Joe Ely: The Mew
Pride of Lubboek
by Paul Cullum
“We like this kind qf music. Jazz is
strictly for the stay-at-homes."
—Buddy Holly
“Hot dog I like it a iotT _joe ^
It’s a smoky yellow evening outside,
still warm, and the Joe Ely band is
onstage at some Lone Star dancehall,
tuning up. John Lennon's just been
shot a couple of nights ago, and the
crowd’s milling around, not much
spirit for the night ahead. Ely, a high
school dropout from Lubbock with a
passei of 5-star albums to his credit,
hasn't looked at the crowd yet.
So the band seems ready, and Joe
faces the mike now, serious. “Y*ali
heard the news?” And the crowd — as
one man — thinks, “Great Whole
world’s falling apart What next?” ...
when Joe slams rhetorically into a Roy
Brown standard: "Ya heard the
news?/There’s good rockin’ tonight."
Which sets off not just the catharsis,
but elation bordering on gratitude.
Or the time at Gruene Hall ( Texas'
Oldest Dance Hall”) when the sheriff
came out after 2 a.m to shut them
down and Jesse Taylor, the bear-like
guitarist, poured a beer in his hat
(forcing them to dive into the crowd
to have an escape). Or London at the
Venue, when Ely and Butch Hancock
were out after the show howling at the
moon, and the bouncers tried to chase
them down and kill them (forcing
them to hide in a Dempsey Dumpster
until a safe car could come around).
, Joe Ely in concert is like no other—
him charging and careening, flailing
about, falling into the drums or climb
ing up on the peeana He has more
fun onstage than a white person has a
right to.
There’s lots of places we could meet,
I’m thinking The Alamo Hotel, the
sparkling and virulent Thirties
brownstone where LBJ's brother de
cayed from cancer. The base of the
Texas Tower — count the sniper’s bul
letholes out on the concrete mall.
Some chili parlor or domino hall with
a sense of history. Any old icon.
‘Tell ya what," — Ely speaking with
that same goofy deadpan in his drawl
— "you bring your tape recorder and
meet me at the Austin Bowl-O-Rama”
"Next up in mixed league competi
tion, we got Hall’s Package Stores vs.
tbe Lane Tamers on Lane 2, and
Edgebrook Texaco vs the Hair Flair
cm Lane 22 Parents, please keep those
youngsters off tbe end lanes, we have a
tournament going on down there ”
"YTcnow," he’s studying the orange
headpin now on the lane just in front
of us, “there’s some real good sauce
you can get at Tom Thumb grocery
stores. It’s called Cox's Texas Hot
Sauce, and it comes in a mayonnaise
jar, from Dangerfieid, Texas. You try it
sometime — it's de-licious.”
Master of non sequitur. Joe is dres-.
sed in a vintage British tweed jacket,
black corduroy shirt and pants, wing
tipped ostrich or something boots, silk
scarf, and a blood-red bolo tie with
tiny toy gun clasp That and the neo
rockabilly chopped pompadour
clump-swirl coiffure (compliments
Yardley English Lavender). For a Lub
bock boy who used to play for nothing
but Rebel Tractor drivers, he looks to
be out of place in any culture he could
claim.
Joe Ely was born in 1947 in
Amarillo, Texas. His father
worked for the railroad, as
had his grandfather, so they
shifted: from Amarillo to
Fort Worth, Houston,
San Antonio and then'
Lubbock. He played
from high
school, tried out
amps and guitars in
the downtown
stores, eventually
starting to work in
local clubs. Over
the past ten years
or so he's gone
from being just
another Texas
secret to open
ing for the
Rolling Stones and touring with the di
verse likes of Merle Haggard. Carl Per
kins. Tom Petty and the Kinks, acting
as Clash clown and Linda Ronstadt’s
next trend to ride ("Honky Tonk Mas
querade” on,her next LP), at long last
putting two albums on the Billboard
charts (Musta Notta Gotta Lotto and
Live Shots), and bringing country music
into the Twentieth Century.
