Joe Ely & Joel Guzman: Live Cactus
Joe Ely & Joel Guzman
Live Cactus
Rack 'Em Records 003
Songwriter Joe Ely and accordionist Joel Guzman are no strangers. They have played together on many stages in different configurations for many years. Recently, they have teamed up for a series of duets in concert halls around the country. It's an interesting concept: Ely's plaintive songs, shorn of all instrumentation beyond an acoustic guitar strum, joined by perhaps the most lyrical accordion player in Texas. There isn't a note of lead guitar or a bass run to be heard in the entire set.
They recorded one night in 2007. It isn't that you haven't heard these songs before. If you're an Ely fan, you probably have; four of the 13 songs were included on 2000's Live at Antone's. But there is no "Dallas," no "Must Notta Gotta Lotta," no "Everybody Got Hammered" here.
This is more reflective material, an hour's worth of poems of the west Texas prairie. Lyrically, the elements are up front; several prominently employ the wind as a metaphor. "Because of the Wind," "Winds Gonna Blow You Away," "Up on the Ridge," "Ranches and Rivers" and "I'm a Thousand Miles From Home" connote wide-open spaces and roads that go on forever even in their titles.
And here is where the magic happens. Those seemingly lonely, empty landscapes seem to give flight to Guzman's creativity, and it is a joy to hear his poetic squeezebox dance around Ely's simple, insistent, ever-so-slightly-shifting rhythms like wind devils skittering across the dusty fields. "Slow You Down," "All That You Need" and "Letter to Laredo," favorites all for Ely fans, have never sounded lovelier.
It's a good time for Ely to look over his canon and revisit his songs with fresh eyes and ears. In this context – guitar, accordion, two voices -- understatement becomes a virtue.
(This review appeared in Stereophile magazine, April 2008.)