JOE ELY:
A TEXAS TWISTER
There can be no doubt that some young people who devote their souls to music will find a way to get to a special place. It’s like their inner heart is aimed at something only they can see and hear and that’s that. It will happen. Usually you can tell who has this destiny just by looking at how they see the world around them. Molecules swing through the air when they walk by, and their eyes have an ability to see things others don’t, and at the same time pass those images on to others around them. Music is magic, and that is all there is to it.
That’s the way the road opened for Joe Ely. Born in Amarillo, Texas near the end of 1945, the young man was practically shoved into freedom. His father died when Ely was a teenageer of 13, and his mother was institutionalized shortly after. The rules that young men are given at that time get quickly tossed when the parents are gone. And their next steps are usually ones that either send them to unbound freedoms, or present hobbies or dreamy futures to the rescue. Luckily for him, Ely found a wonderlust for travel and the sound of an acoustic guitar. Next up was a deep love for poetry and lyrics, and the time and temperament for writing poetry and songs. The game was full on for Joe Ely, and he could see all it took to find his own way free was a lack of fear for not knowing what was next. At that time in America, the mid-1960s, when the biggest choice of the day was whether to join the Army and fight overseas foreigners or slip out the window and blow with the wind through the fifty States. The wind won, and this twisting Texan took off on his own sight-seeing scenario in all directions. When the songs Ely was writing started to sound almost finished, a career had been found. Music was tearing at the seams of the United States, and this was another Texan, who was going to throw his cowboy hat in the music ring. The chase was on
As is often the case, sometimes things that are meant to happen actually. Maybe it’s beginner’s luck, but Joe Ely found himself in Lubbock, Texas when there was a loose-goose gang of musicians and, yes, poets and they were ready to glue together an aggregation and call it the Flatlanders. After, of course, the terrain around town. In the front row on the bandstand along with Ely was Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, along with a requisite musicians who played the saw. Yes, a saw. The group made a name for itself fastly in 4/4/ time around town, and they were soon heading down to Austin for various nefarious gigs, including one outdoors on Sunday nights as the magical beer there at the Armadillo World Headquarters. It was a time when the youngster squad in Austin, including many from the 50,000 students at University of Texas there, had liberated themselves for herbal joys and the unstoppable delight of peyote buttons.
Yes, the race was on and college hipsters of all shapes and sizes decided it was time to get high. Really high. And, of course, swear off surf music again. All kinds of solo acts and turned-on bands began filling the stages of Austin and it wasn’t with folk music. Soon enough, in 1972, Willie Nelson relocated to River City from Nashville and all hell broke loose. Some were calling Austin the new music mecca in the U.S. and got in their VW bugs and beat tracks to the Capital of Texas.
Of course the Flatlanders quickly made a name for themselves as being at the top of the list to listen to, recording an album that never really saw the light of day except as an 8-track tape and then broke up. That’s okay, because with Ely, Hancock and Gilmore it was three bands for the price of one, and they quickly threw in the crowd called cosmic cowboys, redneck rock and other such labels. None of it mattered because as musicians by the double-digits started flooding the city and nightclubs opened up like pizza joints, it was clear that Austin was the home for a red-hot music scene that hadn’t been seen in Texas–ever. And none other than Joe Ely was among those at the toppermost of the rockermost swinging and dinging all over town. The man became a city star almost overnight, and rightly so. His band was on fire, including lead-guitarist Jesse Taylor, who had a way of causing mayhem just by showing up. Original songs of outright wonder started flowing from all the former Flatlanders’ pens and the record label MCA snapped up Joe Ely like he was the next Willie Nelson.
And here’s the really good news. Ely had all the goods of any artist in Austin then, and took it even further into a sound that had as much supercharged rock & roll as brand new country classics that came with crying towels. The man really was in a party of one. By the time his debut album came out in 1977, his firecracker charisma was being talked about by Bruce Springsteen and the brand new Clash in England. It really did feel like there was no way ely could miss jack-knifing his way to the top. Except, of course, there’s the old bugaboo of being too good. The record label and radio poobahs could figure out to call him country or rock, and naturally the man himself didn’t see why he should make a bet with one style or another. Wasn’t it all music? Yes and no, depending on which side of the cash register you worked on.
