heres what Joe says about all of this: In 1982 Joe Ely bought an Apple Computer and a Roland Drum Machine and, with the help of a few friends, started an experiment that became the first record of an emerging genre to come out of Texas. “I had been on the road day in and day out for seven years, I was deep in debt, tired of traveling and disillusioned by the music business. I was back home in Austin for the Christmas holidays nursing my wounds and wondering what to do next. The year was 1982. Our next gig was New Years Eve in Lubbock. After the close of what seemed to be a great show, my guitar player, Jesse Taylor, came backstage and announced that this was his last night. He had quit the band. I accepted his resignation as an omen, and was shocked and relieved at the same time. There had been friction building for a while now. It was clear that this meant the end of an era. I started writing new songs reflecting on where I had been, and in doing so, I found inspiration hiding in the moment. A new horizon began to appear. I had recently built a makeshift studio at my home in Texas. It consisted of a four-track TEAC recorder, a few microphones, a Roland 808 drum machine and a strange contraption called a personal computer. It was the early Apple 2+ Computer with the very first sequencer card called an Alpha Centauri. I recruited Mitch Watkins to help me figure out these new machines. Roscoe Beck, Bill Ginn and Eddy Beethoven added to the mix. This new era had reached up and bit me on the ass… Little by little I began to track the new sounds. New songs and appeared as fast as I could record them. Everything was an experiment. There was no familiar territory. And over the course of the year enough had been recorded for a record. But, alas, the record company was not impressed by the work and wanted to re-record everything from scratch in Hollywood… Of course, this took many months and every penny from my contract. And when it was all mixed and mastered I went back and listened to the earliest tracks. I heard a simple freshness in them that seemed to be missing in the new multitrack recordings. And now I have decided to share those original recordings with you from the year before 1984…” Joe Ely – June, 2014
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 14:33:07 +0000
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