West Texas honky-tonker Joe Ely has a long history with Tucson stretching back to the early 1980s when he opened for hometown country-rocker Linda Ronstadt.
So it wasn’t a surprise when he said his must-do list includes eating Mexican food — the authentic Sonoran style, not the Tex-Mex of the Austin restaurants he’s used to — and taking in the funky downtown vibe when he gets here next week.
“I’ve always liked the vibe of Tucson. It has that Western vibe but also that real old culture,” he said last week from Boise, Idaho, where his latest road trip had taken him before it meanders our way for a Rhythm and Roots show at Hotel Congress Wednesday, Oct. 7.
Ely, 68, comes here with his longtime friend and music-making cohort Joel Guzman, who backs Ely’s guitar with some regionally flavored accordion. The pair worked together on Ely’s just-released album, “Panhandle Rambler,” a collection of songs painting vivid pictures of his native Texas; he grew up in Lubbock and now calls Austin home.
“It kind of brought me back to my roots, growing up in west Texas, and then kind of rediscovering that landscape out there and the characters that I had run into at different parts of my life,” he explained. “I pulled it altogether into kind of a picture of modern day desert from Junction, Texas, out West.”
The album draws on what’s happening in that region: the drought, the desert, the cartels. And like the ever-changing landscape, the album changed the deeper Ely got into it.
“I thought I was finished and I sat back and listened to it over a few days, maybe a few weeks, and then started seeing other songs that would fit better,” he said, and when those songs came about, he shifted gears.
“It’s more like a novel. I never really tell the whole story but I tell enough to make you want to fill in the spaces,” he explained. “I think I found some songs that felt like they belonged with each other.”
The album’s themes resonate with the West — California, Arizona, anywhere along the border with Mexico. And it is Ely’s second record that dips into those topics. In 1995, he recorded “Letter to Laredo,” which trained its attention more along the tumultous Rio Grande.
“This one has a much wider scope, from El Paso and beyond,” Ely said. “I have always just been fascinated by the music. I tried to bring in more of the music of Mexico and that’s were Joel came in. Flamenco and gut string guitar.
“It’s just the two of us and we have done this so much that we kind of read each other’s minds, so it’s a real treat to go out with Joel,” he added.
“Panhandle Rambler” is the 13th indie album Ely has recorded. He also released 13 albums with MCA and another six or seven with the Flatlanders, an early 1970s country band that included fellow Lubbock musicians Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock.
