Joe Ely

During an interview a few years back, Terry Allen, the godfather of the Lubbock Music Mafia, was reminiscing about that wonderful moment in Lubbock when Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock and Joe Ely took artistic flight.

"What I always loved about Joe from the very beginning is that it didn't matter if he came over and sat on my couch and played me just part of a new song he was working on, he played it like his hair was on fire. Full-tilt boogie, man. And he's kept that up throughout his career no matter what kind of stuff he's playing."

Ely was one of the first to truly put "Texas music" on the map. His UK tours with the Clash are the stuff of legend. I saw him take control of an angry crowd of roughnecks in an Odessa bar one winter night in 1977 when violence seemed inevitable. Ely and his band just blew the walls down, and no one could concentrate on anything but the music.

These days his schedule takes him around the world. This will be a rare up-close-and-personal evening with one of the true icons of the whole Texas music thing.