iFest Date/Time
Bud Light World Music Stage
May 8, 6:30pm
Genre
Rock
Bio
With a career spanning 18 albums, thousands of live performances, and hundreds of thousands of miles on the road over four decades, Joe Ely needs no introduction. This American singer, songwriter and guitarist, whose music touches on honky-tonk, country and rock and roll, has had a genre-crossing career, performing with Bruce Springsteen, Uncle Tupelo, Los Super Seven, The Clancy Brothers 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.
Streets of Sin, his first studio album in 5 years, marks a changed man, a restless, creative soul hungry to get back to the ol’ Joe. The album is all about songs and the singer-songwriter who has learned to love the studio and find refuge in it, and the musician who plays more guitar than on any previous recording. The songs are the kind of small stories “you find on page 8 of the B section in the newspaper,” as Ely puts it, small stories that also happen to resonate and ring true in the larger world.
The Flatlanders, the band he started in 1972 with this South Plains co-conspirators Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, inspired the return to the basics. Reuniting, recording their first album in 30 years, and touring coast to coast and overseas brought it all back home for Ely. And the proof is in the music. “When I was signing these songs, I found myself singing not to the multitudes, but to somebody alone in the kitchen,” Ely says. “A listener can relate because they know a character like the ones I write about. It doesn’t require audience participation. I think it’s best listened to in the kitchen, by the computer, in the backyard, or in the car. It’s got a nice road flow to it.
The Flatlanders, the band he started in 1972 with this South Plains co-conspirators Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, inspired the return to the basics. Reuniting, recording their first album in 30 years, and touring coast to coast and overseas brought it all back home for Ely. And the proof is in the music. “When I was signing these songs, I found myself singing not to the multitudes, but to somebody alone in the kitchen,” Ely says. “A listener can relate because they know a character like the ones I write about. It doesn’t require audience participation. I think it’s best listened to in the kitchen, by the computer, in the backyard, or in the car. It’s got a nice road flow to it.
“This is not a honky-tonk or a rock record,” he makes plain. It’s more folk and blues-y rhythms and simple songs and a little dark.
Joe Ely fans believe their Texas troubadour has delivered up a big heaping serving of songs worth listening to, now more than ever, especially when the wind starts kicking up out of the west.
