★★★★★
The Definitive Collection Ely released his first solo album in 1977 and the first six tracks here are from that eponymous album, including the terrific If You Were A Bluebird, one of a number of songs penned by Butch Hancock. It was soon after that debut solo album that Ely met The Clash in London and that encounter had significant baring on the rockier sound he later developed. Tracks like Dallas, with its bluesy feel, begin to show that, as well as the Ely co-write Cool Rockin' Loretta...
- www.music-news.com
2013-10-16
★★★★★
Six-and-a-half decades into a life full of restless adventure played out on stages around the world, it's good to hear Joe Ely proclaim he's "Satisfied at Last." But his title-song declaration that he's happy with his lot hasn't dulled his edge at all. He's still a terrific songwriter, a dynamic performer and spot-on producer. For this album, Ely collected a hot list of Austin-area musicians to lend their chops, sometimes in surprising ways...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
Ely was perhaps still licking his wounds when he made Lord Of The Highway in 1987, his career in limbo after parting ways with a major US label, MCA. His previous outing, Hi-Res, three years earlier, had seen him all but forsake his tough Texan country-rock roots, but here returns to what he does best. The saloon swagger of My Baby Thinks She's French and Screaming Blue Jillions are indicative of Ely's default setting, a cut above standard bar room chugs thanks mainly to the wit of the lyrics...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
When I got to see The Flatlanders earlier this year, I got to hear a bunch of these songs live, and I tell you what -- 40 years in the industry might be a preamble for Joe Ely.He toured with The Clash, made one of the rowdiest live albums ever with Live Shots, wrote Bonfire of Roadmaps, a tale of the road... hell, he's done it all. But at the end of the day, it all comes down the to the music, and Satisfied At Last is 10 pieces of primo Lubbock, Texas, Joe Ely songs...
- www.ink19.com
2011-09-05
★★★★★
Buy it from Buy the CDDownload as MP3Joe ElySatisfied At LastRack 'Em2011 After too many lean years, the Texan troubadour rediscovers the form that established him back in the 1980s. Now 64, Ely still sings with agility and swagger, though retrospection and mortality tie together the songs here. There's a rueful mood to "Not That Much Has Changed", about a soldier's return home, but mostly Ely's tone is philosophical...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2011-08-01
★★★★★
Joe Ely has been releasing albums under his own name since the late 1970s, and the muses have typically been on his side. Like his frequent touring partner, John Hiatt, he's never managed to strike with a commercial audience despite a canonization in singer-songwriter circles, his name always spoken in hushed, reverential tones wherever three or more are gathered with a guitar, a can of pork and beans, and a starlit night full of pickin' and grinnin'...
- www.popmatters.com
2011-07-11
★★★★★
Satisfied at Last is being touted as a milestone in Joe Ely's decade-spanning oeuvre, and there's much to love in the old-dog leather bag of tricks he's carried throughout his travels. Packed with West Texas mythos, Ely's latest revisits the hardscrabble Lubbock poet and his ever romantic muse, the titles alone telling of the journey by a man looking back over his shoulder: "The Highway Is My Home," "Not That Much Has Changed," "You Can Bet I'm Gone...
- www.austinchronicle.com
2011-06-20
★★★★★
Joe Ely Satisfied at Last (Rack'Em Records, 2011) When Joe Ely stepped onto the national stage with his first self-titled MCA album in 1977, he was already a legend in his native Texas for his work with the Flatlanders, a band that also included Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, two other singer-songwriters who had a hard time fitting into the rigid categories of the music business...
- www.crawdaddy.com
2011-06-06
★★★★★
Joe Ely's career has been legendary on one hand—a member of the Flatlanders with Jimmy Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock whose first four solo albums are about as good as Texas country gets—but he has never been as big as it seems like he should be. Ultimately, it's because Ely is a rock 'n' roll singer whose voice and persona is bigger than the singer-songwriter-y production his records tend to receive (even when he's behind the board)...
- www.offbeat.com
2010-11-09
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