Delbert McClinton: Can't Nobody Say I Didn't Try

Can't Nobody Say I Didn't Try:

Delbert McClinton was born Nov. 4, 1940, in Lubbock, Texas. He honed his craft working in a bar band, the Straitjackets, backing visiting blues giants such as Sonny Williamson, Howlin' Wolf, Lightnin' Hopkins and Jimmy Reed. He made his first recordings as a member of the Ron-Dels and was noted for his distinctive harmonica work on Bruce Channel's 1962 hit "Hey Baby." On a tour of the UK with Channel, McClinton met a young John Lennon and advised him on his harmonica technique, resulting in the sound heard on the Beatles hit "Love Me Do."

Relocating to Los Angeles in the early '70s, McClinton emerged in a partnership with fellow Texan Glen Clark, performing a combination of country and soul music. They achieved a degree of artistic success, releasing two albums before splitting, with McClinton embarking on a solo career. Emmylou Harris had a No. 1 hit in 1978 with his composition "Two More Bottles of Wine" in 1978, and McClinton's "B Movie Boxcar Blues" was used in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers. His 1980 album, The Jealous Kind, contained his hit single, "Givin' It Up for Your Love."

After a rest period during much of the '80s, McClinton made a welcome return in 1989 with the fiery album Live From Austin, taped during an Austin City Limits appearance. He won a 1991 Grammy for his duet with Bonnie Raitt, "Good Man, Good Woman," and reached the Top 5 of the country charts with the Tanya Tucker duet, "Tell Me About It." The fledgling label Rising Tide offered One of the Fortunate Few in 1997, but the label quickly folded. In addition to releasing two new studio albums in the early 2000s, New West Records issued Delbert McClinton Live in 2003, collecting songs from throughout his career.

Sir Douglas Quintet - She's About A Mover

Sir Douglas Quintet was a rock band active in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Despite their British sounding name, they came out of San Antonio, Texas and are perhaps best known for their 1965 hit single written by Doug Sahm, the 12-bar blues "She's About a Mover" named the number one 'Texas' song by Texas Monthly. With a Vox Continental organ riff provided byAugie Meyers and soulful vocals from lead singer and guitarist Doug Sahm, the track features a Tex-Mex sound. Other influences came in from blues, jazz, and contemporary rock.

In addition to "She's About a Mover," (1965) the band is known for its songs "Mendocino," (1968) "Can You Dig My Vibrations?" (1968) and "Dynamite Woman" (1969). "Mendocino" was released in December 1968, and reached #27 in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 by early 1969, spending 15 weeks in the chart. It was more successful in Europe selling over three million copies there.

The Sir Douglas Quintet is considered a pioneering influence in the history of rock and roll for incorporating Tex-Mex and Cajun styles into rock music. However, early influences on the band's emerging Texas style were even broader than this, and included ethnic and pop music from the 1950s and 1960s, such as doo-wop, electric blues, soul music, and British Invasion. The Quintet brought the older styles into a contemporary context, for instance by adapting the doo-wop feel, beat, and chord progressions. Perhaps even more off-beat for a late 1960s rock band than some inclusion of doo-wop type songs was that the band also played in styles like Western swing and polka (a Country & Western form and rhythmic style, from theTexas Hill Country, rather than a straight European style). They approached these styles with an instrumental line-up that was typical of blues bands: one guitarist, keyboardist, bassist, and drummer, and a member who could play either trumpet or saxophone.

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Josh Abbott - Buried Me

Josh Abbott Band
Buried Me:



JOSH ABBOTT BAND WEBSITE
JOSH ABBOTT BAND ON LONESTAR RECORDS


Formed in early 2006, The Josh Albert Band was founded by fraternity brothers Josh Abbott, Austin Davis, Drew Hurt, and Neel Huey. After playing mostly acoustic open mic night shows at The Blue Light, Josh and Austin called on Drew and Neel to give the band a rhythm section. On their debut night, The Blue Light packed in a full house and a sense of something special was present. After a year of picking up local shows and greek parties, the band released a self-titled LP in 2007 featuring four tracks. Immediately, the band recorded a music video for "Buried Me" and entered it in the Music City Madness competition on CMT.com. After beating out over 600 other videos, the live concept video made the final cut.



