Live at Antones!
AUSTIN TX- An event that only comes around every 9 years is a live album by Joe Ely. The first series of recordings was done on January 22 and 23 at Antones.. Clifford Antone hosted the show and the show was dedicated to drummer Donald Lindley. The fifteen song set includes favorites from the entire history of Ely's career. A video was recorded of the Antones shows and may be released on DVD later in the year. Now available at your local record store or can be ordered at Joe's Cantina..

"You say you want drama/ I'll give you drama
You want muscle? / I'll give you nerve"
--Joe Ely / Settle For Love

"It's a snapshot," says Joe Ely of his latest album, Live At Antone's.

"Every few years I like to step back and kind of document where the band is at that point. And it's kind of a souvenir for the fans." By those criteria, Live At Antone's is the latest installment of an ongoing documentary of an extraordinary musician on a lifelong journey.

The new album (Ely's 13 domestic release) joins 1980's Live Shots and 1990's Live At Liberty Lunch in chronicling the evolution of one of the great ensembles in rock and roll--the Joe Ely Band.

That band, of course, has undergone many permutations since Ely blew out of
West Texas and released his first album in 1977. But the heart of the ensemble is reunited once again for Live At Antone's; Ely, steel guitarist extraordinaire Lloyd Maines, and monolithic guitarist Jesse Taylor.

That Panhandle triumvirate is only part of the story, however. On this album, Ely is also joined by accordionist and songwriter Joel Guzman, Dutch flamenco guitarist Teye, bassist Gary Herman, and drummer Rafael O'Malley Gayol.

Recorded over the course of two nights, in increments of three-hour sets, at the world-famous blues mecca in Austin, Texas, Live At Antone's not only brings Ely's in-concert repertoire up to date, it also allows him the chance to reprise songs from across the span of his quarter-century of recording.

Besides Ely originals such as "All Just To Get To You," "Road Hawg" and "My
Eyes Got Lucky," Live At Antone's also includes songs by some of Ely's favorite writers, including Robert Earl Keen ("The Road Goes On Forever"), Utah Phillips ("Rocksalt and Nails"), Tom Russell ("Gallo de Cielo"), and, of course, primal Texas rocker Buddy Holly ("Oh Boy!").

From "Dallas," a song he first performed in the mid-Seventies as part of the fabled trio the Flatlanders (which included fellow West Texans and lifelong friends Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore), to the Tex-Mex flavored tunes such as "Ranches and Rivers" and "Nacho Mama" which have permeated his last two albums, Live At Antone's offers a compact portrait of an eclectic
artist whose only constant has been unquenchable energy and an unflickering passion.

* * * *

"Lubbock is so flat in every direction, that if you grow up in it and are blessed with any curiosity at all, your attention just naturally runs to the horizon, the edge... It's the same thing a good song does--go straight from the heart to the heart of the matter."
--Musician and visual artist Terry Allen

If home is where the heart is, then Joe Ely's home for most of his life has been a stretch of two-lane blacktop baking under a West Texas sun--an ebony scrawl connecting two horizons, with nothing but a line of distant, slow-moving boxcars to delineate the skyline. It's the stuff that dreams are made of.

Born in Amarillo in 1947, Ely and his family soon moved to Lubbock, on the
windy tabletop of Texas' Great South Plains. A town in which conformity is
almost a civic motto, Lubbock inevitably bred a subculture of passionate
non-conformists, most of whom tapped into the West Texas musical legacy of
homeboy Buddy Holly, as well as Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison, Bob Wills, and
Buddy Knox.

In his own music, Ely has always embodied the American ideal of the footloose traveler, a creature as unfettered as Huck Finn or carefree as Melville's Ishmael, who used to follow behind funeral processions because it made him feel more alive.

As a youth Ely really did, no kiddin', run away and join the circus; He joined Ringling Bros. for a time and got a job feeding the World's Smallest Horse. Even back then, though, songs were beginning to gestate. Everything you really need to know about the young Joe Ely can be gleaned in the first verse from the first song of his first album, released way back when in 1977:

"Well, I left my home out on the great High Plains / Headed for some new terrain
Standin' on the highway with my coffee cup / Wonderin' who' s gonna pick me up
I had my hopes up high..."

