MUSIC

Home > MUSIC > Joe Ely

• Tweet
• Outlook
• ICAL
• PRINT
• Email
• Feedback

• RSS

• Official Website
• Buy Tickets
• Add to My Favorites

Joe Ely

Presented by Dosey Doe Coffee House at Dosey Doe Coffee House

March 9, 2010

Add Review/Comment
Comment on Facebook

Dosey Doe Coffee House  presents Joe Ely.  Dinner and a Show. Real Live Appetizer – Sheila Marshall.

Joe Ely is a singer, songwriter and guitarist whose music touches on honky-tonk, country and rock and roll. He has had a genre-crossing career, performing with Bruce Springsteen, Los Super Seven, and James McMurtry in addition to his early work with The Clash and more recent acoustic tours with Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, and Guy Clark.

Ely spent his formative years from age 12 in Lubbock, Texas. Shortly after high school, in 1970, with fellow Lubbock musicians Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, he formed The Flatlanders. According to Ely, "Jimmie [Gilmore] was like a well of country music."

"He knew everything about it. And Butch was from the folk world. I was kinda the rock & roll guy, and we almost had a triad. We hit it off and started playing a lot together. That opened up a whole new world I had never known existed." In 1972, the band released their first and — until 2002's Now Again — only album, but have appeared together on each other's albums. Since the band's initial break-up just after their first album was cut, the three musicians have followed individual paths.

Ely's own first, self titled album, was released in 1977. The following year, his band played London, where he met punk rock group The Clash. Impressed with each other's performances, the two bands would later tour together, including appearances in Ely's hometown of Lubbock, as well as Laredo and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Ely would contribute backing vocals on the Clash single "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" from Combat Rock (1982), and Ely's Live Shots includes photos of Clash member Joe Strummer performing as a guest with Ely's band.

From the mid-1970s, Ely has issued a steady stream of albums, most on the MCA label. Ely's energetic live performances have become legendary, and he has released a live album roughly every ten years (the last was Live at Antone's in 2000).

In the late 1990s, Ely was asked to write songs for Robert Redford's movie The Horse Whisperer, which led to re-forming The Flatlanders with Gilmore and Hancock for an appearance on the movie soundtrack. A new album from the trio followed in 2002, with a third in 2004.

In February 2007, Ely released Happy Songs From Rattlesnake Gulch on his own label, Rack 'Em Records. Ely said in an interview with Country Standard Time that he thought it would be easier to release the material on his own label instead of dealing with a regular record label and their release cycles.

A book of Ely's writings, Bonfire of Roadmaps, was published in early 2007 by the University of Texas Press. In early 2008, Ely is scheduled to release a new live album featuring Joel Guzman on accordion and recorded at the Cactus Cafe in Austin, Texas.