I really hate when you call me late at night.
I didn’t answer cuz I didn’t wanna fight,
or hear you say things you don’t mean;
and drive my heart again down Misery Street.

So go ahead and arrange the flowers,
and prepare my eulogy.
Call my brothers to be pall bearers,
cuz what you did already buried me.

When I think of you I get in my car,
but I can never escape from where you are.
And I can’t forget the words that you said
the night you shot me in the heart and left me for dead.

Who am I kidding, I’ll never be over you.
So put me ten feet deep, and I won’t face the truth.



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Steve Earle - The Revolution Starts Now

Stephen Fain "Steve" Earle is an American singer-songwriter known for his rock and country music as well as his political views. He is also a published writer, a political activist and has written and directed a play. In the later part of his career, after troubles with the law, drug addiction and his uncompromising viewpoints, he has become known as "The Hardcore Troubadour".

Earle was born on January 17, 1955, at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia. He is the eldest son of Jack Earle, an air traffic controller, and Barbara Earle. Although he was born in Virginia where his father was stationed in the military, the family returned to Texas before Earle's second birthday. They moved often during his childhood, primarily within Texas, but he spent several of his formative years in Schertz,Texas. He dropped out of school in the 9th grade to move to Houston and learn more about the music business. Earle released his first album, Guitar Town, in 1986. His sister, Stacey Earle, is also a musician, having toured with Steve in the 1990s and sung on the song "When I Fall" on Steve's 2000 album Transcendental Blues.

Earle has been married seven times, including twice to the same woman. His wives were Sandra "Sandy" Henderson, Cynthia Dunn, Carol-Ann Hunter (with whom he had his first child, Justin), Lou-Anne Gill (with whom he had a second son, Ian), Maria Teresa Ensenat, Lou-Anne Gill a second time, and finally, in 2005, singer-songwriter Allison Moorer. His first son, Justin Townes Earle, is also a musician, and is named for Townes Van Zandt. Earle and Moorer are expecting their first child together in March 2010.

Steve Earle Official Website
Original Unofficial Steve Earle Website
Steve Earle on Amazon

I was walkin’ down the street
In the town where I was born
I was movin’ to a beat
That I’d never felt before
So I opened up my eyes
And I took a look around
I saw it written ‘cross the sky
The revolution starts now
Yeah, the revolution starts now

The revolution starts now
When you rise above your fear
And tear the walls around you down
The revolution starts here
Where you work and where you play
Where you lay your money down
What you do and what you say
The revolution starts now
Yeah the revolution starts now

Yeah the revolution starts now
In your own backyard
In your own hometown
So what you doin’ standin’ around?
Just follow your heart
The revolution starts now

Last night I had a dream
That the world had turned around
And all our hopes had come to be
And the people gathered ‘round
They all brought what they could bring
And nobody went without
And I learned a song to sing
The revolution starts now

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Randy Brown - Ophelia

Randy Brown
Ophelia:


Randy Brown Website
Randy Brown On My Texas Music

Randy Brown covers The Band's classic "Ophelia" with a straight-ahead Texas dancehall lilt, and makes it his own.

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Austin Collins - House Without Windows

AUSTIN COLLINS WEBSITE
AUSTIN COLLINS ON LONESTAR MUSIC

Houston-born Austin Collins, currently headquartered in Austin, is garnering respect and considerable airplay on Americana and Texas Country radio stations...and beyond. Hardly a surprise. Collins combines knotty but thoughtful lyrics with a spare hard hitting rock sound (with echoes of folk phrasing in his vocals).


From Twangville:
"...I like lyrics that refuse to take the easy way out. This song, which musically is reminiscent of Whiskeytown’s “16 days”, could be George Strait’s “Easy Come, Easy Go”, where everyone involved is happy and ready to move on, but it doesn’t go that route. Picture the light “Easy Come, Easy Go” vibe with a casual middle finger waving effortlessly at this chick who done him wrong and then you have the right picture. The track where I feel that producer Johnson’s fingerprints are most evident is “House Without Windows”. The gritty, moody, muted guitar intro is a prime example of what you might hear on a future Centro-matic record (if you aren’t familiar with Centro-matic, you should be. They are DBT’s Patterson Hood’s favorite band, people!!) Again, lyrically this isn’t a song that chooses the stale, easy, country-cool path. When Collins strains his voice, he laments his “lead-based dreams”. We are left wondering how dangerous such dreams are when the chorus reminds us that his is a house “without windows...”

