Photo from: Paul Clark Music

Born in Kansas City, Paul grew up in a diversified environment. "My grandfather, the son of a German immigrant and a wild west pioneer, taught me the value of hard labor and the joy of building with my hands. My grandmother, a hearing-aid dependent, literature teacher, gave me a love for words and a spirit of compassion. My father, a trial attorney and tireless sports companion, showed me wisdom, knowledge, mercy, justice, and healthy competitiveness. Last, but not least, my mother, an interior designer and constant cheerleader, pointed me to the canvas with its limitless colors and depth of field.

Unfortunately, commotion was the path of his mid-teens. The whirlpool of drugs and social rebellion nearly drowned him. Mercifully, in April of 1970, after his freshman year of college was cut short due to student unrest, Paul moved from Kansas to a primitive log cabin at 9,800 feet on the Continental Divide, in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. There, his life took a miraculous turn from commotion to devotion as he witnessed something far greater than what he had seen in those stadiums.

" I was an 18-year-old hippie, strong and independent, yet riddled with fear and hopelessness. Like so many disgruntled youth during the era of Vietnam and social unrest, I tried to find solace in God. An anemic denominational church experience, Transcendental Meditation, the Bghavad Gita, the Tibetan Book Of The Dead, grass, hash, opium, speed and countless LSD trips left me empty. One day, at the post office, I received a box of books from my grandmother about Jesus Christ. I chose one and read it from cover to cover in one day. At the end of the book I prayed a prayer to follow Jesus as his disciple. The next morning brought more than another pristine Rocky Mountain High. I remember waking up and sitting on my porch. Something had drastically changed. I felt deeply loved, so new, so clean, so forgiven and unspeakably peaceful. I was also overwhelmed with thankfulness. Concurrently, songs began to pour out of me like the water in the river next to my cabin."

Paul felt an immediate call on his life to sing a new song to the ends of the earth. With the stage as a pulpit, he sang his newly penned songs at the Narrow Gate Coffeehouse, a place he and his friends established to reach out to hippies shortly after his move to Denver in 1971. His local following thrust him into the now historical, "Jesus Movement", which in turn, led to national and international performances.

Paul is recognized as one of the founding fathers of the Jesus Movement and the Contemporary Christian Music industry. During his 13 year association with Word Records in the 1970s and 1980s, Paul's songwriting, record producing and avant-garde artistry placed him in the forefront along with artists like Phil Keaggy, 2nd Chapter of Acts, Love Song, Larry Norman, Andre Crouch, Honeytree, Keith Green, Randy Stonehill, Barry McGuire, and many others.  [ posted on CBN Music ]