Interview: An Evening with Joe Ely

A single spotlight shone down on the stage of Harford Community College's Chesapeake Theater. Atop a throw rug sat a stool, a guitar in its stand, a microphone, and a small table. That was about all Joe Ely needed on this night and his current tour.

The intimate setting of the theater was far and away from big arenas and bars, but in a career that goes back some 50 years it was fine for Ely. This program is "as stripped down as it can be," he would tell me, "I like to do that. If you can put something with just you and a guitar, I think it makes it more personal to the people as opposed to a big band arrangement, 'cause then you're looking at who's gonna take a solo, you know. So this is just right for this record."

With a quiet, easy humor, Ely brought songs old and new, plus a lifetime of stories to the performance. A largely older crowd came to the small theater, excited to see Ely this close.

I didn't think I would get as close as I did.

One thing I enjoy from any event is talking with people who exchange stories of the places they've seen a particular artist, and what they remember of that night. I had the good luck of sitting next to a lady who went to Texas Tech-Lubbock, who told me stories of the Cotton Club and haunts the Amarillo native frequented back in the day.

The moment arrives. Silver-haired with an accustomed quiff, in mostly black, Ely walked onstage to a huge hand. His smile and wave were as easy a greeting to someone he'd long known. Ely sat down and began with Butch Hancock's "When the Nights are Cold," from his new CD, Panhandle Rambler.

This latest recording on Rack 'Em Records is another collection of Ely's story songs, laid back, yet consistent not only with Joe's body of work but also his personality. "I didn't really write (the album) to any particular people in mind," Ely explains, "I just wrote it, because it's where I grew up. This record is kind of revisiting the dusty, old, windy spaces. A lot of the characters in it are people I ran into in my life, some of them I didn't even know their names. But I wrote little pieces of songs, actually stories, I've always done that, kept journals. So this is just a collection of the journals, and then I fleshed them out a little bit and made them into full-blown songs. I'm just glad to get a song finished the way I like and then put it in a collection that feels right for those particular songs."

The subtle passion Ely speaks with is noteworthy, and the same was to be said for the music. Chords, a beat, and specific attack; the songs very much sounded like Ely had just sat down to play them for the first time, and this he acknowledged. "I like to go back to the roots, back to the beginning."

Songs from the new album took precedence in the first part of the set, which included Guy Clark's "Magdalene." Then came "Wounded Creek," another song of images that merge past and present.

"I'm always doing that," Ely admits. "I did one of Bonnie & Clyde like that; I did several. I have a song that I haven't put out yet," he continues, "but it's kind of a takeoff on the Greek tragedies. It's a guy who's a stock car racer who lives in Lake Texoma, he's kind of haunted by his grandfather, who told him he was gonna lose his life in a stock car race, (and) it kind of turns into like an old Greek parable. I like to do that; I don't know why, I guess just 'cause I can ... you can do that in songs, and you can do it in movies too like O Brother, Where Art Thou? The Coen brothers do that quite a bit, they have references to different eras."

Ely decided on a Woody Guthrie tune. "Deportee" in his hands and voice becomes his own song. A favorite from 1995's Letter to Laredo, "All Just to Get to You" was then delivered.

He touched again on the Flatlanders, the trio of Ely, Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. From the latter's pen came "Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown."

Ely prefaces the song by explaining a little about his life and growing up in Lubbock, a place where there wasn't much to do, but "fill the space up with songs." This led to a perfect segue into "Not That Much Has Changed," From 2011's Satisfied at Last.

A call for requests elicited numerous replies for old hits, and Ely chose Tom Russell's "Gallo del Cielo." Again from Letter to Laredo, Ely's version is slower, with a more eerie telling.

The second set included favorites like "If You Were a Blue Bird," and "A Little Like Love" (the second from 1998's Twistin' in the Wind). Stories of working in a carnival followed, and how that inspired "Carnival Bum." "Me and Billy the Kid" followed; Billy Joe Shaver's "Live Forever" and Robert Earl Keen's "The Road Goes on Forever" finished the show. Joe then came back for "Cool Rockin' Loretta" and Townes van Zandt's "White Freightliner."

Then came the unforgettable part. Ely came out to do the customary meet and greet; I picked my spot. I re-entered the nearly empty theater, and Joe came up the steps. Unassuming, with the smile never having left, Joe said hello and gladly agreed to speak with me.

He first signed vinyl copies of his old records, the more recent CD's and other memorabilia, and was polite and engaging with all that waited. "Let's go where it's quieter," I think he said when done.

