NEW NORTEÑO
JOE ELY TURNED TO MUSIC TO GET THROUGH THE PANDEMIC.
A few days into his self-quarantine, Joe Ely suddenly felt disoriented. The scale of the coronavirus pandemic had finally sunk in, in waves: Austin, where he lives about 20 miles outside of town; Texas; the world.
“When it got to ‘the world,’ that’s where I said, ‘I’ve gotta get busy,’ ” relays the 73-year-old singer and songwriter, a steadfast and poetic presence in Texas music since emerging with Lubbockbred compadres the Flatlanders in the early 1970s.
“I just had to keep my mind busy or else it just started going some places I didn’t want to go,” Ely adds.
The result is “Love in the Midst of Mayhem,” Ely’s first album of new songs since 2015’s “Panhandle Rambler.” Except these songs aren’t exactly “new.” Until very recently, they belonged to the trove of song fragments, some more complete than others, that had been accumulating for decades.
“When I’m on the road, I’ll write phrases, pieces of songs,” Ely notes. “I might not look at ’em for a few months or a few years, and then all of a sudden — like this record.”
These 10 songs’ origins range from before the Flatlanders’ 1973 demise — the group has reconvened regularly in the past two decades, releasing three albums — to after “Panhandle Rambler.” Despite the broad time frame, “Mayhem” is united by a feeling of profound humanity, resulting in an assortment of parables (“A Man and His Dog”) and affirmations (“Don’t Worry About It,” “Soon All Your Sorrows Be Gone”). Another, a gentle command, is simply called “Cry.”
Ely says he came to regard the songs as “different voices in a city, so I kind of followed that vein for a while.” Landing on a title fairly early in the process also helped him organize the project, he explains.
“I knew I was looking for songs of love and strength and hope and stuff,” Ely says.
One of the most striking songs is “Garden of Manhattan,” which Ely began working on shortly after the attacks of 9/11. The smoke from the fallen twin towers becomes “an angel ridin’ through the canyons on a chariot of fire.”
“I kind of thought of the song as a bag lady in Manhattan who’s out on the streets, sees the towers fall and thinks it’s like the coming of Jesus,” Ely says. “(She) sees the smoke coming down the street thinking it’s like a guardian angel.”
That’s as apocalyptic as “Mayhem” gets, though. Although the record was very much inspired by the pandemic — which Ely calls “pandammit,” borrowing the term from fellow “Lubbock Mafia” alum Terry Allen — he purposefully excluded any songs born of anger.
“I said, ‘Wait, you can’t be mad at this,’ ” says Ely. “You just have to open it up like a book and read it, and try to get through it. People dying all around you, you just have to focus on bringing some light into the room.”
Besides its themes, the melodies on “Mayhem” help add to the record’s cohesiveness; many, if not all, share a certain wistfulness. Much of that is due to the work of accordionist Joel Guzman, with whom Ely works frequently.
Ely says, “He’s really great to work with and added a whole lot to the tenderness of the record.”
According to Ely, early feedback on “Mayhem” suggests all that baring of his soul did not come in vain.
“I’ve had people since this record came out tell them that it helped them get through a hard day, or found they got some bad news and stuff,” he says. “I figured if it could help one person through a hard day, it was worth it.”
As an unexpected bonus, the album’s release date happened to fall on April 17, Ely’s wedding anniversary with wife Sharon.
“That was kind of a gift,” he smiles.
If this were any other time, Ely would doubtless be heading out on tour to promote “Mayhem,” befitting an artist whose earlier songs include “Road Hawg,” “The Highway Is My Home,” and “Lord of the Highway,” among many others. Instead, he’s already headed back into his massive archive of songsto-be.
“(I’m) mainly just going through and spending a couple of hours a day just listening,” Ely says. “And making tons of notes. I’ve got a stack of notes about a foot tall.”