Well, somebody did pick him up. And then someone else taught him how to
jump a freight train, and someone (figuratively speaking) introduced him to
someone who knew someone who had a couch in Greenwich Village, where he met a girl who used to date a guy who ran a nightclub in New Orleans that needed a guitar player...

Slowly but inexorably, by the mid-Sixties, Ely had evolved to become the gypsy cowboy he'd dreamed of becoming when the distant horizons of West Texas seemed as stifling as a prison cell. He bummed around for a few years, living for awhile in a basement full of theatrical props beneath Astor Place in New York, where the adjacent subway rattled his teeth on a round-the-clock basis. On a whim, he took off for Europe with a traveling theatrical group, and wound up slipping through the catacombs of Paris at midnight.

The road led back to Lubbock in 1971, where Ely hooked up with two other Hub City songwriting prodigies, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock. They formed a short-lived acoustic band, the Flatlanders, continues to exert an improbable but undeniable hold on listeners today (and with whom Ely has once again been recording and touring).

In the Flatlanders, as in Ely's music today, influences ranging from Jimmie Rodgers to Bob Dylan to Mexican border radio made themselves manifest. But there was something more...

The stark landscape of West Texas and the ceaseless keening of the restless wind lent an almost mystical resonance to the Ely's music. Songs such as "Me and Billy the Kid" and "I'm A Thousand Miles From Home" (both featured on Live At Antone's) reverberate to the siren call of the Western landscape.

"Joe is completely restless," says Terry Allen, one of Ely's West Texas musical contemporaries. "It's almost like the stage is some kind of cage for him. Normally, he would be out driving a hundred miles an hour in a car, or going from one pool hall to another. But on the stage, that energy is confined and it comes out in that music."

It always has.

The first Joe Ely Band had its inception with a two-night stand at the Main Street Saloon, near the Texas Tech campus, in Lubbock in 1973. Though the group played that and subsequent engagements without a drummer the results
were, recalled Lloyd Maines, "mind-boggling."

After a year of serving as the virtual house band at the Main Street Saloon, Ely put together the ensemble with which listeners across the country first became familiar, which included both Maines and Jesse Taylor. There are those who even today would put that classic Ely Band up there with any of the timeless outfits that popular music has produced, in terms of sheer excitement and onstage combustibility.

Part of it had to do with geographical tradition; a band's prowess in Texas has always rested largely on how well it comes across live. Records were something of an afterthought. "There's nothing I love more than having a hot band on a Saturday night," Ely affirms. "There's nothing else like it."

Taylor and Maines were and are the band's two sparkplugs, and an unlikelier
pair have seldom crossed paths onstage. Taylor bristled with blues and rock licks, and Maines, who played sweet country notes on his steel, seemed sonically overmatched. But together the two guitarists made an explosive team.

In early songs like "Johnny Blues" and "Boxcars," Lloyd took his steel off the leash, letting it roar like a horn section or wail like a highballing freight; Jesse, a massive man aptly nicknamed "Hercules," drove himself and Maines on with one volley of muscular solos after another. (Listen to the version of "Johnny Blues" on Live Shots album or the blistering cover of Holly's "Oh Boy!" which closes Live At Antone's, by way of example).

In the early years, Ely was all over the stage, ricocheting from the speaker stacks to the drum kit, bouncing off the bass player, winding up with the toes of his cowboy boots hooked over the lip of the stage as his body vibrated like a human question mark. Artist Guy Juke pictured Ely with a jackhammer, reducing an average Saturday night to delirious rubble.

"It's always like a desperation with the music," Terry Allen continued, considering Ely with his artist's eye. "He doesn't physically move around like he used, but the intensity is, like, doubled. He can do more standing still no than he could do moving all over the stage before."

* * * *

As good as the band was, Ely took them all to another level when he hooked up with the Clash to tour America and Great Britain at the dawn of the Eighties. The West Texas country-rockers and the standard-bearers of English punk rock found themselves in unanticipated synch, as Ely played tour guide for the bemused Brits in Lubbock, while the Clash pushed the Ely Band to play with even more damn-the-torpedoes intensity. Ely's classic early Eighties albums, Live Shots and Musta Notta Gotta Lotta, go a long way towards capturing the headlong rush of the era.

