ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, January 5, 1996 TAG: 9601050006
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ALBANY, N.Y.
SOURCE: JOEL STASHENKO ASSOCIATED PRESS
When it comes to empty, Joe Ely said, no place does it better than his native West Texas.
His sometime collaborator Butch Hancock estimated that you can see 50 miles in any direction on those brown plains. Stand on a tuna can, Hancock said, and you can see for 100 miles.
It is odd, then, that this immense nothingness inspires Ely so.
``For some reason, the emptiness of it just gives me ideas,'' he said. ``I guess there is nothing to get in the way. ... You can go for hundreds of miles between cities. There is a kind of majesty about it, like being on an ocean. All you have in between is a tornado or two or a thunderstorm. Those take on huge importance.''
While most songwriters prefer to peck out their compositions on a piano or a guitar, Ely does his best work on the road. He will click on the tape recorder, head out in any direction toward those endless horizons and drum his ideas onto the steering wheel.
``Old pickups work pretty good,'' he said.
This landscape accounts in part for his latest release, ``Letter to Laredo,'' a series of stories collected somewhere between the badlands and the corner bar. There is a Wild West, South-of-the-Border quality about it, shaded by the evocative runs of the flamenco guitarist Teye. But Ely allows the present day to intrude on his tales, too.
``I tried to keep the songs in the modern day,'' he said. ``The addition of Teye's guitar gave it a sound like it could have been from 100 years ago. But then you get to the last verse of `Ranches and Rivers,' and you find that the baby, she's asleep in the car seat. I like that.''
The question, though, is whether Ely's fans will like ``Letter to Laredo.'' Until now, Ely has been admired more for his raucous live performances than his introspective songs, no matter how artfully they've been done.
The energy and musicianship of the Joe Ely Band was first noticed in a big way in the late 1970s by the Clash, when that band was about the biggest in the world. The two bands toured Europe and the United States together in shows still remembered fondly by Ely.
His band, accustomed to Amarillo (``Where you'd have to worry maybe about getting hit by a beer bottle'') found itself playing before huge crowds of the Clash's buzz-cut, boozy fans (``Suddenly we were playing in the biggest cities in the world before complete lunatics, truckloads of them.'')
``Musically, I have gone a long way since then,'' he said. ``Performance-wise, I look at it really as just the other day. ... It kicked our energy level up. By the time we had toured around for a year or so, we had a whole different energy level.''
How is Ely reconciling the contemplative strummer of ``Letter to Laredo'' with the consummate honky-tonk rocker of renown? Simple. He plays the down-tempo new songs in the first half of his shows these days and returns to the older, faster, harder songs of the past in the second.
Teye's flamenco guitar dominates the slower half, and Jesse Taylor's electric guitar drives the other half. Ely's traditional show-stoppers, such as ``Musta Notta Gotta Lotta,'' ``Cool Rockin' Loretta'' and ``Roadhog,'' still rule at the end of an evening in which he also has managed to introduce his audiences to his more lyrical songs.
It is a dual nature that suggests nothing as much as the turn Bruce Springsteen took starting in the mid-1980s. Probably not coincidentally, Springsteen sings behind Ely on the best two cuts of ``Letter to Laredo'' - ``All Just to Get to You'' and ``I'm a Thousand Miles From Home.''
Both songs have that kind of restrained but insistent beat that Springsteen has employed so often since ``Born in the U.S.A.''
Springsteen first offered to sing backup for Ely when Ely appeared at a Springsteen-sponsored benefit in New York City two years ago. In what Ely said was a particular compliment, Springsteen told him he had been listening to the Joe Ely Band since before its Clash-fueled breakthrough.
``I have always admired his songwriting,'' Ely said. ``He is a great rock 'n' roll singer, but it is his songwriting that has impressed me more than anything. He tells a good story. He can use the dynamics of words to leave out the right things and make your imagination fill in the blanks.''
Ely, who figured he throws out 10 songs to every one he keeps, said that knowing what not to keep is the hardest part of writing lyrics.
``The simplicity is what you are after, of boiling them down from some idea into telling the whole story in less verses,'' Ely said. ``It's a hard thing, and it doesn't get any easier.''
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Until now, Joe Ely and his band have been known moreby CNBfor raucous live performances than for introspective songs. Still,
Ely hopes fans will like his latest release, ``Letter to Laredo.''
color.