49.00 PLN

CD:

Nr kat.: RERCD003
Label  : Rounder

Joe Ely is one of the great American survivors. In the early 70s he was a key member of the legendary Texas alt.country trio the Flatlanders, along with Jimmy Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, and by the end of the decade he was touring alongside his admirer Joe Strummer, whom he joined on the 1982 Clash hit Should I Stay or Should I Go? His latest venture is a return to basics, recorded live in Austin with only the fine Tex-Mex accordion player Joel Guzman to back his guitar work. The result is a brave and powerful reworking of songs from Ely's back catalogue, from the epic Up On the Ridge to All Just to Get to You, a song that was originally recorded in the mid-90s with help from Bruce Springsteen, and now re-emerges as a muscular, slowed-down rocker dressed up with subtle accordion work. Best of all, there's an exquisite treatment of Because of the Wind, a song that's 31 years old and still one of the great Texas lyrical ballads https://www.guardian.co.uk -------------------------------- JOE ELY & JOEL GUZMAN"Live Cactus!"Rack 'Em ON HIS new concert recording, "Live Cactus!," Joe Ely makes a joke about his home town, Lubbock, Tex. "It's a very romantic place," he says, adding after a pause, "if you've just gotten out of the pen." He then goes on to confess that most of his songs are rooted there: in the narratives of cowboy songs, in the swing of Bob Wills, in the rockabilly of hometown hero Buddy Holly and in the accordion-fueled bounce of Tex-Mex music. That last quality has always been present in Ely's music but never so obviously as in his collaborations with accordionist Joel Guzman. The two were bandmates in the borderland all-star ensemble Los Super Seven, and recently they've been performing as a duo. This disc captures the two live, playing 10 songs by Ely and one apiece by R.C. Banks, Butch Hancock and Townes Van Zandt (young singer Ryan Bingham joins in Van Zandt's "White Freightliner Blues"). Guzman is an underappreciated virtuoso of the squeezebox; his thick chords and fluttery runs fill out the sound of Ely's tenor and acoustic guitar remarkably well. On "Ranches and Rivers," Guzman's accordion answers each line of Ely's vocals so eloquently that it almost sounds like a dialogue. -- Geoffrey Himes - https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/26/AR2008062601121.html