After two years of non-stop touring, opening shows for the Rolling Stones, Linda Ronstadt, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and still maintaining their own frenetic schedule of honky-tonk one-nighters, the road had taken its toll. Exhausted, Ely retired the original band in 1982.

* * * *

After a period of rediscovering his music through solo shows, Ely enlisted members of the Austin jazz-rock ensemble Passenger to serve as his backup band. Ely recorded one more album in 1984 for MCA Records, the curious, computer-generated artifact Hi Res, before being dropped from the label. His daughter, Marie Elena, was born the same year. "I wonder why I thought for years I couldn't slow down enough to have a child," he told a reporter at the time.

* * * *

After two albums for the independent Hightone label (1987's Lord of the Highway and '88's Dig All Night), Ely re-signed with MCA Records and released a second signature live album, Live At Liberty Lunch. He had by this time assembled another bulletproof band, a tongue-in-groove rock 'n' roll quartet that figured in Dig All Night, Love and Danger and Letter To Laredo.

Ely's current cycle, from some perspectives, began in March of '95, when he hooked a bootheel while hopping over a fence and broke his shoulder and hip. Hobbled by his injuries for four months, he began to reassess his ways and means.

"Psychologically, the fall came at a point where I said, hey, I've got to look at things a little differently," he said. "I kind of rethought everything--about my house, my family, my music, my band. I found that the things I was writing changed at that point too."

Speaking of his own childhood he said, "My family was constantly on the move, my daddy worked on the railroads and moving van lines. "And when he finally kind of settled in Lubbock, he got a little used clothes store downtown. That was kind of the time when I developed a real love for Mexican music, because he had this place way down in the lower part of Broadway.

"And all the migrant workers who came up to chop and strip the cotton and pull the weeds would buy their clothes there. So I just loved that period of time, with accordions on the street, and the smell of corn tortillas, and the dance halls and the lights. Part of Lubbock was like a little Mexican village."

Today, those memories form the leitmotif for Ely's band, from the Iberian melodies of Teye's flamenco guitar to the conjunto riffs of Joel Guzman's
accordion. (Guzman and Ely were both part of the 1999 Grammy winning Los Super Seven Project, which also featured members from Los Lobos.)

The border-straddling, vividly visual songs on his two most recent studio albums, Letter To Laredo and 1998's Twistin' In the Wind are the soundtrack of a man wandering out into the High Lonesome and finding his way back again. Live At Antone's is a souvenir from the journey, a snapshot, as Ely alluded to, from a wild and distant country.

Austin City Limits Taping

AUSTIN, TEXAS - Although the first four were just fine, Joe Ely and Band recorded their fifth Austin City Limits performance (sixth if you count Los Super Seven last year) on Monday, October 18th 1999 at the KLRU Center on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin as a part of the Austin City Limits 25th Anniversity Celebration. The musicians who joined Ely onstage included David Grissom on Electric Guitar, Teye on Flamenco Guitar, Lloyd Maines on steel guitar, Gary Herman on Bass, Michael Villegas on drums and Rafael O'Malley Bernardo Gayol on drums and percussion. The show will be aired May 13, 2000.

The Flatlanders on the Rise

DRIFTWOOD, TX - When the Flatlanders went skipping off from their 14th Street Lubbock home in the early 70's, thier destination points resembled the spokes of a still rolling wheel. Butch Hancock went to Clarendon Texas to build an ampitheater and live in a caboose, Jimmie Dale Gilmore went to Denver to live in an ashram, and Joe Ely joined Ringling Bros Circus to fulfill a childhood dream. With an album freshly recorded in Nashville still visible in thier collective rear view mirrors they all vanished into the Lubbock horizion not looking back. The three of them surfaced a few years later in the music mecca of Austin playing together more for the "sheer pleasure of it" in some one's living room than on the professional stage. Often half-jokingly calling this phase of the band the " Hill Country Flatlanders" all three continued to make music on their own terms as well as to enjoy each other's company as often as possible. After contributing a song, "South Winds of Summer", to the soundtrack of the film "The Horse Whisperer" the three bards wrote and recorded other songs not destined for any existing project. The summer of 1999 found the Flatlanders in New York City playing in Central Park for the outstanding "Summer Stage" series which set into motion invitations from several citys to bring the Flatlanders to thier towns. Keep your fingers crossed and your eyes peeled for a summer 2001 tour.

