Many young people have looked around Lubbock, Texas, and realized there’s little else to do but share a few drinks and play some songs in a hazy bar with friends until it’s time to move on, or someone makes them. Others have responded to this view as reductive, choosing to take the best of what others will fly over or drive past as a challenge or an inspiration.
Few have lived the best of both these seemingly contradicting mindsets quite like Joe Ely.
According to his family in a Facebook post Monday evening, Ely died Monday at his home in Taos, New Mexico, at the age of 78…