Willie Nelson - Stella Blue

Image by annableker

The idea of Willie Nelson covering a Grateful Dead song might seem to be something of a head-scratcher, at least at first. But Willie has always been first and foremost a songwriter, and the Dead were always open to traditional folkways. Their classic album American Beauty is a milestone in the development of Americana as a viable musical genre.

WILLIE NELSON
WILLIE NELSON ON AMAZON

STELLA BLUE:

All the years combine
They melt into a dream
A broken angel sings
From a guitar

In the end there's just a song
Comes crying up the night
Through all the broken dreams
And vanished years

Stella Blue
Stella Blue

When all the cards are down
There's nothing left to see
There's just the pavement left
And broken dreams

In the end there's still that song
Comes crying like the wind
Down every lonely street
That's ever been

Stella Blue
Stella Blue

I've stayed in every blue light cheap hotel
Can't win for trying
Dust off those rusty strings just one more time
Gonna make them shine

It all rolls into one
And nothing comes for free
There's nothing you can hold
For very long

And when you hear that song
Come crying like the wind
It seems like all this life
Was just a dream

Stella Blue
Stella Blue

Guitar Shorty - Please Mr. President

"Please Mr. President lay some stimulus on me.
Please Mr. President place some stimulus on me.
Cause I'm just a working man tryin to feed my family.

I used to have a good job working forty hard hours a week.
Had money in the bank and a mortgage I could meet.
But then they started to lay off and got a hold of me.
Now that mean ol' banker trying to put me in the street.

Please Mr. President lay some stimulus on me.
Please Mr. president place some stimulus on me.
Cause I'm just a working man tryin to feed my family.
I'm playin this for you, Mr. President!

Now I sure don't mind workin'- I'm not scared to break a sweat.
I'm not lookin' for a bailout, but I gotta pay my debts.
I don't know how to be a bad guy, I'm not gonna steal and rob.
But if I'm gonna feed my children, I gotta have some kind of job.

Please, please, please Mr. President lay some stimulus on me.
Please Mr. President place some stimulus on me.
Cause I'm just a working man tryin to feed my family.


I've got to have it, you know I need it.
Everybody needs stimulus."

GUITAR SHORTY
GUITAR SHORTY ON AMAZON

Credited with influencing both Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Guy, Blues veteran Guitar Shorty has been electrifying audiences for five decades with his supercharged live shows and his incendiary recordings (beginning in 1957 with a Willie Dixon-produced single on the Cobra label). Through the years, Shorty has performed with blues and R&B luminaries like Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, B.B. King, Guitar Slim and T-Bone Walker. Although he had recorded a handful of singles for a variety of labels, it wasn’t until the 1990s that the wider world opened its collective ears to one of the blues’ most exciting performers. His albums since then all received massive critical acclaim, and his legendary live performances have kept him constantly in demand all over the world.


Guitar Shorty (born David William Kearney, September 8, 1939, Houston, Texas) is an American blues guitarist. He is well known for his explosive guitar style and wild stage antics. Billboard magazine said, “his galvanizing guitar work defines modern, top-of-the-line blues-rock. His vocals remain as forceful as ever. Righteous shuffles…blistering, sinuous guitar solos.”

Ray Wylie Hubbard - Kilowatts

RAY WYLIE HUBBARD


RAY WYLIE HUBBARD AT AMAZON

Ray Wylie Hubbard (born 13 November 1946 in Soper, Oklahoma) is an American country music singer and songwriter.


Hubbard grew up in southeastern town of Hugo, Oklahoma. His family moved to Oak Cliff in south Dallas, Texas in 1954. He attended Adamson High School with Michael Martin Murphey, who had his own band at the time. Hubbard graduated in 1965 and enrolled in college as an English major. He spent the summers in Red River, New Mexico playing folk music.

During his time in New Mexico, Hubbard wrote "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother", made famous by Jerry Jeff Walker's 1973 recording. Hubbard recorded for various labels but struggled with sales; his mix of country, folk and blues elements didn’t find an audience. After leaving the scene and struggling with personal problems, he returned to recording with Lost Train of Thought in 1992 and Loco Gringo's Lament in 1994.

