RIP Joe Ely

Son of a bitch.
I've been liking this guy since the late 70s, when I saw him on Austin City Limits. Joe and Jesse reunited.

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Damn.....somebody check on Willie

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Hate to say it but REK may be next; pretty frail these days.

Damn. Wrote one of the best songs ever…about a fighting rooster. RIP Joe

We lost a great one. I love his first band The Flatlanders:



Now those are country and western lyrics. Perfection.

The unlikely connection formed while Joe Ely was touring England in 1978. The Clash attended one of his shows and thought it was brilliant. For the next week they led Ely on a raucous romp through their hometown of London and, although their backgrounds were worlds apart, they found common ground musically and socially. “Strummer knows a lot about Texas music, and not just the stuff you might expect,” Ely explained. “Guy Clark is one of his favorite songwriters.”
Following Ely’s return stateside, The Clash headed to the studio to record their third album. Despite having two prolific songwriters, the band arrived at the recording sessions without any new material. This forced them to write a slew of songs in a surge of last-minute creativity, drawing on influences like the rockabilly intensity of the Joe Ely Band.
With the album nearly complete, The Clash set off on a North American tour, eager to explore the land of honky-tonks and cowboys that had long fascinated them. True to their punk ethos, they weren’t following the playbook of solely booking obligatory appearances in major urban hubs. They were visiting cities like Laredo, Lubbock, and Austin. The Armadillo World Headquarters was nearing the end of their remarkable run, but the legendary venue wasn’t done yet. In October of 1979 The Clash brought their British punk rock into the shangri-la of outlaw country.
Punk mentality was rampant in the bands that played Austin in the seventies. Some have even gone so far as to argue that Asleep at the Wheel were the first punk band in Austin, but conventional wisdom gives that title to The Skunks – and they worked the local crowd into a frenzy before Joe Ely and The Clash took over the stage. “There was such an explosive feeling in the air,” Ely recalled. “Our attitude was ‘it’s Saturday night at the honky tonk and someone just shot a gun into the ceiling. It was one of those dangerous nights where anything can happen.”

The show at the Armadillo was one of the final ones before London Calling was released, which means it was before they were THE Clash. It was poetic in its timing – one of the final chapters in the Dillo’s storied history overlapping with the meteoric rise of the British punk superstars. The front cover famously features Paul Simonon smashing his bass at the Palladium in New York, but if you flip the album over, you’ll find a homage to the band’s Texas adventure—a black-and-white shot from their night at the Armadillo, tucked just under the track listing. LINK

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My next door neighbor is Jimmie Dale Gilmore,

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How cool. His version of DC9 is the best. The trembling in his voice shakes my soul.

I knew that I had seen Joe Ely in concert way back, so I looked it up and figured it out. I saw Joe Ely on August 22, 1981 when he opened for The Kinks at the Greek Theater in Berkeley CA. A bit of an unlikely pairing, but it looks like they just happened to be in the Bay Area at the same time. I do remember enjoying it enough that I never forgot that I saw him at the Greek.

The internet, and the people who like to compile this kind of data, are awesome.

Joe through the decades