Heart Of Texas: Ely's Honky-Tonk Heroics

LUBBOCK, TEXAS — To understand why Joe Ely is the most promising singer/songwriter to come out of Texas since Willie Nelson, one must understand his surroundings. To an outsider passing through Lubbock, a city of 175,000 set in the middle of the South Plains of West Texas, the place is a surreal Desolation Row, where cowboys are definitely not the drugstore variety and fights are the preferred method of proving a point. It is a hangout for mid-America's version of the Blank Generation.