Twisting in the Wind: a survival kit
 By Paul Barrow
Steve
Morse of the Boston Globe says that when Joe Ely
opened for Mary Chapin Carpenter July 10, this
"Texas honky tonker with the novelist's
heart seemed out of place in the early
twilight." As another writer Joan Anderman
has put it, "If 'Achy Breaky Heart"
is your idea of brilliant country music, you may
not appreciate Joe Ely." To be sure.
Nashville country artists and Joe Ely mix about
as well as water and oil. The two are about
entirely different purposes, from worlds that
really don't go to the same parties or speak to
one another.
Still his latest album Twisting in the Wind
is probably one of the best albums on the market
today.
It is an interweaving of styles from flamenco to
rock, from the country sound of a steel guitar to
that Zideco feel that comes from a
"Louisiana piano."
Joe Ely's music lacks the feel of a Nashville
writer's group spinning out
songs draped around old cliches or hackneyed
"good ol boy" images full of blue-eyed
blondes driving pickup trucks. His images are
fresh, yet often reminiscent of a Southwest we
have mostly relegated to old Clint Eastwood
movies: a turn-of-the-century cowboy Up
on the Ridge. "I heard thunder in
the distance," he sings. "I seen
lightnin' in his eye."
The Queen of Heaven
"carries my heart in a red bandanna/she
stole on a moonlit mountain."
In Behind the Bamboo Shade, he
sings "When her eyes met mine, the room
filled with Spanish guitars/the kerosene in my
blood/came on like a flood/as I stood to take her
away."
In a more gutsy vein, Sister Soak the
Beans offers a more get-down earthy
feel. "Sister soak the beans/I'll be comin'
home to chop the onion/Mama, light the
stove/It'll take awhile for the cornbread to get
done." In Workin For the Man,
"Life's too short to be sittin' around
grievin'/You're workin for the man and you ain't
breakin' even."
Joe Ely is not an artist in the same way that you
speak of country artists or rock artists in a
more generic sense, as a common denominator for
people in the business, without regard for the
quality or character of what is produced. He is
rather an artist in the same way that Picasso is
an artist. He seems less focused on the
commercial aspects of his craft or the
stereotypes of his genre--which is probably why
he is not in Nashville--and much more focused on
the images that form in his soul. To the critic
he is a purist. To the musician, he is committed.
He writes almost all of his songs. On this album
only two have had collaboration by other writers.
It is a credit to his label MCA Nashville and
also a measure of the respect he has gained that
he is given the freedom to write, produce, and
record all his material with his own band and in
his own town in his own studio.
Although this album was produced and recorded by
Ely himself in a studio behind his house in
Austin, Texas, each piece is crafted carefully,
each voice and each instrument positioned in each
song as carefully as as a flower might be in an
oil painting.
His music has been categorized as roots rock,
country rock, honky-tonk, Tex-Mex and a few other
things including Americana and folk, but it is
difficult to generalize about Joe Ely.
Blockbuster Music has him on their computer as
"country" but I found his CD's in the
rock section. Each album is different. Each song
is different.
He is an outlaw's outlaw whose qualities go
beyond those who fall into this category. He's
not just another Willie, another Waylon, or a
Jerry Jeff Walker. His is not just an independent
spirit roaming in a tough and uncompromising
world of corporate priorities. He brings us
something fresh when we were all about to puke in
the stagnant air of old formulas for top 10 hits
and radio play lists carefully fabricated to fit
market share. Joe Ely is a live fish in a dead
sea, a breath of fresh air in an outhouse during
a heatwave. You need him to survive.
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