Exit On Easy Street: Sayin' Goodbye To The Lord Of The Highway

Joe Ely died earlier this week. Now, unlike some other folks that have dies in recent years, I don't have a particularly strong connection to Ely, despite him working in Americana, so music that should be right up my alley. But somehow I never stumbled over any of his albums, so he mainly stayed in my conscience as a guy that many of the Americana and Alt Country artists that I like idolized and namechecked. As a matter of fact, for years the only Joe Ely song in my collection was the cover of "Are You Sure Hand Done It This Way?" with Uncle Tupelo. Ely had been sick for a while it seems, and announced in Spetember that he had dementia and Parkinson's, so you figured he wouldn't be very long for this world. Still, another one of the old heroes gone. It's starting to get mighty thin in the ranks for a certain type of country-folk singer-songwriter. Having recently posted the second album of my Willie & Waylon Outlaws series, I'm thinking that Willie Nelson is immortal, but he will definitely be the last one left.

Anyway, just because I'm not the world's biggest Ely fan, mainly out of ignorance, doesn't mean that I won't mark his passing with a bit of his music. Because the only Ely music I have I put aside a while ago to maybe do something with for this blog. And now that Ely is gone, I did. So these tracks that make up Easy Street and a second album to come up later were recorded by Joe Ely in the mid-80s, in 1985 or early 1986 to be precise, for a follow-up to 1984's Hi-Res. However, his relationship with RCA, the label he was with for eight years and five albums was starting to get rocky, and MCA decided against releasing an album from these sessions, finally dropping Ely from the label. He recorded two albums for Hightone Records before fianlly going back top MCA for the 90s. 

The music that is on Easy Street is proof of Ely's all-encompassing approach to his music. It's rooted in country, but Ely's music is as much rock, while also dipping into honky tonk, mariachi music, and even reggae, as on "Up A Tree", while kick-ass opener "Baby Needs A New Pair Of Shoes" is almost new wave. He's also pretty good with country ballads, as on "A Thousand Miles From Home" and "Heart And Soul". This is all pretty good stuff, and eminently worth of being released. Fair warning, though; This is music from the mid-80s and boy does it sound like it. Drums like gunshots, an overly bright and very likely digital sheen - this isn't a roots record in the traditional sense, or at least it doesn't sound like one. But it does sound pretty good, even if it does sound of its time. 

So here's part one of unreleased Joe Ely, which we more or less discover together. Next stop: Easy Street...

R.I.P. Earle Rewell "Joe" Ely, 1947 - 2025