Joe Ely has consistently been banging out Texas-style rock for some 50 years. The fact that the Lubbock native’s music doesn’t sound much different now than it did some five decades ago is a tribute to his talent and hard work. The kid who once saw Jerry Lee Lewis play from the back of a flatback trailer in Amarillo has stayed true to the gospel of rock and roll and its many auxiliary influences, from honky tonk to Tex Mex to punk to blues to country with more than 20 full-length albums attesting to that truth. Ely’s efforts have made him a legend in the Lone Star State, along with Willie Nelson, Buddy Holly, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and others who belong on the crowded Texas musical Mount Rushmore. But that’s not because he has remained in one place. As the title of his latest release testifies, he’s been Driven to Drive. He can’t stay still. His music keeps on moving and gets listeners to do the same.
Ely is a road warrior. Driven to Drive‘s songs were recorded on assorted dates, even during different decades, when he would return to his home studio outside Austin after coming off a tour. The album, as a whole, still manages to have a harmonious vibe. It isn’t easy to distinguish which songs were recorded when. They share a uniform sensibility. Ely’s vocals and guitar playing remain strong throughout. His musician neighbors accompany him, most frequently accordionist Joel Guzman, as well as keyboardist Bill Guinn, fiddler Richard Bowden, and singer Eddie Beethoven—but not all at the same time. Most tracks feature just one or two other players. Jeff Plankenhorn later added his guitar to three tracks at the Zone studio in Dripping Springs, Texas, and engineer Par Manske (who mastered the LP) added percussion. Bruce Springsteen also contributed guest vocals on one track.
Driven to Drive presents Joe Ely hitting the highway by car, semi-truck, motorcycle, and Greyhound bus. The songs are full of colorful one-liners that contain the wisdom of the road as found in tall tales, folk wisdom, and poetic inspiration. “For your love, I’d stop a freight train single-handed / I’d straighten the bends in the Rio Grande,” he sings boastfully in “For Your Love”. “Lady luck is for horses and dice / she has no heart,” he observes in “Odds of the Blues”. “Nashville is a catfish looking for a silver hook,” he recites in his tribute to the Tennessee town.
Joe Ely’s stories wander the way a traveler does when entering strange territory, noting the novelty and sameness of the surroundings, not yet sure what’s important and what just is. For example, the song about Nashville has the city turn into “a fiddle, ain’t no violin”, “a dreamer with a broken heart”, and “a tour bus shining like a lady of the night” before Ely’s done. He appreciates the many sides of the Music City even as he sees through its facades.
Most of the tracks on Driven to Drive throb with the motion of being on the go, whether the singer is watching the vehicles roll or driving himself. The most prominent counter-example is the slow-moving acoustic “Gulf Coast Blues”, where he looks out at the tide and realizes one can be moving and still be going nowhere like the waves in the sea. He notes that blues are the feeling one gets while waiting for the wind. Joe Ely knows he has to keep on moving, as he says in the title song. He provides room for the rest of us to join him. I call shotgun.