Peter Guralnick called Ely’s work
’’some of the hardest-hitting music of
the decade” in Country Music maga
zine. adding, “It has all the intensity,
the singleminded drive, conviction and
explosive originality of first generation
rock 'n roll.” Rolling Stone found Ely's
albums “Full of poignancy, insight and
affection for the Southwest and its
people.” The LA Times tagged him
“... the most impressive male singer to
enter country music in the '70s.’’
Twentieth Century-Fox approached Ely
to star in Not Fade Away, a planned
film biography of Buddy Holly that
never got made. (Ironically, Gary
Busey — later the star of The Buddy
Holly Story — was to have played the
part of Holly’s drummer.) Chuck Berry
caught a 1978 Ely set in St Louis and,
after midnight, jumped onstage to join
the band on “Jambalaya” and “Moun
tain Dew.”
The corners in-between were
packed up with a lot of his term, "col
orful misery " He slept on the beach in
Venice, California with a Fender Supter
Reverb amplifier for a pillow, rode a
lot of rails (“The Rock Island Express
out of Amarillo, up east to watch the
leaves turn"), played the subway cir
cuit in NYC, and slept on the Staten Is
land Ferry. He zigzagged around in the
entrails of the continent, working as a
fruitpicker, dishwasher, feeding the
llamas and the world’s smallest horse
for Ringling Bros., sopping up the
scenery in places like Louisiana, Ar
kansas. New Mexico, Old Mexico, Col
orado — all those Texas outlands he’s
been made responsible for.
"1 helped build Angel Fire Ski Run
up in Eagle’s Nest. Drove a concrete
truck up and down that mountain, like
to scare me to death. I was unloading
hunnerd-pwund sacks of concrete and
they asked could anybody drive a
truck, so I said ’sure,’ anything to get
out of loading concrete.” And could he
drive a truck? “No, course not. But,
y’know—you learn real fast, a-hurtling
down the side of a mountain with
about two tons of concrete right be
hind you."
Ely came into American radio
through the backdoor of the English
Joe Ely: Hard-hitting, fun loving
Texas rocker Above, Butch Hancock
and Jimmie Gilmore Head of the Balladeer Class
Gilmore & Hanroek:
The Hinds
Behind the Songs
A lot ot the hands who come through
Austin, from V-2 to the Stray Cols, he
lieve all those stories Joe Ely tells over
in England — chicken wire across the
stages to protect the bands, people
shooting off guns inside of bars So in
variably, they get depressed by all the
redevelopment — fern bars, gentrifica
tion, ossification, cartilage to bone, the
spread of mellow capitalism up Sixth
Street like a pastel disease
After that, they generally like what
they find: The Fabulous T
Birds/Cobras/Stevie Ray Vaughan
blues confluence The Huns/Re
Cords/NorvelLs new wave exes nexus
And the Emmajoe s aggregation
Emmajoe's is the socialist roadhouse
(named after Joe Hill and Emma
Goldman* which is local home to the
modem country crowd — people like
Townes Van Zandt, Lucinda, Rank and
File (formerly the Dils, premier West
Coast punk outfit), Butch Hancock and
Jimmie Gilmore.
Hancock and Gilmore are always
mentioned in tandem, probably a dis
service, since both go back to the Flat
landers, the Lubbock band circa 1970
that they formed with running buddy
Joe Ely The Flat landers one album is
finally on Charley Records as a British
import Together they have written
over a third of the songs on Ely's al
bums.
Jimmie Gilmore is responsible for
“Treat Me Like a Saturday Night," ‘To
night I think I’m Gonna Go
Downtown," and "Dallas," three bal
lads of subtle clarity They speak of
loneliness and grey light, and the high
gentle whistle of the Lubbock winds
Technically, it was Jimme Dale and the
Flatlanders
Butch Hancock, on antxher hand, is
the best songwriter in America This is
not hyperbole In the folk poet tradi
tion, singer-songwriter, one man/one
guitar, Hancock is the best there is
OttNNIS CjUUYlf. IMJBJNt,
‘Boxcars," “Pools Fall in Love," Wish
in’ for You," "She Never Spoke
Spanish to Me' (“All her favorite poets
said/Spanish is the loving tongue .")