Today Ray Wylie Hubbard is an elder statesman of the Texas music scene. From New Braunfels, Texas, Hubbard hosts a Tuesday night radio show in called "Roots & Branches". This program promotes new and established Americana artists. Like some other performers in his genre, he is perhaps as popular in Europe as in the US--Hubbard has been invited by record companies in the Netherlands to produce albums. His most recent recordings have been produced by Texas guitarist Gurf Morlix.

Jack Ingram - Keep on Keepin' On

Jack Ingram


Jack Ingram on Amazon

Jack Owen Ingram (born November 15, 1970) is an American country music artist signed to Big Machine Records, an independent record label. He has released eight studio albums, one extended play, six live albums and seventeen singles. Although active since 1992, Ingram did not reach the U.S. country Top 40 until the late 2005 release of his single "Wherever You Are". A number one hit on the Billboard country charts, it was also his first release for Big Machine and that label's first Number One hit. Besides this song, Ingram has sent six other songs into the country Top 40: "Love You," a cover version of Hinder's "Lips of an Angel," "Measure of a Man," "Maybe She'll Get Lonely," "That's a Man" and "Barefoot and Crazy."

Ingram was born in The Woodlands, Texas. He started writing songs and performing while studying psychology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Ingram toured throughout the state of Texas in the early 1990s, opening for Mark Chesnutt and other acts. His first release was the self-titled Jack Ingram in 1992 via the Rhythmic label, followed by Lonesome Question in 1995. Warner Bros. Records eventually signed him and released a live album entitled Live at Adair's, and re-issued his first two indie albums.

In 1997, he released Livin' or Dyin' via Rising Tide Records, which produced his first chart single in the #51-peaking "Flutter". Two years later came Hey You via Lucky Dog, a division ofEpic Records, which accounted for a #64 country single in its title track. In 2000, he collaborated with Charlie Robison and Bruce Robison for the live album Unleashed Live.

Electric, his second album for Lucky Dog, was also his first album to enter Top Country Albums, despite not producing a chart single. This album was supplemented a year later by an EPentitled Electric: Extra Volts before he left Lucky Dog. Two more live albums followed before he signed to Columbia Records for the release of Young Man in 2004, which accounted for no singles. Another live album, Acoustic Motel, was issued in 2005.

In 2005, Ingram signed to the independent record label Big Machine Records. Under the Big Machine banner, Ingram released a predominantly live album entitled Live: Wherever You Are. His first single release on that record label, "Wherever You Are", became Ingram's first top 40, and later his first Number One single on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, as well as the first Number One for the Big Machine label. "Love You", the only other studio track on Live: Wherever You Are, was also released as a single, peaking at #12 on the charts. This song was also recorded by Trent Summar & The New Row Mob (whose frontman, Trent Summar, co-wrote it) on their 2005 album Horseshoes & Hand Grenades.

In late 2006, Ingram released a cover of Hinder's song "Lips of an Angel". Ingram's cover peaked at #16 on the country charts "Lips of an Angel" was the lead-off single to This Is It, his second album for Big Machine. This album also produced the #18 "Measure of a Man" (a Radney Foster co-write) and the #24 "Maybe She'll Get Lonely".

He won the Academy of Country Music award for top new male vocalist on May 19, 2008. Ingram also filled in for radio host Bob Kingsley on the countdown show "Bob Kingsley's Country Top 40" for the week of September 20-21, 2008.

According to CMT, Ingram's Big Dreams & High Hopes album has "more guts" and Ellis Paul's "The World Ain't Slowing Down" may be the song that takes Ingram to the "next level".Ingram says "It'll be fun for me to expose people to a fantastic song from an artist who's had a 20-year career of being a very successful folk artist." The song was cut from the album. Its lead-off single "That's a Man" charted in the Top 20, followed by "Barefoot and Crazy," which became his second Top 10 hit.

On August 26, Ingram set a Guinness record for the most radio interviews in one day, when he was interviewed 215 times.

