A rooster born of heaven...

Carlos Saragosa
left his home in Casas Grandes
when the moon was full

He had no money is pocket
just a locket of his sister
framed in gold

He headed for El Suego
and stole a rooster named Gallo del Cielo
and the he crossed the Rio Grande
with that rooster nestled deep beneath his arms

Robbie Fulks once told The Onion in an interview that Country Music does one thing really well, and when it does that thing, it sort of transcends itself. As I watched Joe Ely last night at Lee's Liquor Lounge, I pondered this idea. What kept ringing in my head is that what I consider good and/or authentic twang music, stains you. It stains your clothes, your heart, and your soul. It gets down inside you and it stays there across the years.

By contrast, the kind of Countrived Music that I rail against is more like lip gloss or clown paint, very temporary. If you're prancing around in a black cowboy hat right now, singing about Margaritas and Senoritas, you're going to wake up 10 or 15 years from now and wonder what the joke was. Why were you wearing that shirt, and man, this song sounds kinda fruity all the sudden doesn't it?

Joe Ely's music isn't like that. I often tell people if they had to re-record the episode of the Simpsons where Homer eats the chili pepper, goes on a trip and meets his spirit guide, a coyote with Johnny Cash's voice, they should choose Ely to fill in for the Man in Black (God rest his soul). When Joe sings a song, it stays sung. There's some kind of creepy, ethereal, authority to the way he sings; and that's not to say his voice is hard-edged and brute. Rather, when you're there, 20 feet away from the guy, and he sings something, you have a hard time imagining anybody else ever singing that song again. I like Robert Earl Keen like the next guy, but, after last night, I can't imagine anyone else singing "The Road Goes on Forever," ever again.

And make no mistake about two things: 1) Seeing the man do "Me and Billy the Kid," live in your face is just about one of the ten best things you can do on this earth if you're a country fan, and 2) Joel Guzman will cut the top of your head off with his accordion playing. I'm not sure I've seen anything like him, this side of Flaco Jimenez. He made that thing sound like a pedal steel, harmonica, and everything in between.

Finally, he sang the chicken fight song during his encores. I think I would have stepped over my own mother to hear that song live. To use a sports analogy, the welling of emotion for me in that song at the end is very similar to Al Michaels' "do you belive in miracles" bit at the end of the game against the Russians. The song is epic, yet believable, and for some reason, you get a big sympathetic hole in your heart for a fighting rooster during it. More of that ethereal stuff I was talking about.