Clyde Mattocks: The Man Who Never Quit Playing

If you walk through North Carolina and ask about Clyde Mattocks, people will tell you stories. Not just stories about his music, but stories about the man — how he’s still out there, steel guitar in hand, grinning, playing, teaching, raising up the next crop of musicians while half his peers have long since gone home to sit on the porch and talk about what they used to do. Come October, Clyde will be inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. The thing about Clyde is, he’s not interested in the laurels — he’s too busy doing the thing to worry about what people are pinning on his lapel.

“That’s quite an honor. It’s not really sunk in yet,” he says. “I’ve been playing music over 70 years and it just all runs together.”

That’s not false modesty. That’s a man who’s done so much, seen so much, played so many kinds of music — pop, bluegrass, hardcore country, rock — that the years smear into one long road, dotted with bars, stages, and radio towers. He remembers the moment the music grabbed him. It wasn’t in a studio or a formal lesson. No, it was standing out on the sidewalk as a kid, listening through an open window to a family across the street playing music. “One night a steel guitar player showed up and the light went on and I said, that’s that sound I’ve been hearing,” he laughs. “I thought it was just a regular electric guitar that was making that sound. And then when I saw the steel guitar, it just set me on fire.”

So, Clyde lobbied his parents hard, and at 14, Christmas brought him a lap steel guitar. “I was making some pretty awful music by that night,” he admits. “And I was playing in a band in six weeks because back then, people couldn’t tell whether you were playing one good or not.”

That mix of sly humor and sharp honesty marks Clyde’s whole career. He’s been called the best pedal steel player in North Carolina — maybe even the world — but Clyde shrugs that off.

“That’s so subjective to say the best. I never considered myself the best. Why I stay in it at my age is simply to watch these people grow and become good musicians. Actually, I’ve always been able to see the potential in people very early on when my peers didn’t.”

His band history is as tangled and lively as the music itself. You’ve got the Super Grit Cowboy Band, where Clyde blended country with the rising wave of West Coast rock. “For about three months, people hated us,” he says. “We were too rock for country and too country for rock. But about that time, the wave hit, and from that day, we could do no wrong.”

Ask Clyde about why bands fall apart, and he’s seen the same story play out again and again. “Most of the time, it’s wanting the need after they have families, the need to make more money… a lot of times, it’s wives and girlfriends. I’ve seen guys give up music just because of a girlfriend. And then they lose the girlfriend, and they’ve lost their girlfriend and their gig.”

You talk to Clyde long enough, you realize he doesn’t chase drama. “I have always been a fairly calm person and try to resolve conflicts and not take sides.” He jokes that people have called him “a benevolent dictator” when he leads bands — a boss, sure, but one who looks out for his people.

And bluegrass? That’s home base. “I love the straight stuff — Flatt and Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers. But these days, the dobro is my number one thing.” Even when playing with the loudest rock bands, Clyde laughs, “We would roll our set with straight-ahead bluegrass… and when you’re on a concert bill with five or six rock bands, it’s really refreshing to the crowd to come out there and hear that banjo cracking their attention.”

His connection to his instruments runs deep. When asked if a good instrument can make a player better, Clyde says, “I think instruments have a soul… certain instruments can inspire you to play better.” He knows the magic of picking up something like the 1949 Gibson console he now plays: “It wasn’t my favorite steel for a long time… until I got it. And then when I got it — oh. It’s the response you get out of it.”

At the moment, Clyde is recording with the Lovesick Drifters, a Hank Williams tribute band. Ask him what it is about Hank that draws people decade after decade, and he doesn’t miss a beat: “It’s the songwriting.” And he loves the stories — like how Don Helms’ steel guitar playing first amazed him, or how Helms used to scoop up Gibson console grands from pawn shops because fans wanted to own a guitar his hands had touched.

As for what’s left for Clyde to do, he chuckles. “I played all my licks and played every kind of venue. I’ve played theater shows where I had to wear a tux, and the next night played at a biker bar where you had to wear all black. But now? Forget this legend stuff. I’m just trying to be relevant today.”