IN A PARALLEL universe, Joe Ely is a household name, filling stadiums and being lauded as a master storyteller shoulder to shoulder with Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. Both of those guys have doffed their metaphorical cap to the Texan’s unique ability to fit a short story’s worth of emotional depth and breadth into a three-minute song. Ely’s take on that is simple: “I like to tell in a song where the location is, paint the background, and then bring it into a rhythmic world and try to find something that doesn’t take away from it, but adds to it,” he says. When reminded that he once quipped, “I chase songs and I catch one of them every once in a while,” the Lubbock, Texas, native laughs. “I’ve got a whole bunch that I chased for many years but never caught,” he reflects. “Sometimes it’s like a stew or something: They can sit and simmer for many years until something might happen that lets you finish them.”
Ely started out on violin before he took to guitar. “I had been playing the violin since third grade,” he says. “But when I moved to Lubbock, the school didn’t have a music department, so I thought I’d just write my own music, and picked
