Joe Ely

Joe Ely

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LUBBOCK OR LEAVE IT
Joe Ely Documents his West Texas Soul on LIVE AT ANTONE'S
Joe Ely has been tearing up rock, folk, and country circles since his days with the Flatlanders, the late-'70s supergroup out of Lubbock that included Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock. On his own Ely has shared stages with Bruce Springsteen and Carl Perkins, opened for the Clash, and lent his talents to the Grammy-winning Tex-Mex posse Los Super Seven. All well and good, but in Texas, a musician lives or dies by his ability to keep dancers on the floor. Ely's house-rocking live sets are legendary: Never has a band with accordion and pedal steel sounded so good. Hear for yourself on LIVE AT ANTONE'S, his 12th disc. From his Austin home, Ely spoke with Barnes & Noble.com's Kerry Dexter about playing live, the Flatlanders, and his west Texas roots.

Barnes & Noble.com: How do you go about choosing the songs for a live show like the one recorded at Antone's?

Joe Ely: It's really the kinds of songs that are most requested and that we think come off best live. Mainly, it was for the fans. I wanted to get the feeling of being in the middle of the crowd on a hot Saturday night with the band just wailing, you know. We actually recorded four shows, but we ended up using just one, because it stood out from all the rest. We didn't really try to break any new ground, although there are two songs I haven't put on tape before.

Barnes & Noble.com: Which are those?

Joe Ely: "Rock Salt and Nails," which is a song by an ornery old guy called Utah Phillips. He writes a lot of great songs, but very few people have heard of him, he's kind of a hermit. That's a song I've done live for years, just never recorded. And the Buddy Holly tune "Oh Boy," which closes out the record, is sort of a reminder of Lubbock.

Barnes & Noble.com: About Lubbock...

Joe Ely: We moved there when I was ten. Buddy Holly had just died, and he was a huge, huge influence -- everybody played Stratocasters and wanted to sound like him. All kinds of bands were forming all over the place. I kind of learned how to play the electric guitar around that time. There was a lot of music in that dusty, old cotton town -- still is, from Waylon Jennings up to Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks. There's no real explanation for it, except that there's not a lot to do out there.

Barnes & Noble.com: You ran across Mexican music there?

Joe Ely: My daddy had a used clothing store, and all the migrant workers would come in there, so he taught me Spanish. When they'd come up to work the cotton, they brought their music with them. It was like a part of Lubbock became this little Mexican town with the smell of corn tortillas and the accordions playing. Those are some of my most favorite memories.

Barnes & Noble.com: What about the Flatlanders?

Joe Ely: Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock, and I all shared a house in Lubbock in the early '70s. We each had vastly different backgrounds in music: Jimmie knew all about country, Butch had this knowledge of folk songs back to the beginning of time, and I came more from a rock background. We never did really play together as a band, though there was this guy who had a radio station, and he took us up to Nashville, and we recorded 17 tracks. They had a real unusual sound, not what any one of us would do alone. And then it never came out until ten years later in Europe, and then ten years after that, Rounder picked it up and reissued it in the U.S.

Barnes & Noble.com: Did the three of you write songs together?

Joe Ely: We never did back then. The first time we ever sat down, all three of us, and tried to write together, was back a year or two ago when we wrote a song that ended up on the HORSE WHISPERER soundtrack. Actually, when we did that we wrote three other songs at the same time, and now we've written some more since and played about 20 dates together. I don't know where that will take us, but this summer we'll get together and write some more. And it still doesn't sound like anything any one of us would do by himself.

Barnes & Noble.com: You've done two live recordings before. Why another one now?

Joe Ely: There's nothing I love more than having a hot band on a Saturday night -- there's just nothing like it. And every few years I like to step back and kind of document where the band is at that point. It's a snapshot -- and a souvenir for the fans, too.

Kerry Dexter