We went back into the theater, now quiet but for one of two of the tech crew. We sat down in theater seats; Joe sipped his post-show drink. I asked, Joe spoke.

He went further into his life in Lubbock. "Nobody likes dust storms and tornadoes, and all the things that West Texas is famous for," Ely says. "But it is an amazing place to return to, because you see it in a different light as you get older and more experienced, the more you've traveled around you see things from a different perspective. I think that's why I wanted to do this record, and especially now. I make references in songs, I didn't want to talk totally about it but I make references to the cartels, and that's made a big change, especially in through like the Rio Grande River, cities, always loved the border towns because they had an old Mexico flavor, they hadn't become modernized, and I always loved the music and everything. So in this record, I tried to show a little of the old feeling but also include some of the fear the cartels have brought in there."

Then, more of the city he grew up in: "Lubbock was amazing," Joe says, "because for such an isolated town, surrounded by miles and miles of flat plains, Lubbock is an amazing well of stories and writers and stuff, and especially songwriters. I've always felt lucky to just happen to be hatched there, you know. Because it's not an easy place to live, the environment's harsh, they're running out of water, but at the same time there's a wealth of stories there, and a wealth of writers that are trying to capture those stories in a certain form, and very few places do that. "

With story songs, and their imagery, Ely became serious as he discussed what is becoming a lost art. "Unfortunately it has," he says. "I don't think the value of carrying on the history of songwriters, kind of merging the present day with the past (is understood). Woody Guthrie was great at that, he took old-timey ballads and folk songs and put new words to them. Songs about Bonnie and Clyde; he did the greatest song about Pretty Boy Floyd, and his portrait of workers and Mexican laborers and so on.

'I'm disappointed when I turn on like a radio station that's supposed to be modern day Americana stuff," he continues, "and it's songs about, you know, chicks at the beach, playin' kickball, and hey let's go drink a beer and get real drunk and pass out. Those are great songs for just a break, but we're in charge of the modern day stories these days."

Joe never once railed or decried any of the changes to music, or to the machine it's largely now become. "We have to keep things in mind," he says, "not just what the audience is gonna like, but what you're gonna tell as a story that somebody might listen to a hundred years from now and say, 'Hey, I've never heard this story before', kind of like a newspaper clipping, but in a verse form."

The encroachment of commercialization that has taken Nashville appears to be hitting another place close to Ely. "I've noticed that the same thing is happening to like Austin and places that were considered the Avant Garde of the songwriter movement," he explains. "I've watched the same thing that happened to Nashville, trying to repeat same formula over and over now happens in Austin with producers trying to make the band that got on the radio last week sound exactly like, and using the same instruments, the same producer, and that's what happens when something becomes popular, people try to copy that, copy the sound."

As for songwriters, Ely liberally covers and plays, "people's songs that moved me and inspired me. In fact, I've got about five different albums I've recorded at my house that are tributes to other people. But I don't know what to do with them, too much to even think about, but I did one for Butch Hancock, Guy Clark, Terry Allen, I kinda did an acoustic version of a thing we worked on about 20 years ago, and lots of other tributes that I kinda just started on but didn't finish them.

'I've been fortunate to be 50 years on the road now starting out when I was about fifteen, sixteen, going out in to the world collecting, songs, learning how to write songs, and I happened to be fortunate to run into some of the best writers I admire, like Townes van Zandt, Butch, Guy, John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett, Springsteen, all these people I've run into in my life that are serious writers."

The Flatlanders had to be brought up. "We played the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival (in San Francisco), which has become a wonderful, huge festival. (We) played a couple shows and were out there for about four, five days together. We talk about getting together and kicking something around, but we really don't take it too seriously, because we like to keep that as a group of friends and not as a business and so when we get together and build a new group of songs it's as a bunch of friends getting together and recording in stead of being a business decision. I think that's why we've been together and 40 years and still like each other!"

As for the question of the current tour, and what comes next? "I've got three records that I'm working on," Joe tells me. "I'm always working on several records at the same time. I have no set goal of when they're gonna come out or when they're gonna be finished. I've got three different records I'm working on whenever I get back home and kick back for a couple of days, and I go over to my studio and start working again...I'm a workin' man, always been a workin' man," he adds with a grin.

I could not resist. "The road goes on forever..."

"...but the party never ends," Joe finishes, "that's the way it is."

(The author thanks Craig Ward and Bob Mumby of Slate Ridge Entertainment, plus Don Boles for their kindness and assistance.)

Photo Credits: Will van Overbeek

www.joeely.com

www.slateridgeentertainment.com

To post a comment, you must register and login.