So my guest today, Clarence Greenwood, also known as Citizen Cope on the music circuit, grew up actually in the really early days in Memphis, and then split most of his time between Washington, DC, in the sort of late eighties and nineties, and a small town in West Texas where he got exposed to all sorts of different types of music.
The go go scene in DC, the country scene in West Texas, and then sort of the whole amalgam.
And that set him into a whole bunch of exploration of what it would be like for him to actually live his life in the world of music.
It started by simply writing poetry and slowly blossomed into creativity and writing and singing and then recording.
He ended up getting signed pretty early on.
And then some of the sort of elder guard in the music world started to take notice of him.
People like Carlos Santana, who first recorded Cope's song Sideways.
And then he decided at some point that it was time for him to step into his own place of control, start his own label and build his own career.
As we sat down to record this conversation, he was literally about to kick off a new tour for his new album, heroin and helicopters.
And that is kind of a funny story that involves Carlos and Hannah behind the name of that album.
And the tour goes on for a number of months.
And one of his first stops was actually just a couple blocks from our studio at the Beacon in New York City.
We dive into his journey, his life, his influences, the moments and experiences that really shaped and formed him.
We explore how things have changed, how his lens on music and life has changed since he's become a dad and so much more.
Super excited to share this conversation with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project.
I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and moved to Greenville, Mississippi, and my father's side of the family was in a small town in Texas called Vernon.
So I was kind of exposed to different lifestyles, different communities, different cultures throughout my life.
But when I moved to New York, I felt like it was the first time I felt like I was home.
Yeah.