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Joe Ely.

Article Excerpt
February is a big month for you. You turn sixty. You have a book out and a record about to come out, and it's exactly thirty years since your first record was released. How's all that sitting with you?

Well, you know, it's been a busy thirty years, with thousands of cross-country trips. I never made it out of high school, so I was really lucky to go around the world and get to see all this stuff. Of course, it doesn't feel like thirty years. I was always in motion, and when you're in motion, you don't really feel time. You feel like you're passing through time, but you don't really feel like you're leaving any time behind. You're kind of in the moment, because the wind's in your face and there's always another highway.

How clearly do you remember your early days in Lubbock?

When I actually think of how things happened to me--it was unreal. I had absolutely zero resources, but Lubbock had a little underground music scene. I always laugh about how we had a pretty good built-in crowd in Lubbock. We'd go to the outskirts of town, where the honky-tonks were, because Lubbock was freshly wet--it had been dry for seventy years. There weren't package stores, but there were bars.

If you're going to play music and attract crowds, alcohol helps.

It helps! We started getting a little bit of a following out at the bigger honky-tonks and among the [Texas] Tech kids. I remember on a Monday morning someone came over to the house and said, "Man, the preacher at the First Baptist Church did a sermon on the evils of honky-tonks, on the drinking and dancing." And he said, "He mentioned your name specifically!" I went, "Oh, man, I'm finished! I'm washed up!" This is before I'd even started recording. But you know what? The next Saturday night, we had a line four blocks long to get into the honky-tonk. It was advertising, and from then on we had great crowds.

You were born in Amarillo and got to Lubbock when you were eleven or twelve, right? What do you remember about growing up there?

My first memory of Lubbock is a knock on the front door and there's a guy selling steel guitar lessons. My mother invites him in. He has an...

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