trifecta of the most hated musical instruments.'
He admits to being 'a terrible musician, a terrible singer. But I am a decent songwriter.' He started writing songs, he says, 'About a dozen years ago when I fell into an unrequited love, which is a great impetus for songwriting. I've since written about 100 songs, though none won over the object of my affection.'
His musical career recently came back to life and the reason is artificial intelligence. 'That was almost by accident,' he says. 'I had 15 friends, most from Chicago, help me out on my new album, performing the first 15 tracks recorded live, and then I ran out of friends and went to AI and started using that.
'It is a little scary, I will admit that, but I have decided to embrace it. I give my lyrics and just select the kind of feeling I want, what kind of style, what instruments,' he says. 'Do I want country? Broadway? Rock? And then in an hour or so, I will be delivered basically what I heard in my head.'
We talked about the questions surrounding artificial intelligence, and about creating music in a way that takes musicians out of the creative process (except in the way live musicians' work gets sampled and copied by AI websites).
He tells me that there are a number of source sites he has used. 'Some have free trials and even when they do charge, it's only a few dollars and you can keep going, revising until you get the sound you want,' he says. 'Is it cheating? Are the results too slick and not human enough? Is it ethical? Who knows? These are the things currently being debated about all uses of AI. What I do know is that AI is not going anywhere. It's here to stay. So we might as well get used to it and learn how to properly and ethically use it.
'I believe I'm doing this with my songs. All the words and music are mine. They don't get changed. It's the performance of these that is AI, but carefully and thoroughly and creatively controlled by myself.'
'I've learned since completing the album that some folks object to the whole idea of the use of AI in music … and elsewhere. I get this. But for me, it's been a godsend. Now I can put down my words and basic melody on paper and, through careful thought and discernment, produce something that reflects what I have in my head … even at three in the morning.'
On his latest album, 'Chicory,' there are 35 songs and I was especially taken with 'Last Night (Back in Chicago)' because it arises from his affection for the city in which he spent many of his formative years.
He has lived in Santa Monica, California, for three decades, but was 16 when he moved to our area from the suburbs of New York City in the summer of 1969 with his parents and three sisters. The family settled in Kenilworth, that fashionable suburb befitting his father's position as the new chief of Time magazine's Chicago bureau.
His father was also named Champ. It's a family name, passed down with variations from his great-grandfather, James Beauchamp Clark, who was speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1911 to 1919, and his grandfather, Bennett Champ Clark, who was a U.S. senator from Missouri.
After a couple of relatively uneventful years at New Trier High School, he spent a semester at Ripon College in Wisconsin before coming home and working as a dishwasher, Christmas tree salesman and bookstore clerk. He studied dance. He taught an after-school program and developed a filmmaking program for kids. He was an artist-in-residence at the Art Institute and also made a living as a house cleaner, artist model, waiter and bartender. He worked for a summer with Cirque du Soleil around the same time he started working in the offices of the People magazine bureau here.
He then began to act on the stages of various local companies and was for seven years an ensemble member of Center Theater. He got some good reviews and some not-so-good reviews. He fell in love with a woman. They got married and, after a couple of years, decided to move to California so he could try to make it as an actor.
He became a father instead and worked as a reporter and writer for People magazine's Los Angeles bureau. He and his wife divorced and, since being laid off by People a decade ago, he has been freelancing, exploring whatever creative urge strikes. His daughter just got married.
His music, he knows, is unlikely to make him rich. 'The songs are meant, of course, to entertain listeners,' he says. 'But maybe they might attract recording artists, and maybe one of them will want to record a song of mine. Making tapes and sending them to artists I admire would be a much harder road.'