{"id":2997,"date":"2017-07-28T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-29T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=2997"},"modified":"2022-08-13T15:21:45","modified_gmt":"2022-08-13T19:21:45","slug":"because-of-the-wind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/because-of-the-wind\/","title":{"rendered":"Because of the Wind (Joe Ely)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Because of the Wind\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QTiXV-mp6_c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I first heard Joe Ely in 1979-80, when I was visiting my erstwhile washboard player, Rob Forbes, in Ithaca\u00a0 and a friend of his played me <em>Honky Tonk Masquerade<\/em>. Rob&#8217;s friend introduced it as a fusion of new wave rock with <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-2998 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Joe-Ely-LP-e1660418076967-300x300.jpg?resize=300%2C300&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Joe-Ely-LP-e1660418076967.jpg?w=300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Joe-Ely-LP-e1660418076967.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>country music, but I didn&#8217;t hear anything new wave about it &#8212; the country sounded country and the rock sounded like Jerry Lee Lewis. Which said, the band had a unique mix of high-powered electric guitar and steel with accordion, and the songs were my first taste of the new Texas scene, which was a huge relief from the singer-songwriter stuff I was hearing back east. (I later learned that the new wave connection was kind of guilt by association: the Clash were huge fans and took Ely on tour with them, so a lot of people first heard him in that context.)<\/p>\n<p>I bought that album, listened to it over and over, learned more than half the songs on it, picked up Ely&#8217;s next couple of records as well as his first, which preceded <em>Masquerade<\/em>, and eventually had the luck to see him live and solo. I saw him a few times with bands as well &#8212; a loud rock group with Bobby Keyes on sax and then the reunion of his old Lubbock\/Austin band with Lloyd Maines, Ponty Bone, Jesse Taylor, and the addition of a Dutch flamenco guitarist named Teye &#8212; but the shows that blew me away were the solo ones. He would come onstage with just an acoustic guitar and I swear he rocked harder than I ever saw him do with a group. His charisma was incredible, his guitar work was as effective as anybody&#8217;s this side of Lightnin&#8217; Hopkins &#8212; ok, that&#8217;s an exaggeration, but in context it was terrific &#8212; and I can&#8217;t think of any concerts I&#8217;ve loved more.<\/p>\n<p>I sang a lot of Joe&#8217;s songs in my touring days, and have posted my versions of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/me-and-billy\/\">Me and Billy the Kid<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/row-of-dominoes\/\">Row of Dominoes<\/a>&#8221;\u00a0 (the latter written by Butch Hancock, Joe&#8217;s sometime partner with Jimmie Dale Gilmore in the Flatlanders, but I&#8217;m one of the many people who mostly know Butch&#8217;s work through Joe). I rarely <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-3001 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/joe-ely.jpg?resize=150%2C203&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"203\" \/>played this one onstage, because I had other quiet songs and was looking for something else when I went to him, but I always loved it and did it when I had the right crowd, and almost recorded it on my LP&#8230; and I still think it&#8217;s one of the simplest, prettiest lyrics I&#8217;ve ever heard. Pure Texas, without any mythic posing or overstatement.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, my own experience of &#8220;the breeze that blows from Corpus Christi&#8221; is a good deal less romantic. I hitchhiked through there in early December, 1987, as the temperature dived to freezing, with nothing but a light wool jacket. Fortunately\u00a0 a friendly bum had an extra sweater, but it was still damn cold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I first heard Joe Ely in 1979-80, when I was visiting my erstwhile washboard player, Rob Forbes, in Ithaca\u00a0 and a friend of his played me Honky Tonk Masquerade. Rob&#8217;s friend introduced it as a fusion of new wave rock with country music, but I didn&#8217;t hear anything new wave about it &#8212; the country &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/because-of-the-wind\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Because of the Wind (Joe Ely)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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I'd probably heard a few of Guy's recordings, maybe \"Homegrown Tomatoes\" on the radio, but I was more of a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Kerrville LP","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Kerrville-LP.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5977,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wishing-for-you\/","url_meta":{"origin":2997,"position":1},"title":"Wishing For You (Joe Ely)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 11, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"This is neither the first nor the last Butch Hancock song I learned off Joe Ely's terrific string of records in the 1970s. (Actually, I just checked, and this is off his 1981 album,\u00a0Down on the Drag, which was not quite up to that standard, but still had some killer\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Joe-Ely-Ponty-Bone.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3801,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/me-and-billy\/","url_meta":{"origin":2997,"position":2},"title":"Me and Billy the Kid (Joe Ely)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"June 30, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I've already written about my introduction to Joe Ely and my affection for his work, and I'm happy to revisit the subject, because I owe him a lot. Beyond the great songs I learned off his records, and the records themselves, it was a whole attitude toward music. Along with\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Ely-Liberty-Lunch-297x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4441,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/watermelon-dream-guy-clark\/","url_meta":{"origin":2997,"position":3},"title":"Watermelon Dream (Guy Clark)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 16, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"This is probably my all-time favorite summer song -- partly because of the lyrics and the way they fit with the melody, and partly because the guitar arrangement fell together so comfortably. It may have taken an hour or so, just playing and seeing what felt right, and that was\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Guy-Clark-old-no1-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5998,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/boxcars\/","url_meta":{"origin":2997,"position":4},"title":"Boxcars (Joe Ely\/Butch Hancock)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 9, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Yet another I got from Joe Ely, penned by Butch Hancock. I've paid tribute to that pairing a few times already, in my posts for \"West Texas Waltz,\" \"Row of Dominoes,\" and \"Wishing for You,\" and don't have more to say about them... Joe reshaped my ideas about what I\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Joe-Ely-LP-e1660418076967.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2983,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/gimme-ride-heaven-boy\/","url_meta":{"origin":2997,"position":5},"title":"Gimme A Ride To Heaven, Boy (Terry Allen)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"August 4, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"When I was writing for the Boston Globe I would sometimes drop by Rounder Records to see what was new, and one afternoon I stopped by George Thomas's desk and he handed me Bloodlines by Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band. I'd never heard of Allen, and\u00a0 George was\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Bloodlines-LP.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2997"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4701,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2997\/revisions\/4701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}