Flamenco guitarist Teye who has played with the Joe Ely band since 1995 has a new CD release. It is called 'Viva el Flamenco' and has garnered rave reviews in the international music press. Check out Teye's web page ( www.teye.com ) for more information about this wonderful new recording.

Rearview Mirror

Dust in the wind

All the Pretty Horses

SANTA FE, NM - A good time was had by all, except the video projector person.... Joe Ely and Teye were recently asked to play at the wrap party for the Billy Bob Thornton directed film, All the Pretty Horses. The movie, inspired by the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, was filmed in San Antonio and Santa Fe and included Sam Shepard, Matt Damon, Bruce Dern and San Antonio native, Henry Thomas. Joe's album Letter to Laredo was inspired by the same Cormac novel. The party went on into the night and early flights were had by all....

Los Super Seven Win GRAMMY!

FLASH! - LOS SUPER SEVEN WINS GRAMMY!

 LOS ANGELES - The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles was the scene for the 41st Annual GRAMMY Awards and Los Super Seven was presented a GRAMMY for Mexican-American record of the year. Los Super Seven is composed of Tex-Mex legends Freddy Fender and Flaco Jimenez, formerly of Texas Tornadoes, David Hidalgo and Caesar Rosas of Los Lobos, Lone Star country-rocker Joe Ely, mainstream country hitmaker Rick Trevino and Tejano stalwart Ruben Ramos. Los Super Seven was born during an acoustic showcase of Tex-Mex musicians at Austin's Las Manitas Cafe during 1997's South by Southwest Music Conference. A slightly different bunch returned in 1998 and 1999 to a wildly enthusiastic audience.

The album was recorded in March and April, 1998 in Austin Texas mostly at Cedar Creek Studios with Los Lobos producer, Steve Berlin at the helm. Other musicians included accordion wiz Joel Guzman and bajo sexto guru Max Baca. Sarah Fox adds vocals on several songs.

The band performed at the House of Blues in LA on September 15, at the Bowery Theater in New York City on September 17, on Conan O'Brien's Show on September 18, and a stop in Austin in early December. Watch for an Austin City Limits appearance in the spring of 1999...

Los Super Seven recorded a track ( Wildwood Flower ) for an upcoming Tribute to The Carter Family to be released on Bob Dylan's label, Egyptian Records, later in 1999...

Michael Greene, the president of NARAS, flew to Austin to present the GRAMMYS onstage at The Austin Music Awards. Also present was the Texas Chapter of NARAS president, Carlin Major and four members of Los Super Seven, Freddy Fender, Rick Trevino, Rubin Ramos and Joe Ely...

SXSW Crosses Borders

AUSTIN - Joe Ely and various incarnations of his band played eight shows in five days during this years SXSW. On Wednesday Joe sat in on an acoustic set with local faves Reckless Kelly to do a version of Dylan's "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" and a version of the country classic "An Empty Bottle, A Broken Heart, And You're Still On My Mind".

Fifteen minutes later Joe and band were at Antones Club playing for the Premiere of hit movie "EDTV". Matthew McConaughey with shaved head danced practically unrecognized in front of the band for the first three songs while Woody Harrelson and Martin Landau remained in the upstairs VIP box. Also at the party was director Ron Howard and actresses Ellen DeGeneres, Sally Kirkland and knockout Elizabeth Hurley...

The next day, Thursday, was Super Seven Day with an unannounced early evening show at Las Manitas and an appearance with Rick Trevino at the Austin Music Hall.

