{"id":5977,"date":"2025-10-11T10:27:34","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T14:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=5977"},"modified":"2025-10-11T10:26:55","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T14:26:55","slug":"wishing-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wishing-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Wishing For You (Joe Ely)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Wishing for You (Joe Ely - Butch Hancock)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Vqps_1SB3S0?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>This is neither the first nor the last Butch Hancock song I learned off Joe Ely&#8217;s terrific string of records in the 1970s. (Actually, I just checked, and this is off his 1981 album,\u00a0<em>Down on the Drag<\/em>, which was not quite up to that standard, but still had some killer tracks.) I&#8217;ve already posted &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/west-texas-waltz\/\">West Texas Waltz<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/row-of-dominoes\/\">Row of Dominoes<\/a>&#8221; (the latter of which I also recorded on my CD,\u00a0<em>Street Corner Cowboys<\/em>), as well as Ely&#8217;s own &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/because-of-the-wind\/\">Because of the Wind<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/me-and-billy\/\">Me and Billy the Kid<\/a>,&#8221; and there are more to come, because I immersed myself in those albums, and credit them &#8212; and later Joe&#8217;s solo live shows &#8212; with <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-5978\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Joe-Ely-Ponty-Bone.jpg?resize=218%2C193&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"218\" height=\"193\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Joe-Ely-Ponty-Bone.jpg?w=311&amp;ssl=1 311w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Joe-Ely-Ponty-Bone.jpg?resize=300%2C265&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 218px) 100vw, 218px\" \/>transforming my ideas about what I wanted to be playing and how, and why.<\/p>\n<p>I know that sounds over the top, but somehow Joe showed up exactly when I needed him. I&#8217;d come out of my year with Dave Van Ronk playing a huge repertoire of Van Ronk songs, and a lot of old blues guitar arrangements, and some half-assed swing&#8230; and yet, I had always loved rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll, and a lot of my skills were better suited to country music, which I had never understood&#8230; and Joe showed up, rocking hard and playing a blend of all of that, plus some Latin rhythms, and making it all sound like solid bar-band music rather than an attempt at some kind of innovative fusion.<\/p>\n<p>And that band. Lloyd Maines on steel, long before he nurtured the Dixie Chicks; Jesse Taylor on lead guitar, sometimes playing too much for my taste, but often right in the pocket; Gregg Wright on bass and Steve Keeton on drums; and Ponty Bone on accordion, adding some Mexican flavor &#8212; my guitar break on this one starts out directly mimicking his accordion break, which I hadn&#8217;t heard in probably twenty years until I just went back and listened to it, but is engraved in my brain.<\/p>\n<p>And that songs. A lot of the best ones were by Butch, and prompted me to hunt up some of Butch&#8217;s albums &#8212; Van Ronk was a huge fan; he once suggested Butch was the only songwriter in the US who could have hit New York the way Dylan did &#8212; but to my tastes, Joe had picked the cream of the crop. And there were also some fine ones by Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and by Joe himself.<\/p>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t one of the masterpieces &#8212; I love the first verse and chorus, but the second doesn&#8217;t stand up &#8212; and I&#8217;ve never performed it onstage and don&#8217;t expect to, but it was one of my first attempts to fingerpick a Caribbean rhythm, and I&#8217;ve been playing it for my own pleasure for almost fifty years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is neither the first nor the last Butch Hancock song I learned off Joe Ely&#8217;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 tracks.) I&#8217;ve already posted &#8220;West &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wishing-for-you\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Wishing For You (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_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Wishing For You (Joe Ely) - 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I've already done posts about a bunch ofsongs from that album, and from Joe's other records, some of them written by Butch, some by Joe: \"Boxcars,\" \"Because of the Wind,\" \"West Texas Waltz,\" \"Row of Dominoes,\"\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":2997,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/because-of-the-wind\/","url_meta":{"origin":5977,"position":1},"title":"Because of the Wind (Joe Ely)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"July 28, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"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's friend introduced it as a fusion of new wave rock with country music, but I didn't hear anything new wave\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-e1660418076967-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6334,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/everyday\/","url_meta":{"origin":5977,"position":2},"title":"Everyday (Buddy Holly)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"October 3, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"I've known Buddy Holly's big hits since back when I started buying \"oldies\" rock 'n' roll sets in my early teens, and can still sing \"That'll Be the Day,\" \"Peggy Sue,\" and \"Oh, Boy!\" I think I even performed them occasionally when I was busking the cafe terraces in Antwerp,\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/everyday\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Buddy-Holly.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":603,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/diamond-joe\/","url_meta":{"origin":5977,"position":3},"title":"Diamond Joe (Cisco Houston\/Jack Elliott)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"March 21, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A wry ballad from Cisco Houston and Ramblin' Jack Elliott, about the dubious pleasures of working for a lousy trail boss.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"cisco songbook","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/cisco-songbook-204x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":527,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/casey-jones\/","url_meta":{"origin":5977,"position":4},"title":"Casey Jones &#8212; The Union Scab (Joe Hill)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"March 8, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"One of Joe Hill's most pointed parodies, about union strikebreakers, to the rollicking melody of the pop train-wreck ballad \"Casey Jones.\"","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Joe Hill","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Joe-Hill-183x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3915,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/row-of-dominoes\/","url_meta":{"origin":5977,"position":5},"title":"Row of Dominoes (Butch Hancock)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"August 4, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Yet another I learned from Joe Ely. Among the many debts I owe to Joe is that he introduced me to Butch Hancock's songwriting. Joe and Butch had teamed up way before I heard of either of them, in a band called the Flatlanders, which also included Jimmie Dale Gilmore\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\/2018\/07\/butch-hancock2.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5977","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=5977"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5983,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5977\/revisions\/5983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}