The latest LOS SUPER SEVEN project, Heard It on the X, released by Telarc on March 22, is a tribute to the "border blasters," free-form stations with powerful signals that reached all of North America and beyond from towers located just below the Texas/Mexico border. These stations, which operated from the 1930s through the ’60s, had call letters beginning with the letter "X." The cast is once again scintillating, as Lyle Lovett ,Delbert McClinton ,John Hiatt ,Rodney Crowell and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown join LS7 two-timers Raul Malo, Joe Ely and Freddy Fender, as well as Tejano legend Ruben Ramos and country/roots singer Rick Trevino , both back for their third go-round.
Heard It on the X was tracked in Austin with a pair of units, one built around Tucson-based Calexico and the other anchored by Austin luminary Charlie Sexton (who completes the production triumvirate) and drummer Hunt Sales (Todd Rundgren ,Iggy Pop ). Fender, Ely, Trevino and Ramos recorded their vocals in Austin, after which the producers brought the remaining tracks back to Nashville, where they cut Malo, Hiatt, Brown, McClinton, Lovett and Crowell, the latter three Texas transplants. "It’s to the point where I know more Texans in Nashville than I do in Texas," McClinton quips. - Bud Scoppa
See ice Magazine for the rest of the story. http://www.icemagazine.com/stories/214/superseven.shtm
A free show was held at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on October 1, 2005 as a part of the massive Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.
AUSTIN Texas, January 12 2005 - On the morning of December 26, 2004 one of the largest natural disasters in modern history occurred that brought death and destruction to parts of Indonesia, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka. Over 150,000 people were killed and millions were left homeless. Thousands of children were left without home and family. The World watched in horror as the video cameras began to expose the vast nature of the disaster.
Out of the sadness and destruction rose immense compassion from all corners of the world. This Compassion was above and beyond all the concepts of countries, borders, races, religions and beliefs. It was as if there were One World and we were all the same and we all rose together.
I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who participated in the Tsunami Benefit at the Austin Music Hall on January 10, 2005. Thanks to Michael Hall who put it together, thanks to all the bands for playing, especially Willie Nelson and Family for headlining the event, thanks to the businesses and media outlets who supported the event, thanks to the hundreds of people who pledged their time and energy to make it happen, and a big thanks to the thousands of people who attended and the thousands more who watched at home without whom the concert could never have happened. The show was put together in eight days (four of which fell on weekends) and when announced, four days before the show, sold out in seven hours. It has raised over $130, 000 and that amount is still growing with radio and TV contributions. A video crew filmed the entire event and should have a DVD ready for release in February. All proceeds will go to the Tsunami Victims through the three major relief organizations, CARE, RED CROSS and UNICEF. Thanks again, everyone, for rising to the occasion in this time of crisis. - Joe Ely
AUSTIN Texas, November 16 2004 - For a band that took thirty years between it's first two records, 2004 is becoming a red-letter year for The Flatlanders. Early in the year their third CD, Wheels of Fortune, was released on New West Records to rave reviews followed by a coast to coast tour. As if that were not enough to keep the trio and their band busy counting highway stripes for the year another group of recordings appeared from out of nowhere. A long lost live record, Live '72, recorded at Austin's One Knite Tavern in 1972 (on the site of present day Stubb's BBQ) came to light and was released in the summer while the band was on tour. It contained songs long left out of the playlists of the modern day band, songs that conjured up neon visions of West Texas honky tonks and dust bowl visions of the spaces between them. To top off the year yet another release is on the horizon for November 2004. This time it comes in the form of a DVD video. Recorded June 21, 2002 as part of an Austin City Limits Taping, this Flatlanders concert, Live from Austin, is a full 75 minute DVD re-mastered in stereo and 5.1 surround sound available for the frist time ever. Here is a snippet from the liner notes written by producer Terry Lickona:
"This is their first appearance on Austin City Limits together under the name, "The Flatlanders," but of course each of them has appeared separately, and with each other as special guests, many times over the years. What began back in Lubbock, Texas, in 1970, has come back to life in a new century but with every bit of the freshness and creative edginess that made their sound so unique three decades ago. Featuring the three legendary Texas artists, Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock, this stellar performance captures The Flatlanders at their creative peak." - Terry Lickona
Speaking of Julia, reports are that Joe and Joel Guzman
played a private party for her and her crew at an undisclosed place at the
end of July, 2001.
|
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.. |
|
|
 |
J O E E L Y
L I V E @ A N T O N E S
by John T. Davis
Austin American Statesman
"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.
I-10 Chronicles
What do Willie
Nelson, Adam Duritz, Joe Ely,
Los Lobos' David
Hidalgo, Charlie Musselwhite,
Bill and Bonnie
Hearne, Emmylou Harris,
Tex-Mex great Flaco
Jimenez and
Buena Vista Social
Club's Eliades Ochoa
have in Common?
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
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.
(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...
