Joe Ely Reviews
THE TIMES
Why Joe Ely is the best-kept secret in country
Unsung hero?
A superb gig
at the Mean
Fiddler confirms
the abounding
talent of Joe Ely
David Sinclair is spellbound by one of the best-kept secrets in the country-rock world
Outlaw who can`t get arrested
What can be going through Joe Ely`s mind as he starts another show at the mean Fiddler? It is, to be sure, the finest honky-tonk in harlesden and on friday night the bar is crammed to its 600 capacity. But, like the character in one of his songs, it must seem to him that "though so much time has passed, not that much has changed".
Now 48, Ely has gone beyond the point of playing the fame game. Indeed, when the Texan arrived in britain ten days ago, he declared himself unavailable for interviews, if anyone was asking, even though he remains virtually unknown beyond a small coterie of fervent admirers.
His 1970s band, the Flatlanders, became highly regarded as forerunners of country-rock, but only after they had split up. he tasted the fruit of wider acclaim when the clash took him on tour 1980 and he became an honorary, if somewhat unlikely, cult figure to the punk generation. but in 1996 he is surely just one more roadhouse veteran, seeing out his performing years the only way he knows how. another day another dollar, right?
WRONG! as he and his four piece band wrap up a superb reading of robert earl keen`s the road goes on forever, a typical tale of young love blighted by a life of crime, ely seems genuinely taken aback by the intensity of the applause. and it quickly becomes apparent that with the songs from his new album letter to laredo, ely has added yet another colour to a musical palette that already includes a vibrant mix of country, blues rock. tex-mex and western swing.
this new dimension is provided by a spanish flamenco gutarist called TEYE, who sits on a stoolat stage right, resplendent in a sequinned mariachi jacket and a black sombrero. On numbers such as I saw it in you, Saint Valentine and the galloping run preciosa, he complements the yearning emotion of ely`s vocals with the most wonderfully stirring trills and crisp arpeggios, plucked with fiery precision on a nylonstringed acoustic guitar. his solo introduction to letter to laredo is sensational and perfectly sets the scene for another story about a desperado doomed to roam the badlands with a "five-numbern bounty" on his head.
Whether because of a failure of judgment or nerve, though, teye is laid off about three quarters of the way through and ely turns the stage over to his other guitarrist jesse taylor, a tattooed old-stager who was a member of his first backing group in 1976. a conventional eric clapton influenced blues-rock player taylor steers the band back to more familiar territory, and while it is fun to hear old favourites such as dallas and me and billy the kid the magic dissipates as they switch to autopilot for a version of the buddy hollyand the crickets hit, oh boy however an encore of terry allen`s gimme a ride to heaven boy justifaiably produces an ecstatic responce and for ely it is clearly a case of striking a balance between indulging his sense of adventure and playing within the limits of his game. THE ROAD GOES ON FOREVER, AND HE STILL HAS A LONG WAY TO GO.
THE WASHINGTON POST
Joe Ely's new album, "Letter to Laredo," is a roots-rock album with a difference, for it is marked by an unusual "Spanish tinge," to borrow Jelly Roll Morton's phrase. The storytelling lyrics are full of Spanish, Mexican and West Texas imagery and are reinforced by the prominent presence of the Spanish flamenco guitarist Teye.
Teye joined Ely's band at the Birchmere on Sunday night, and the guitarist's elegant, nylon-string phrasing brought a European flavor to the singer's usual country-rock and made this show different from Ely's many previous visits. There were times, in fact, when Teye's energetic flamenco flourishes locked in with Ely's booming vocals to create the Texan equivalent of the Gipsy Kings -- especially on new songs such as "Run Preciosa" and "Gallo del Cielo."
With his black hair combed back like Johnny Cash's and his black vest decorated with pink roses, Ely commanded the stage with the authority and exuberance of an artist who knows he's riding a career-making album backe d by a great band. On outlaw songs such as "Me and Billy the Kid," "The Road Goes on Forever" and "Ranches and Rivers," Ely held back the band and his muscular tenor on the verses, and then let everything bust loose on the choruses. Yet he was just as effective on tender ballads such as "Where Is My Love?" and "I'm a Thousand Miles From Home." He encored with "Oh Boy," a giddy salute to his hometown hero, Buddy Holly of Lubbock, Tex., from a tribute album due this fall.