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Joe Ely - Cool Rockin' Loretta

From allmusic.com:

Biography
by William Ruhlmann


Country-rock singer/songwriter/guitarist Joe Ely was born Earle R. Ely on February 9, 1947, in Amarillo, TX. His family had worked for the Rock Island Line railroad dating back to the start of the century. When he was 12, the family moved to Lubbock, TX, where his father ran a used clothing store. Inspired by seeing Jerry Lee Lewis perform when he was a child, Ely aspired to a musical career, and he briefly took violin and steel guitar lessons before turning to the guitar. His father died when he was 14, and his mother was institutionalized for a year due to the trauma, so he and his brother were forced to stay with relatives in other cities. When the family came back together in Lubbock, he took a job washing dishes to bring in some money.


He also dropped out of school and began playing music professionally in local clubs, forming a band called the Twilights that became successful enough for him to quit being a dishwasher. Soon after, however, he became sufficiently restless to begin traveling, at first to other cities in Texas, then California, and later New York, with even a trip to Europe working for a theatrical company. This peripatetic period in his life lasted a full seven years, from 1963 to 1970. In the summer of 1971, back in Lubbock, he teamed up with a couple of singer/songwriter friends with whom he was living, Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, along with some other musicians, to form the Flatlanders, a country-folk group. They attracted interest from the small Nashville record label Plantation Records and in March 1972 went to Nashville and cut an album that Plantation barely released, credited to Jimmie Dale & the Flatlanders. (The album is reputed to have been issued only as an eight-track tape.)


Ely returned to rambling around the country, but he was back in Lubbock by 1974, when he began putting together a permanent backup band to play there and around Texas. The Joe Ely Bandfeatured Ely on acoustic guitar and vocals; Jesse Taylor on electric guitar; Lloyd Maines on steel guitar; Gregg Wright on bass; andSteve Keeton on drums. A demo tape made by the group was passed to members of Jerry Jeff Walker's backup band, who gave it toWalker, who gave it to an A&R representative of Walker's label, MCA Records, and in the fall of 1975, Ely was signed to MCA. During 1976, he recorded his debut album, Joe Ely, which was released on January 10, 1977, along with a single, "All My Love," that reached the Billboard country charts. That song was one of five original Ely compositions on the LP; the other five had been written by Hancock or Gilmore.


Over a year later, on February 13, 1978, Ely followed with his second album, Honky Tonk Masquerade. (By this point, accordionist Ponty Bone had joined the backup band.) Again, the collection was a combination of Ely originals, including the title song, "Fingernails" (aJerry Lee Lewis-styled rocker with piano by Shane Keister), and "Cornbread Moon" (all of which were released as singles), and songs written by Hancock and Gilmore (the latter's "Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown," co-written with John X. Reed, had appeared on the Flatlanders' album). There was also a cover of Hank Williams' "Honky Tonkin'." Honky Tonk Masquerade was well received critically upon release (and a 1990 article in Rolling Stone magazine named it one of the essential albums of the 1970s), but it didn't sell. Ely was back in record stores a year later with Down on the Drag, released in February 1979. Another four Hancock compositions were introduced, along with five Ely originals. The album reached the Cash Box country chart.


Ely and his band toured extensively in the late '70s, headlining small shows and opening for bigger acts. Among these, surprisingly enough, was the British punk rock band the Clash. The group befriended Ely, however, and asked him to open shows for them back in the U.K. This expanded his following overseas and exposed him to rock audiences. The British division of MCA took advantage of the attention to record an Ely live album during the tour, and Live Shots, credited to the Joe Ely Band, was released only in the U.K. in the spring of 1980. (By this point, Robert Marquam had replacedSteve Keeton as Ely's drummer.) Meanwhile, the British reissue label Charly Records licensed the Flatlanders' recordings and gave them their first widely distributed release on a compilation called One Road More.


Back in the U.S., the American division of MCA initially declined to release Live Shots, preferring to wait for Ely's next studio album and continue to try to break him as a country artist. That album, Musta Notta Gotta Lotta, appeared in March 1981 on SouthCoast Records, an imprint founded by Ely's manager, still manufactured and distributed by MCA. (By now, Michael Robberson had replaced Gregg Wright on bass; Smokey Joe Miller [saxophone] and Reese Wynans[keyboards] had joined the band; and Lloyd Maines had dropped out of touring, although he continued to participate in Ely studio recordings.) Again, it mixed Ely originals like the title song with songs by Hancock and Gilmore (the latter's contribution being "Dallas," another song drawn from the Flatlanders' album). The commercial response to Musta Notta Gotta Lotta reflected Ely's increasing profile in both the country and rock markets. It reached the Cash Box country chart and even the Billboard and Cash Box pop charts, with the title song earning enough airplay to reach Billboard's mainstream rock chart. In October 1981, SouthCoast/MCA finally bowed to popular pressure and released Live Shots in the U.S., packaging it with a bonus four-song EP, Texas Special. It reached the Billboard pop chart.


