Joe Ely, RIP

Word from his family is that the great Joe Ely has died. He had Lewy’s body dementia and Parkinson’s, so it wasn’t totally surprising, but it’s still an enormous loss for the world of American music. Ely was part of the Flatlanders in the early 70s, the hippie Lubbock country outfit with Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock. That band disappeared pretty quickly after recording with the lunatic Shelby S. Singleton. Ely was the first to appear on his own, with a couple of great records for MCA in the late 70s, especially the initial self-titled album, Honky Tonk Masquerade, and then Live Shots, which was recorded in England when he and Joe Strummer became buddies and The Clash wanted to come to Texas to play in places they heard about in old country songs and they opened for him and then they brought him to England to open for them. Must have been wild opening for The Clash with country music in 1979.

In the 80s, Ely went more on a rock and roll thing, fitting the retro style that people such as Brian Setzer were mining a lot too. So many of those 70s albums were filled with Butch Hancock’s amazing songs (the problem with Butch is that he’s a great songwriter, but not much of a singer) and he wrote more in the 80s, but just isn’t Butch with a pen. Still, he did rock. In the 90s, he embraced the alt-country Americana thing and did epic covers of Robert Earl Keen’s “The Road Goes on Forever” and Tom Russell’s “Gallo del Cielo,” which really became his song. Then in the 2000s, he did more of a folk thing, often playing with the Tejano accordionist Joel Guzman, and then occasionally getting back together with the Flatlanders, though those later albums never quite gelled.

I saw Ely a few times. The best was probably in 2008 or so at Antone’s in Austin. I saw him at a festival once too and once with the Flatlanders in Santa Fe. But that 2008 show, that’s a man at the peak of his powers. You’d see him around Austin too, including at a Tom Russell show I attended once. He’d just hang out. It was his town after all.

Joe Ely, RIP, you absolutely great legend. Check out the albums listed above, all the live albums he did, and Letter to Laredo, which really nailed the Americana period, though like many mid 90s albums, it’s a bit too long.