First of all, Joe Ely is a badass.
He was there when the Clash recorded their last great album, "Combat Rock," in 1982. Ely sang background vocals, in Spanish no less, on "Should I Stay Or Should I Go." (Interestingly, the song on other side of that single was "Straight to Hell," which features prominently in M.I.A.'s 2007 song "Paper Planes" - you know, the super-catchy one with gunshots in it.)
Ely, who was born in Amarillo and moved to Lubbock at 12, had found his way to England after years of rambling. He brought the Clash back with him and they played together in Texas and Mexico. Try to imagine how insane that tour was. You get drunk just thinking about it.
Years earlier, back in Lubbock in 1972, he had recorded the first (and until 1998, when they got together to do songs for "The Horse Whisperer," the only) record by the Flatlanders, "More A Legend Than A Band," with fellow singer/songwriters Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock.
That first record, called "All-American Music," was a failure, released only on 8-track. It would eventually be re-released in slightly different form after all three singers achieved solo success, and is now a cult classic. If anything, its original obscurity adds to its appeal.
Ely has, for over 30 years, been the Texan answer to Bruce Springsteen, as a songwriter, in that he writes good songs about bad people. Character portraits that find sympathy for, and in, the devil. He writes rock-and-roll songs mostly with a country wash to his voice that is not full-on, but hinted at.
He was back in Lubbock Saturday at the Cactus Theatre, accompanied by accordionist Joel (rhymes with Noel, like the Christmas song) Guzman. Ely wore shiny red cowboy boots, black pants, a black T-shirt and a gray suit vest. Under the vest he wore a thin gold chain.
At 61, he still looked like he could deck half the college dudes down the street in the Depot District bars. Like Springsteen, he has aged well, his voice picking up a suitable amount of grit, though his tenor voice is still strong and clear. He also sings like Springsteen, with a furrowed brow and either a grimace or a thin, mischievous grin.
Ely leans into the microphone as he sings, his thin black acoustic guitar always on hand, rollicking along. His voice comes out the side of his mouth, like Paul Newman in the movie "Hud." His cheeks have drawn inward with age like Lyle Lovett, and he wears his hair in a Johnny Cash wave.
"I like to play songs Joel has never heard before," he said after one song, as Joel, his grinning straight-man sidekick, shook his head in mock bewilderment. Guzman, a Tex-Mex accordion hero, had no trouble keeping up. He played passionately on every song, illuminating brilliantly Ely's tales of heartache and sorrow.
It was bizarre after the show to walk out of the Cactus Theatre and see and hear what seemed like a non-descript bar band playing cover songs on a large stage down at the end of Texas Ave. Officially, the Joe Ely concert was part of the Lubbock Music Festival; I had to buy a festival bracelet to get to the show. I presume that what I saw on that outdoor stage was one of the main acts of the night.
The Lubbock Music Festival is not well known or popular, and appropriately so. It is especially awful every year, it seems. It looked this year as if a few of the corn dog stands from the South Plains Fair were brought over, as well as a guy to keep yelling "Get your T-shirts!" Lubbock is a city with lots of musical history, and one of the festival's headliners was KC and the Sunshine Band. That's criminal.
I loved the intimate performance I saw, but really, Joe Ely should have been up on that main outdoor stage with a full band. Hell, get the Flatlanders back together. Get Alejandro Escovedo up there. David Garza. Thrift Store Cowboys. Erykah Badu. Willie Nelson. There are plenty of great Texan musicians, alive and well, and Lubbock somehow maintains a certain mystique (call it the Buddy Holly Effect).
But until the city does something that shows they actually care about music - and by this I mean live music - then Lubbock will remain in musical purgatory. (I am of course not talking about the many terrific efforts in the underground Lubbock music scene. The city of Lubbock, however, remains the most powerful opportunity around, meaning the wealthiest with the kind of dough needed to truly put the tractor beam on great music and bring it here.)
There's an interesting dynamic between Lubbock citizens and Lubbock musicians (or at least the members of the Flatlanders, and other artists that define Lubbock music post Holly), mostly because the former tend to be wealthy conservative farmers, and the latter tend to write songs about poor liberal farmers - populists, really.
Case in point: Joe Ely performed a Butch Hancock song on Saturday called "Dry Land Farm," which includes a lyric about a "two-faced president." He also performed a song called "All That You Need" (which he introduced as "Sow the Seed") that features the lyric "The ones who set our policy don't give a damn about our needs."
It is testament to the emotional respect Ely draws as a songwriter that he gets away with that kind of sentiment in a Lubbock gig - and even some raucous applause on the "two-faced president" line, which surprised me - but then again, there was a little tension, too.
I was sitting in the second row, and in front of me sat two platinum blonde women who chatted throughout the show, especially the quiet moments at the beginning of songs. One of them even tipped her head back and cackled. Their husbands, I guess, were sitting off to the side. After Ely sang from the perspective of a down-but-not-out dry land farmer and that the president should be put out on a "dry land farm" to see how he likes it, one of the husbands grew irritable.
"Well he lives in (expletive) Austin," the man grumbled. Within a few minutes, however, he was saying, "Oh, this one's good," and clapping loudly for a new song.
Mostly the crowd got into "The Road Goes On Forever (And the Party Never Ends)," a romantic tale about a fated love, but more importantly a dose of nostalgia, with the scene about a woman driving her truck through the countryside, the windows open, a beer can between her legs. About a hundred middle-aged ladies with country roots lit up with recognition and hooted, and sang along. The men, in colorful button-up short-sleeves, shouted, "And the party never ends!" and held up their cans of Coors Light.
"It's hard to see you guys," said Guzman, at one point in the show, squinting into the crowd. "Do you guys have lighters?" He grinned at the joke. Ely looked back at him, one arm resting on his guitar, and shook his head.
"No, they all use iPhones now," he quipped.
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