By the end of 1982, Ely was arguably on the cusp of breaking through commercially as a country-rock crossover artist. He had opened shows for the likes of Linda Ronstadt, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, and even the Rolling Stones. But he had been touring continually for years, and the pace wore on him and his band. His guitarist, Jesse Taylor, quit. His drummer, Robert Marquam, died. He broke up what was left of the band and retreated to his home in Austin, TX, with his wife, Sharon Glaudt and, soon after, a baby daughter, Marie Elena. There he began writing songs intended for a movie and toying with computers and synthesizers. The financing for the film ran out, but by then he had a batch of songs that he took to Los Angeles and recorded in synth rock arrangements, calling the resulting disc Hi-Res. It appeared in May 1984, his first new music in more than three years, receiving mixed reviews and not selling.


Ely submitted another album to MCA, which the label declined to release, bringing his contract to an end. In a sense, he started over, assembling a new band and hitting the road. The new group featured lead guitarist David Grissom, bassist Jimmy Pettit, and drummerDavis McLarty, plus keyboardist Mitch Watkins, a holdover from Hi-Res. Ely signed to the independent HighTone Records label and in July 1987 released his sixth studio album, Lord of the Highway. Reviews were favorable, for a disc that again contained a couple ofButch Hancock songs, although Ely's own "Me and Billy the Kid" garnered the most attention, with covers recorded by Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Marty Stuart, among others. Dig All Night followed in October 1988. All the songs were written by Ely, with the title track co-written by Watkins, who did not perform on the album. (Some had been written prior to Lord of the Highway for the rejected MCA album.) Among them were "Settle for Love," which was covered byKelly Willis, and "For Your Love," which Chris LeDoux took into the country chart in 1993.


By the late '80s, Ely's sound, having long since lost its more overt country elements, had moved toward the mainstream rock style of John Mellencamp and Tom Petty. At the same time, however, a more rocking style had become more acceptable in Nashville, where, for example, Dwight Yoakam, Hank Williams, Jr., and Steve Earle had all topped the country album chart in recent years. In that atmosphere, MCA again became interested in Ely, re-signing him and issuing his second concert recording, Live at Liberty Lunch, in November 1990. Ely's first live album in a decade, it found him performing the best of the songs he had recorded since Live Shots. It spent five weeks in the Billboard country chart. Also in 1990, Rounder Records released the Flatlanders' More a Legend than a Band, a revised version of the group's barely released 1972 album.


In early 1992, Ely joined together with John Mellencamp, Dwight Yoakam, John Prine, and James McMurtry in an impromptu country-rock singer/songwriter supergroup called Buzzin' Cousins to record a Mellencamp composition, "Sweet Suzanne," for the soundtrack of the film Falling from Grace, in which Mellencamp starred. The track reached the country singles chart. In September 1992, MCA released Ely's eighth studio album, Love and Danger. Ely turned to acting in July 1994, appearing in the musical Chippy: Diaries of a West Texas Hooker at Lincoln Center in New York City. He also contributed songs to the score and appeared on the cast album, released by Hollywood Records. MCA released his ninth studio album, Letter to Laredo, in August 1995, by which time Ely's bassist was Glenn Fukunaga. If not quite "unplugged," it was more of an acoustic effort than previous releases and prominently featured flamenco guitarist Teye, with occasional harmony and background vocals by Jimmie Dale Gilmore,Raul Malo of the Mavericks, and Bruce Springsteen. It reached the Billboard country chart.