Friday was dedicated to the largest event of the week, Joe Ely and Fastball for a free show at Waterloo Park. Over 10,000 fans overflowed into the cloudy night. The threat of rain could never develop, burned off in part by a smoking set by Fastball. Miles Zuniga called Joe to the stage to partake in a blazing version of the Clash rocker " Brand New Cadillac". Joe and Band played for 2 hours and 3 encores...

The Flatlanders got together for a 5 song set at the University of Texas Ballroom on Saturday night, March 19 th. Hal Ketchum and Guy Clark among others chiped in to donate their time to raise money for the family of Donald Lindley who died last month of cancer...Earlier that night Los Super Seven rocked walls at the Austin Music Hall...

What many thought was the highlight of the week was the show Sunday night at Stubbs BBQ. Terry Allen, The Sexton Brothers, David Byrne, Jesse Taylor, Joe Ely and Lucinda Williams all played heartfelt sets. This night was also dedicated to Donald's family. In addition to raising a lot of money to help pay the hospital bills, this night also raised goosebumps on the arms of most everyone there. Every one that played felt a spiritual electricity in the air and the night took on an emotional depth that trancended the weariness all of the people must have felt in order to complete the circle, unbroken....

A note from Joe about the death of drummer Donald Lindley...

Check out pictures of the summer of '98 tour with Donald at Tommy Mack's Page

AUSTIN - When Terry Allen, David Byrne and Joe Ely conspire to meet in the Texas Hill Country something devious must be up. No Word of what it might be but the Houston International Airport has released an all-points bulletin requesting the whereabouts of this suspicious crew. Something about a huge bronze oak tree that Terry left in the middle of the floor. By April it starts singing...and won't stop until the airport shuts down...

LONDON - An album of Joe Ely live solo tracks has been released by the BBC Broadcasting Company from the Cambridge Folk festival. The set of 8 songs were recorded in 1992.. The album is only available as an import. Check with Waterloo Records in Austin, TX for availability.

JERUSALEM - Joe and his band have been asked to join many musicians from around the world to participate in a million person Concert for Peace in Jerusalem in July or August 1999....(CANCELED 2/15/99 DUE TO MID-EAST UNREST)

National Music Critics Association's - 1999 Best

• Tori Amos - from the choir girl hotel
• Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
• Garbage - Version 2.0
• Joe Ely - Twistin' in the Wind
• The Horse Whisperer Soundtrack- (Various Artists)
• Ani DiFranco - Little Plastic Castle
• Madonna - Ray of Light
• Fastball - All the Pain Money Can Buy
• Dave Alvin - Black Jack David
• Massive Attack - Mezzanine

The Austin American Statesman Critics Year's Best Awards voted The Joe Ely Band as Best Live Band for 1998.

The Twistin' in the Wind album was voted in the Years Top Ten.

(Austin)

Legendary guitar slinger and Ely sideman, Jesse Taylor has just completed work on a solo album to be released later this summer in Europe followed by a US release later in the year. Much of the Ely band including Donald Lindley and Glenn Fukunaga backed up Jesse on his second solo album.

Don McAllister was at the producer helm. Joe, Jimmie and Butch sang with Jesse on a Hancock penned track called "Naked Light of Day"

(Austin)

Yet another movie currently in production wants to use the opening song "Up on the Ridge" from Joe's new album, "Twistin' in the Wind". The movie takes place in the desert just east of El Paso. More on this when details become known...

(Austin)

Later in the year a trilogy of Joe Ely's written works will be released that chronicle his years of traveling the road. They will include his early writings in and around Lubbock, jumping freights to unknown destinations, joining Ringling Brothers Circus, hitchhiking around Europe, and panhandling the mean streets of New York City. The books, tentatively titled, Ripened, Seasoned and Salted will follow his path to the present, traveling the world with his current band.

(Austin)

Butch Hancock just finished his new album titled, "You Could Have Walked Around the World".

The album recorded at Ely's Spur Studios in Austin features Butch completely solo doing songs inspired by the magic of the Big Bend Desert. The CD is available now at Waterloo Records in Austin...

(New York)

The Flatlanders reunited on the David Letterman show, May 21, 1998, performing the song they wrote for the soundtrack album, "The Horse Whisperer".

Earlier that day they did a live set at Fordam University's radio station...

