KATIE ELASMAR/WHISKEY DIET
Joy Clark and bassist Tiffany Morris perform at The Split Level Concerts series at The Jersey Shore Arts Center in Ocean Grove.
The name of the Split Level Concerts series, now in its second year at The Palaia Theater at The Jersey Shore Arts Center in Ocean Grove, refers to the fact that Split Level Concerts began as a house concert series, all the way back in 2000. Even in a theater setting, though, the series retains a house concert feel. I doubt that Joy Clark’s March 21 show there would have felt more intimate if you were sitting in someone’s living room.
If you are not familiar with Clark … that is understandable. This was her first show in New Jersey under her own name, though she is a veteran, New Orleans-based singer-songwriter and guitarist, having worked extensively with artists such as Allison Russell and The Neville Brothers’ Cyril Neville in addition to releasing two albums on her own: An EP, Here, in 2020, and a full-length album, Tell It to the Wind, in 2024. The latter came out on the Ani DiFranco-founded Righteous Babe label.
Clark was backed at this show by Jentleman Sharp on keyboards, and Tiffany Morris on bass; both also contributed backing vocals, helping to create a remarkably full sound for a three-piece group.
Morris and Sharp’s warm and sensitive playing was just right for Clark’s introspective, positive-minded songs, which she often introduced with stories that helped listeners connect them to her life and, maybe, find a connection to things that they have gone through themselves.
KATIE ELASMAR/WHISKEY DIET
Joy Clark at The Jersey Shore Arts Center.
She opened the show with “One Step in the Right Direction,” a solemn statement of purpose in which she sang, “I feel the sunshine on my face/I know this road is not a race/So I keep going my own pace/Till I find my place … I’m taking one step in the right direction.” The second song, “Shine,” had a funkier sound but a similar inspirational message, with Clark singing, “Shine your light/Radiate the great that makes you, you,” and getting the crowd to sing along.
“All Behind” was a firm declaration about leaving negativity behind and moving ahead, while “Tell It to the Wind” turned toward the mystical, lyrically, though it also benefited from some of Clark’s strongest pop hooks. The equally catchy “Love Yourself” was explained as something she wrote about her 12-year-old self. “Go back in time, look her in the eye, and tell her, ‘You’re so perfect,’ ” Clark sang.
After a pair of love songs, “Good Thing” and “Watching You Sleep,” Clark returned to the theme of personal empowerment on “Shimmering,” while also stretching out musically with a long guitar solo and some improvisational instrumental exchanges with Sharp and Morris.
Before “Guest,” which has an anthemic feel, she talked about her upbringing as the daughter of a minister. She found “my love for connecting with people” by playing music in church, she said, but as a gay woman, she ultimately found that the church was “not the most welcoming place,” and felt that she had to hide her true self there. She dedicated the song to “anybody who ever felt they were fading into the background of their own life.”
KATIE ELASMAR/WHISKEY DIET
Keyboardist Jentleman Sharp performs with Joy Clark at The Jersey Shore Arts Center.
She introduced the main set’s last song, “Lesson” — which has a swamp-rock feel, and a touch of edgy defiance — with some loving memories of her “kind but fierce” late grandmother. She also drew some connections between the segregrated world her grandmother grew up in, and racial problems that persist, today.
She then encored with the show’s only cover, a rapturous take on Allen Toussaint’s “Southern Nights,” which became a huge hit in 1977 for Glen Campbell. The song included a jaunty piano solo by Sharp, and a pair of verses at the end that felt like a benediction:
It feels so good, it’s frightening
Wish I could stop this whole world from fighting
Mysteries, like this and many others in the trees
Blow in the night, in the southern skies
The second season of the Split Level Concerts series — which has already featured shows headlined by James Maddock, Tim Easton, Anthony D’Amato and Shannon McNally — has two more concerts left. Lucy Kaplansky and Dave Vargo will perform on April 18, followed by Kim Richey and Sharon Lasher, on May 16. Visit jerseyshoreartscenter.org.
For more on Joy Clark, visit joyclarkmusic.com.
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