Barnes & Noble.com: Listening to you do the new songs acoustic, it struck me that if you had stuck with an acoustic version of this album, it would have been something approaching Springsteen's Nebraska, with respect to the subject matter and the temper of the times it addresses. How did it evolve into a hard-driving band album?

Joe Ely: Well, I actually finished the first version of this record -- which resembles the final release not in the least, because it was an acoustic album -- probably at the end of 2000. But then I started working with Butch [Hancock] and Jimmie [Dale Gilmore] on the Flatlanders' album [Now Again], and as I started working with them I realized there was a whole period of my life I had forgotten about, which was the time we first got together and started going into the old folk songs. Butch would teach me these old Appalachian songs I had never heard, Jimmie knew all these old country songs, and I kinda came from the rock 'n' roll world. I grew up listening to Buddy Holly. When I first came to Lubbock he had just died, so everybody in Lubbock had a Stratocaster. So I always had a little rock 'n' roll band when I was growing up.

Coming together when we first did, it opened me up to a whole new set of rhythms and songs, that finger-picking stuff. So while we were working on the Flatlanders record I started thinking, I really love this kind of rhythm, but I've never done a record like this, never approached anything like that. While we were out on the road with the Flatlanders, I was writing these songs and everything felt like a whole other record -- I had just taken a right turn. I could have done them all acoustic, but then there was something that didn't quite hold up like that: They needed a little bit of a rhythm, and a little bit of something behind them. I think the record would have worked as an acoustic record, but it didn't feel quite right.

B&N.com: The first two songs, "Fightin' for My Life" and "I'm on the Run," are so fierce. You really come roaring out of the box.

JE: Yeah, the whole record has a progression to it. I don't know what the mood of the country is, or the mood of the radio stations, so I don't have any idea if it's gonna get any airplay, but I feel I've done my job. I hope I caught a little of what's going on out there in the world from an everyday-man point of view.

You know, I didn't want to make a big record; I wanted to make a little record of little stories, not big headlines. That was the whole theme of it. In order to do those little stories, I wanted everyone to play small, find the groove, not try to make a big statement. As I saw it coming together I started doubting myself and I started thinking, Man, I don't know if this is it. But then as I zoomed into it, I realized that in its simplicity it was kind of complex, because then the story came through better and that's basically what it was about.

B&N.com: It's interesting that you talk about making a small record, because it seems to speak to big themes about the mood of the country, outside of urban areas anyway.

JE: Right.

B&N.com: There are a lot of stories about people on the edge, and so many of the characters in these songs are on their last legs...

JE: They're right on the edge.

B&N.com: The earth is rebelling against them, things are falling apart in their lives...

JE: There's floods and droughts. I wanted it to reflect what I was thinking, but putting it more into the context of some guy living in some little town down at the end of the road whose story never makes the paper. But he is going through a microcosm of what the world is going through: A corporation bought his farm and put him out of business, or some little guy runs off a bridge. Instead of being the headlines it was what was on the back page, but it still told the story of what was going on, through little people's eyes, like the everyday person, or somebody who is observing what's going on. Which has basically always been my job. When I was a kid I always wanted to be a door-to-door salesman so I could walk into people's living rooms and see what was the turmoil of their lives. But I guess I was never able to do that except in songs.

B&N.com: In "All That You Need" there's a line -- "The ones who set the policy don't give a damn about our needs" -- that really jumps out. Your records have never been overtly political, but this sounds like a political statement about the disconnect between the people who make policy and the guys who are living from day to day trying to make ends meet. That line could set some people off -- you might get Dixie Chicked.

JE: Well, that whole song is something I've been wanting to write for a long time, because I've seen it happen in my immediate family. My uncle, whose daddy and granddaddy settled an area of Texas back at the turn of the century, and had a huge, giant farmland. Back then the state of Texas said if you could handle it, you can have it. If you don't do it, we'll give it to somebody else. So he took on a huge piece of land, and it came all the way up from the turn of the century to my immediate cousins. My uncle would fly us around the perimeter of the farm in his plane, because it was so huge -- 20 miles in every direction. But I watched it go from a huge farm that produced huge amounts of cotton and my uncle being a very wealthy man, to his sons losing the farm 30 years later -- the entire thing. I think they might have just a little tiny piece of land left, basically because of corporate farmers coming in and taking over huge plots of land. It's kind of like a Wal-Mart coming into town and all of a sudden a sewing machine company goes out of business, little mom-and-pops go out of business.

So I watched that happen all around Texas, and I played some of Willie [Nelson]'s Farm Aids too, and I thought, That's real close to where I came from and I need to say something about that. I tried a couple different songs, but it never worked. I never could say it right. And this one, I just took it straight from the time that they foreclosed on the farm, and then followed the family from there. It's not an accurate portrait of what happened in my family, but it's close. The sons, now one of them is a bouncer in a bar, and one of them runs an air conditioner place. Went from having thousands of acres to working for a living, in one generation.

B&N.com: From a lyrical standpoint, this album has a novelistic feel to it. You could start with "Fightin' for My Life" and hear the entire album as that character's story, right through to "Gotta Find Ol' Joe." It's the same guy all the way through, and even when there's a love song there's very little salvation, very little redemption to be had. He's trying to get there…