Nearly stealing the show from Teye and Ely was electric guitarist Jesse Taylor, another product of Lubbock. Ely has had faster, more dexterous guitarists, but he has never had one as passionate or as sympathetic. When Taylor capped off Butch Hancock's "Boxcars" with a ferocious blues-rock solo, Ely could only shake his head and say, "Whoa! That scared even me."
originally printed in The Washington Post
THE WASHINGTON POST
By Geoffrey Himes
Column: PERFORMING ARTS
Saturday, March 11, 1995 ;
Page H06
A lot of bands roll into town with enough equipment to outfit a small industrial park and still don't rock half as hard as Joe Ely did with just his acoustic guitar recently night at the Wolf Trap Barns. The West Texas artist understands that rocking depends far more on syncopation and dynamics than volume, and he transformed the solo singer-songwriter format into a surprisingly raucous affair, inciting dance hall whoops and hollers from the crowd.
With his all-black stage outfit and creased, craggy face, Ely resembles Johnny Cash more and more with each passing year. And like Cash, Ely has become an expert interpreter of outlaw songs; Thursday he drove tunes like "Me and Billy the Kid" and "The Road Goes On Forever" implacably toward violence and doom.
Ely previewed four songs from "Letters to Laredo," his album due in Ma y. Tom Russell's "Gallo del Cielo," an extended narrative about cock-fightin g, never flagged despite its length. "All Just to Get to You" was a propulsive list of the ways the singer loves his woman, much like Ely's "For Your Love," which Chris LeDoux recorded last year. On the slower side were two new El y love songs, "Ranches and Rivers" and "I Saw It in You," which he delivered with a smoldering intensity.
originally printed in The Washington Post
THE WASHINGTON POST
By Geoffrey Himes
Column: PERFORMING ARTS
Monday, February 7, 1994;
Page C07
Applying the "Unplugged" concept to Joe Ely is pointless. You can send the Texas singer out on the road with no band and just an acoustic guitar, and he's still going to rock harder than 90 percent of the bands on MTV. He can't help himself.
Friday night he stood alone on the stage at the Barns of Wolf Trap and banged so emphatically on the low E string of his hollow black guitar that he hardly missed his drummer and bassist. He followed through with choppy quarter-note chords that shivered through his songs like percussive blasts. The storytelling in Ely's songs may come straight out of the folk and country music traditions, but the impatient insistence of his guitar, even his acoustic guitar, is pure rock-and-roll.
Ely was in an expansive mood. He told stories about playing at Jay's Cockpit & Lounge in Louisiana, where the rooster fights were the opening act, and followed with Tom Russell's poignant story-song about cockfighting, "Gallo del Cielo." Ely spoke of the time he ran away with the circus and discovered "those romantic occupations aren't what they're built up to be2E" He then played "Indian Cowboy," a song he once played for Guy Clark about the experience, and then forgot about until Clark recorded it 18 years later.
Whether he was singing his own "For Your Love," Jimmie Dale Gilmore's "Dallas," Butch Hancock's "Boxcars" or Robert Earl Keen's "The Road Goes On Forever," Ely was in terrific voice, roaring out the rockers and twisting the ballads around their ironies. Kevin Welch, the opening act and a much better singer than songwriter, joined him to sing Woody Guthrie's "Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad" and Ely's own "Me and Billy the Kid."
originally printed in The Washington Post
THE WASHINGTON POST
"I sure don't need a set list tonight," joked singer-songwriter Joe Ely, swamped with requests for songs at the Wolf Trap Barns recently. Sinc= e most of the chairs were stashed away, the setting was perfect for an old-fashioned barn dance, but the majority of the crowd nevertheless hudd= led near the stage, the better to see and hear Ely and his band in top form. If you were to blend Ely's last two albums -- the concert set "Live a= t Liberty Lunch" and the new and more deliberate "Love and Danger" -- you'd= have a good idea of what the audience witnessed -- an often raucous collection= of Ely's greatest hits (including gems by Butch Hancock and Jimmy Dale Gilmo= re) and a mixture alternately of wry and romantic ballads and outlaw anthems,= comprising both original tunes and Robert Earl Keen's hard-boiled narrative "Whenever Kindness Fails."
