Joe Ely - Silver City

In a twist on the 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man routine', Silver City finds Joe Ely, the West Texas country-rock troubadour, providing us with a bunch of new recordings of songs he wrote in the late sixties and early seventies.

Don't let the smiling portriat of the young Ely on the cover lead you to suspect that the recordings are a cash-in from his early archives - this is a new recording, and although the sound and the spare, acoustic backdrop set Silver City firmly in the vein of his work with the Flatlanders, the miles of rough road and years of hardcore honky-tonking that come through in Ely's dusty vocals lend the album an undeniable maturity, putting it squarely on par with any of his latter-day solo outings.

Silver City offers a unique opportunity to hear the ambition of youth tempered by the wisdom of experience.

• Silver City
• Santa Rosa / St. Augustine
• Indian Cowboy
• Wounded Knee
• Cloister Mountain
• Time For Travelin
• I Know Will Never Be Mine
• Drivin' 'Cross Russia
• Windy Windy Windy
• Billy Boy