Although Ely had produced albums by Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, the three resisted calls for them to reunite as the Flatlanders until 1998, when they resurrected the band name to record the song "South Wind of Summer" for the soundtrack to the film The Horse Whisperer, issued in April. In May, Ely followed with his tenth studio album, Twistin' in the Wind. It spent four weeks in the Billboard country chart, but after releasing four albums without scoring a big hit, MCA again dropped Ely. In September, he participated in the self-titled debut by the Tex-Mex supergroup Los Super Seven, alongside Freddy Fender, Joel Jose Guzman, Flaco Jiménez, Rubén Ramos, Doug Sahm, Rick Trevino, and David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos, and he shared the album's Grammy Award for Best Mexican-American/Tejano Music Performance.


In 2000, Ely had two live recordings in release. His 1990 solo acoustic appearance at the Cambridge Folk Festival in the U.K. resulted in the six-song EP Live at the Cambridge Folk Festival on BBC/Strange Fruit Records in Great Britain. And he signed to Rounder, which released his third full-length concert collection, Live @ Antone's, in June. His band for the shows, taped in January 1999, consisted of returning members Jesse Taylor and Lloyd Maines, along with Teye, bassist Gary Herman, drummer Rafael O'Malley Gayol, and accordion player Joel Guzman. The album reached the Billboard country chart. The Flatlanders, meanwhile, had taken another step toward reconstitution by launching a national tour in the late winter of 2000. In May 2002, Ely, Gilmore, and Hancock finally re-formedthe Flatlanders for a new full-length album, Now Again, released by New West Records. Ely co-wrote 12 of the 14 songs and produced the set, which reached the Top 20 of the Billboard country chart. Ely's 11th studio album, Streets of Sin, was released in July 2003. It reached the Billboard country chart. Having waited 30 years between their first and second albums, the Flatlanders were ready with their third, Wheels of Fortune, within two years. Again produced by Ely, it was released in January 2004 and spent 11 weeks in the Billboard country chart. Among the four Ely compositions on the disc was "Indian Cowboy," a song he had not previously recorded, but which had been recorded over the years by Guy Clark, Tom Russell, Townes Van Zandt, and Katy Moffatt. Six months later, there was another Flatlanders album, the archival Live '72.


Ely had sat out the second Los Super Seven album, Canto, in 2001, but he returned for 2005's Heard It on the X. Leaving Rounder, he founded his own record label, Rack 'Em Records, and in February 2007 released his 12th studio album, Happy Songs from Rattlesnake Gulch. The same month, the University of Texas Press released his book of memoirs of life on the road, Bonfire of Roadmaps. That spring, he embarked on a tour with Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, and Guy Clark. At the same time, in April, Rack 'Em had its second release,Silver City, an acoustic collection of early Ely compositions in newly recorded performances featuring only Ely and accordionist Joel Guzman. Ely and Guzman were co-credited on Rack 'Em's third release, Live Cactus!, which appeared in March 2008.

Tish Hinojosa - Donde Voy

In a November post, we featured Tish Hinojosa's song The Westside of Town, about growing up Latina in San Antonio. Today let's hear Hinojosa's beautiful Spanish language ballad Donde Voy.





DONDE VOY
(Where I go)
By Tish Hinojosa


Madrugada me ve corriendo
(Daybreak finds me running)
Bajo cielo que empieza color
(Under a sky that's beginning to color)
No me salgas sol a nombrarme
(Sun please don't expose me)
A la fuerza de "la migración"
(To the force of the INS)
Un dolor que siento en el pecho
(The pain that I feel in my chest)
Es mi alma que llore de amor
(Is my heart that hurts for love)
Pienso en ti y tus brazos que esperan
(I think of you and your arms that wait)
Tus besos y tu passión
(Your kisses and your passion)
(Chorus)
Donde voy, donde voy
(Where I go, where I go)
Esperanza es mi destinación
(Hope is my destination)
Solo estoy, solo estoy
(I'm alone, I'm alone)
Por el monte profugo me voy
(Through the desert, a fugitive, I go)
Dias semanas y meces
(Days, weeks and months)
Pasa muy lejos de ti
(Pass far away from you)
Muy pronto tu llega dinero
(Soon you'll receive some money)
Yo te quiero tener junto a mi
(I want to have you near me)
El trabajo me llena las horas
(Work fills my hours)
Tu risa no puedo olividar
(Your laughter I can't forget)
Vivir sin tu amor no es vida
(To live with out your love isn't living)
Vivir de prófugo es igual
(To live as a fugitive is the same)

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