Joe Ely and the super-electrified band scored the opening slot at the Armadillo near the end of 1979 for the UK’s superkings the Clash. They really were the most blasting band from England, and had enough crazy electric kicks in them that their Austin shot would anoint them in America. But first the electrified Ely homeboys got to show their smoking goods that night, which is exactly what they did. The boys in the band took their sound to the rafters and shook the city. Really. And, of course, made lifelong fans of the Clashsters. It felt like the Texans had busted out of any chance of not turning the world of sound around, and Joe Ely was now ready for his own startime.
So come the 1980s and it’s time for the Texas terror du jour was still touring like hurricane-creators and recording albums that could not be bested. And surely the mass crowds were on their wave. When Joe Ely walked into a room the lights got brighter and the conversation turned up a few slots. Every album he made became a slab of vinyl wonder, and the band even got more unbeatable. Though they weren’t famous everywhere in America, it was starting to seem like it was inevitable.
So when the Texans strolled in Los Angeles in 1981 it felt like it was time to throw them a good old-fashioned twist-off, something where the in-crowd cats needed to be there. There was a semi-dump of a Chinese restaurant in Hollywood that had a music room in the basement that was hot as firecrackers. When I first saw the place I immediately figured it could use some great Texas music, I booked bands like Stevie Vaughan (who had not released an album yet), Joe King Carrasco & the Crowns, Sir Douglas Sahm and, just to show we weren’t all Texadocious the first Hollywood gig by Los Lobos. Of course, Joe Ely just had to take over the joint for a night. But there was a problem. A Los Angeles weekly club party by a crowd of New Wave groovers called the Veil, and put on a party every Monday night at Club Lingerie just down Sunset a few blocks. The crowd grooved to super New Wave music, and thrived on dancing of a whole other kick. And they had booked the Cathay de Grande because the Lingerie wasn’t available. Of course, it was the same night we wanted Joe Ely to play. So we did what we had to do, which was featuring Ely and his rowdy crowd for a 5-8 p.m. gig, right before the Veil swingers showed up dressed in tuxes and frou-frou dresses. What could go wrong?
Luckily the Ely-ites got there at 5 p.m., started pouring down the libations and having one hell of a night. It almost felt like Soap Creek outside Austin on a full moon. The sweat in the room was at full-tilt, the dancers were throwing each other around like hula hoops and Elyand was absolutely on fire. And just when it seemed the crowd couldn’t get crazier, the New Orleans rhythm & blues hero who wrote and had the original 1948 rock & roll hit “Good Rockin’ Tonight” went into the smash like the world was going to end. Really. Brown had magic in him, and he was ready to show an audience who didn’t know who he was how things were really done in rock & rollvile. Once the song was done, the Cathay owner flipped on the lights in the dark dungeon and surveyed the damage of a club that was nearly destroyed. The Veil crowd was horrified as they watched it from the back of the Cathay, and as Ely’s army marched up the stairs to the street, the Veilsters seemed to push against the far wall and hide. Los Angeles has never been so split apart. Luckily, no fights broke out and those Joe Ely fans who were lucky enough to be there are still talking about it.
A year later, Joe Ely had continued to move up the concert ladder and one night in the fall of 1984 opened at the Universal Amphitheatre for superstar Linda Ronstadt. Near the end of his set he started a song that was about having Roy Brown playing with him at the Cathay de Grande. My heart started beating fast and had a mile-wide smile remembering that night. Ely’s chorus line was something like, “Rockin’ with Roy Brown, rockin’ at the Cathay de Grande…” I froze in happiness. Brown had passed away not long after the Cathay show, after he went back to his home in New Orleans to perform at the Jazz Festival there. Watching him in that crowd I felt a massive smile cover my face, realizing what a wild world we all live in when things can come together exactly as they’re supposed to.
Of course, Joe Ely went on to a stellar career that grew bigger and bigger in the 1980s and beyond. He always pushed his creative buttons with just enough beauty, and followed a path through life that seemed like it was exactly what it was meant to be. The man’s songs and shows were events that really couldn’t be equaled, and Ely always seemed to know where his life shined the brightest. When the Texan became ill last year it didn’t seem possible that he would move on to the next world. Not yet. He still had so much to give here. But none of us really know the future, not really, and acceptance of our time on this planet is one of the tests that keeps us here and then takes us home. Joe Ely shared his gifts until last December, and has gone to a new realm to no doubt give them his best there. Still rockin’ like he always has.