— over and over again Perhaps his
most accessible songs show up on the
Ely albums, those on his own being
more private, more mystical Bui there
are gems like "Dominos" or “Own and
Own," about Texas' rural to urban shift
and things lost to progress, or the bal
lad “Mario y Maria" (subtitled "Crym'
Statues and Spirtin' Images”) which are
shared between an audience of maybe
5000 people
Hancock has five albums — West
Texas Waltzes arui [rust Mourn Trot
tor Tunes The Wind's Dominion
(double), Dtanumd HUl, and two new
live collections, 19H1 A Spare Odyssey,
and htrewater (Seeks Its Own Level),
with Jimmie Gilmore If he lived in Los
Angeles and hustled the clubs on the
Strip for five years, tie would be fa
mous in more places than just Texas
and Italy (where they love him) But
that would probably kill whatever tt is
that makes him Butch Hancock Han
cock is also a practicing architect,
makes video documentaries, once won
an argument with the Soviet ambas
sador over Afghanistan, and built the
bar at Emmafoe s But those are other
stories
Hamuck s albums are waitable fur $7 00
from Drawer HIO, Clareruton TX 7l)2Jb
press. Much has been made of his
adoption by the Clash, their English
tour, the oxymoron of that alliance
But if the new wave was ever about
anything, it was about structural integ
rity -— purity of essence, reconnecting
to roots of form
“The first couple of Clash shows we
did in England were really hilarious,
the first time we were confronted with
what would be a normal Clash crowd,
y'know? Especially places they'd grown
up, like Camden Town, were really
rowdy crowds. They d be throwing
stuff, and we'd throw back buckets full
of ice. To me it felt about like a Satur
day night in Austin
That was the London Calling tour,
and Joe s Live Shots LP was almost
named Lubbock Calling Stateside, the
Clash wanted Joe to open their Texas
dates, and he ended up signing on for
the rest of the American tour. (It's
probably instructive to remember that
the Sex Pistols said their San Antonio
audience was the only one to respond
with violence in kind Two thousand
people in a concrete skate palace, guys
with shaved heads and safety pins in
their scalp, and this big cowboy saying,
“If y ail'd just move about a c-t hair
closer, we could get some more
people in here”)
“The Clash were playing Houston,
Austin and Dallas on their swing
through Texas, and they had a couple
of days before they had to go out west,
so I talked 'em into playing Lubbock
They scared everybody there, it was
great. Then they wanted to see the
lights of Lubbock Vknow, there just
aren't ux> many sights in Lubbock. So I
showed cm Prairie Dog Town, the
high school where buddy Holly
played, that's just about it We ended
up gening some six-packs and spend
ing the night out at buddy Holly's
grave
Lubbock was where Ely came of age.
where he took guitar lessons from
buddy Holly's old guitar teacher,
where at age 11 he saw Jerry Lee Lewis
outside of Pontiac House ("There was
Jerry Lee on a flatbed truck, wind
blowing, dust everywhere .. .") It’s
where he says he learned to shoot
pool (He played a friend's wedding
last year and took some Aspen devel
oper types for about five hundred dol
lars.) It’s where he lived through his
first three LHs (Joe Ely, Hanky Tank
Masquerade and Down on the Drag)
The 6th LP, the one he's fast at work
on at his lakehouse outside Austin,
could well be the one to finally force
him out of this cult gheno he's been
reposing in the last four years Another
Linda Roastadt LA-country album is a
small enough price to pay
"Bowlers, I'd like to remind you of
the Diamond Jubilee next week, we'll
he baving one shift and one shift only,
and that wilt he the BOO shift Also,
there will be a deaf tournament here
It’s gonna he real quiet."
“He say ‘Death Tournament'?”
"I think he said deaf tournament
"Oh, good Least we won’t have
to hear all this racket."