Driven To Drive has been called Joe Ely's "first road album," featuring a collection of songs inspired by his travels from different eras of his illustrious career which spans five decades. It contains a collaboration with Bruce Springsteen on "Odds Of The Blues". The album stitches together recordings over several decades at Spur Studios, his home recording facility outside of Austin. Movement in these songs is measured in many ways: cars, sixteen-wheelers, motorcycles, Greyhound buses. There are pedal-to-the-metal anthems ginning down a straight strip of two-lane blacktop; a lazy meander on the Gulf blues highway; a tale of going on the lam on the Interstate; stories of getting from here to there, and songs about going nowhere at all.

"I got the idea for the song from hanging out at an all night after hours joint on the edge of east Lubbock called TV's… there was always a dice game in the back room, the pool table had a bad lean, and the jukebox mainly played old blues songs", explains Joe Ely about the origins of "Odds Of The Blues". "I wrote the song later when I put my studio together in Austin. I asked Bruce recently if he would like to sing with me on this song and he said he'd love to. We've been long lost friends for a long time. One of my memories of us singing together was in Dublin, Ireland when we both got on stage with Jerry Lee Lewis and Shane MacGowan and sang "Great Balls Of Fire"." "I've been traveling all my life in search of whatever I find," says Ely. "Revisiting some of my studio files, I noticed there were a lot of songs I had written on the road about traveling. I had recorded them in my studio every time I got off the road. I compiled a selection of songs like that from different eras. That's Driven To Drive."

 

source: Brucebase 

  

Joe Ely (born February 9, 1947, Amarillo, TX) is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist whose music touches on honky-tonk, Texas Country, Tex-Mex and rock and roll. He has had a genre-crossing career, performing with Bruce Springsteen, Uncle Tupelo, Los Super Seven, The Clancy Brothers and James McMurtry in addition to his early work with The Clash and more recent acoustic tours with Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, and Guy Clark.

 

2003-03-02 Frank Erwin Center, Austin, TX

"Gonna bring out my good friend Joe Ely down and play with us, come on up....out of a great city of songwriters, the talent that´s come out of Texas, Joe´s one of my very favorites, man.."

Joe Ely was also on stage with Bruce on May 20, 1993. singing together in Dublin, Ireland, when they got on stage with Jerry Lee Lewis and Shane MacGowan and sang 'Great Balls of Fire.' During an extended encore, Ely appeared to perform his 1988 tune "Settle for Love" with Springsteen, and then returned to the stage a bit later with Lewis for "Great Balls of Fire" and "Whole Lotta’ Shakin’ Goin’ On."