"You say you want drama," the opening line to the new song "Settle for= Love," captured the prevailing spirit perhaps better than any of Ely's memorable lyrics, since much of the concert was devoted to examining the = ins and outs of relationships -- the tender as well as the tumultuous. Few si= ngers cover that ground as passionately as Ely, and his new band, which feature= s the 24-year-old guitar phenom Ian Moore and keyboardist Reese Wynans (for= merly of Stevie Ray Vaughan's group Double Trouble), was particularly impressiv= e shaping the dynamics of the songs and their sometimes feverish pitch.
originally printed in The Washington Post
THE WASHINGTON POST
Joe Ely
Joe Ely stood alone in a red fringed jacket on the Birchmere stage Wednesday night and, with no accompaniment but his own acoustic guitar, sang Tex-Mex ballads and Dylanesque travelogues. Nonetheless, what Ely delivered was unquestionably a rock-and-roll show. He attacked his hollow guitar with urgent, choppy chords, and he shouted his stories as if he'd burst if he didn't get them out. Ely proved that acoustic rock is no oxymoron but rather rock-and-roll at its most personal and essential.
In The past, Ely's solo shows have lacked the authority of his band gigs, but on Wednesday - the last stop on a seven-month tour - the Texas singer was as compelling as he's ever been. Taking requests from the crowd, he turned to titles he seldom performs -- songs like "The Indian Cowboy" and "Tennessee Is Not the State I'm In." Whether he sang his own songs or those by fellow Lubbockites Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Ely invested the cowboy-bohemian lyrics with an immediacy that could not be denied.
Opening the show was John Jennings, who sang "Quitting Time" even as his production client, Mary Chapin Carpenter, was vying for a Grammy Award for the same song. Far more surprising were Jennings's understated, well-crafted originals such as "It's Only the Rain" and "Feet of Clay," which suggested he may have a successful performing career of his own someday.
originally printed in The Washington Post
By Mike Joyce
Column: PERFORMING ARTS
Monday, March 27, 1989;
Page C07
Song for song, at least, Joe Ely has put on better shows in town than the one he and his band staged at the Bayou Thursday night. But given the energy he put into the two-hour set, no one seemed in the mood to complain.
Briefly punctuated by acoustic or near-acoustic numbers, including terrific versions of "Honky Tonk Masquerade" and "Box Cars," the show was more not able for Dave Grissom's exhilarating guitar solos and Ely's hell-bent intensity than anything else. Clearly, Ely came to rock the place. "Musta Notta Gotta Lotta," "Fingernails" and other tunes were delivered with full-tilt aband on, all leading to the thunderous and fitting encore of Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away." But along the way several songs seemed unworthy of the effort, while other, more substantial ones received short shrift.
Billy Kemp and the Paradise Rockers opened with an impressive hook-laden set, drawing several tunes off its debut album "Nightwaves." Just as Ely conjured vivid images of life in Texas throughout his set, Kemp frequently turned to his native Baltimore for inspiration. While some tunes hoisted an all-too-familiar blue-collar rock flag, several others struck a highly personal note that was vigorously amplified by Kemp's rousing guitar breaks.
THE WASHINGTON POST
Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post
JOE ELY, JIMMIE GILMORE, TERRY ALLEN, BUTCH HANCOCK
By Geoffrey Himes
Column: PERFORMING ARTS
Monday, November 16, 1987;
Page B11
Singer-songwriters Joe Ely, Jimmie Gilmore, Terry Allen and Butch Hancock were high school buddies in Lubbock, Tex. When the Washington Project for the Arts brought them here last fall to do research for the "War and Memory: In the Aftermath of Vietnam" exhibit, the four found the names of several old classmates on the shiny black wall of the Vietnam Memorial. Friday night at the Museum of Natural History, the four singers repaid WPA with an hour-long song suite about the state of post-Vietnam America. At least four of the songs were written especially for the occasion, but all of them brought the sprawling subject into sharp focus through the eyes of some down-to-earth west Texas cowboys.
Ely, sporting a black-and-red cowboy shirt and playing rock 'n' roll electric guitar, was the most charismatic performer. His unaccompanied version of "Letter to L.A." was a chilling ballad of unrequited love (or unrequited patriotism); the three others joined him for his brand-new "Who's in Charge," a rocking challenge to authority. The skinny, boyish Gilmore sounded a bit like Jimmie Rodgers on his unaffected memory song, "Down in My Hometown."
The professorial Allen hunched over his piano and sang short, vicious satires from his epic "Youth In Asia" project. The evening's biggest revelation was the grizzled Hancock, who wore a beatnik cap, cowboy boots and a harmonica holder and sang mesmerizing, Dylanesque fables about veterans, angels, motorcyclists, Indians and the Statue of Liberty.
originally printed in The Washington Post