August 2, 2024 – Today, GRAMMY Award-winning singer-songwriter Joe Ely has released his new album Driven to Drive via Rack ‘Em Records / Thirty Tigers. Garnering early praise from American Songwriter, No Depression, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Stereogum and more, Driven to Drive is a collection of songs inspired by Ely’s travels from different eras of his illustrious career, which spans five decades. Along with the release, the Texas icon has shared the music video for his rollicking new single “Didn’t We Robbie.”
Directed by Matthew Esky (“The Mojo Manifesto: The Life and Times of Mojo Nixon”), the video features never-before-seen images of Joe Ely and The Clash from Ely’s personal archive.
Watch the Official Video for “Didn’t We Robbie”
Director Matt Eskey on Ely’s relationship with The Clash: “Joe’s new record Driven to Drive is out today and so is the video I directed for the new single ‘Didn’t We Robbie.’ Joe met the Clash when they came to an Ely band gig in London and showed them around for the next week. Joe would later return the favor and the bands would play a legendary show together at the Armadillo in October 1979. The next year Joe and the band opened shows on the ‘London Calling’ tour and in 1982, The Clash shot the ‘Rock the Casbah’ video in Austin. Ely was also in the studio with the band when they recorded ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go,’ helping out with backing vocals and the Spanish language lyrics. They remained close over the years and Ely and Joe Strummer had plans to make an album together when Strummer unexpectedly died of an undiagnosed heart defect at age 50.”
With 23 albums and several million miles under Ely’s belt, Driven to Drive stitches together recordings over several decades at Spur Studios, his home recording facility outside of Austin. Self-produced by Ely, movement in these songs is measured in many ways – there are pedal-to-the-metal anthems ginning down a straight strip of two-lane blacktop; a lazy meander on the Gulf blues highway; stories of getting from here to there, and songs about going nowhere at all. The end result features highlights like “Odds of the Blues” featuring Bruce Springsteen and the anthemic title track, which celebrates Ely’s affinity for freedom and is dedicated to those who refuse to stay put in one place.
Driven to Drive follows Ely’s critically acclaimed 2022 album Flatland Lullaby, which the Associated Press hailed as a record “for anyone who has ever been a kid.” In addition to his revered solo work, he is one-third of the Texas-based trio The Flatlanders along with Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. In 2021, the band released Treasure of Love, their first album in over 12 years that earned widespread support from press including Rolling Stone, American Songwriter and The Austin Chronicle, who raved in their five-star review, “Perfect in vision, voice, harmony – not to mention timing – Treasure of Love delivers quintessential Flatlanders.”
Over the course of his long and eclectic career – as a songwriter, performer, collaborator, and author – Joe Ely has altered and expanded the meaning of Texas music while taking those sounds and this place around the world. Driven to Drive is a reflection of this tireless roadwork, taking stock of the many trails he’s blazed.
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