Honky Tonk Masquerade

Of the three Flatlanders, Joe Ely was the youngest and the most rock-oriented. His style crystallized on 1978’s Honky Tonk Masquerade. Though it was recorded with producer Chip Young at his studio in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the core band consists of Ely’s longtime Lubbock pals: Steve Keeton on drums, Gregg Wright on bass, Jesse Taylor on guitar and the incomparable Lloyd Maines on pedal steel. It sounds like true country, which is to say, this music couldn’t have come from a city. “Because of the Wind” and “Tonight I Think I’m Gonna Go Downtown” are dust-blown Texas folk songs, rustically played and delivered with love and ease. Few songs fuse country and rock as fluently as “Cornbread Moon,” “West Texas Waltz” and “Honky Tonkin’.” It isn’t a contrived formula of “country-rock,” just some West Texas boys who know how to play the old music with joy and spontaneity. The album’s great accomplishment might be Butch Hancock’s “Boxcars,” to which Ely applies bongos and fuzzy layers of steel guitar. It sounds incongruous, but not even Woody Guthrie alone with his acoustic could conjure a more chilling ghost story.