Make that three shows in one day...

Later that evening Jimmie Dale performed a great solo set at the packed-to-the-gills Mercury Lounge. The rest of the Flatlanders came up to join Jimmie for three songs to close a memorable New York night.

(Austin)

Along with his new CD, soundtracks, and a book release, yet another opening is in the near future for Joe. The Austin Gallery that specializes in visual art created by musicians, Wild About Music, will show Joe's works from March 13 through May 31, 1998. Many of these works have been shown in Philadelphia, Nashville, New York, Houston and San Antonio but have never been shown in Austin. For a preview see Gallery or Jail.

(Berkeley, CA) West Coast Live, a Public Radio Concert Event, will air a Joe Ely Live show at 11 a.m., June 20th, 1998 from an as yet undisclosed theater in Berkeley, California. The show will be broadcast over most of the West Coast, many states in the USA as well as Europe and Japan, to kick off the first date of the Twistin' in the Wind Tour. The band should be ready to play as they arrive that morning after a 1600 mile bus ride from Austin, Texas. The same evening finds Joe and the band at Slim's in San Francisco.

(Santa Cruz, CA) KPIG, the ace station of Northern California, will be on the scene for the Red Tail Ale Tailgate Party on June 21, 1998. Tune in for live interviews with the band after the performance at Highlands County Park in Ben Lomand, California.

(Hollywood, CA) Some time around the 25th of June, Joe will be the featured artist on CNN Show Biz Today. He will be performing songs from his new album, "Twistin in the Wind".

That evening watch for a Live Video Web cast from the Troubadour in West Hollywood from 6 p.m. until late. The performance can be found at the following World Wide Web locations:

LAlive.com

mca.com

mca-nashville.com

(Hollywood)

The song "Dam of My Heart" which first appeared on the 1981 album 'MUSTA NOTTA GOTTA LOTTA' made a brief appearance in the movie, "Hope Floats".

(Dallas)

Watch for the Flatlanders in Dallas on the 15th of March at the Texas Film Awards. They will present the award for Best Music Documentary...

(Austin) 1998

It's that time again. South by Southwest is just around the corner. This year features Joe and his band performing cuts from the new CD onstage at La Zona Rosa. All the musicians who recorded the album will be invited to join Joe for the closing show now scheduled for 1 a.m. An earlier, all acoustic show, may take place at a yet undisclosed venue...

A great time was had by all on board the S.S. Seabreeze for Delbert McClintons Sandy Beaches Cruise IV.

Thirty concerts on board included artists such as: Delbert McClinton, Ray Benson & Asleep at the Wheel, Marcia Ball, Lee Roy Parnell, Hal Ketchum, Wayne Toups and Zydecajun, Stephen Bruton, Gary Nicholson w/Jonell Mosser, Al Anderson, Jimmy Hall, Monte Montgomery, and the great Mike Henderson and the Blue Bloods.

(Austin)

Released summer '97 in Europe, is a music-film documentary on Ely and his compadres. VH1-Europe will play the 20 minute piece eight times during August and September. Directed by Trey Fanjoy, the film crew follow Joe up the California coast riding trains from San Diego to Seattle. Interviews, reflections and live shows are included including a performance with Bruce Springsteen at Johnny Depp's Viper Room in Hollywood. Glenn Fukunaga on bass and Teye on Flamenco Guitar are featured throughout the special. Plans for a US viewing are in the works...

(Nashville) All the Kings Men Tribute Album

Tribute album (All the Kings Men) was released August 14th to honor Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana, and other musicians who played on the early Elvis sessions. Steve Earle, Keith Richards, Ron Wood, The Bo'Deans, Carl Perkins, The Mavericks, Tracy Nelson, Lee Rocker, The Band, and Joe Ely are among those participating. The album will be a soundtrack for a film documentary to be premiered at the Sundance Film Festival...

Speaking of Elvis, did anybody see Joe on ABC's NIGHTLINE? Interviewed at his home studio in Austin, he talked about the influence of Elvis's music and the way it changed history. Supposedly cut from the interview was a scene of Joe singing to his dog, Bruno...