Description
Book Synopsis Since he first hitched a ride out of Lubbock, Texas, at the age of sixteen, singer-songwriter and Flatlanders band member Joe Ely has been a road warrior, traveling highways and back roads across America and Europe, playing music for '2 hours of ecstasy' out of '22 hours of misery.' To stay sane on the road, Ely keeps a journal, penning verses that sometimes morph into songs, and other times remain 'snapshots of what was flying by, just out of reach, so to savor at a later date when the wheels stop rolling, and the gears quit grinding, and the engines shut down.'
In Bonfire of Roadmaps, Ely takes readers on the road with him. Using verse passages from his road journals and his own drawings, Ely authentically re-creates the experience of a musician''s life on tour, from the hard goodbyes at home, to the long hours on the road, to the exhilaration of a great live show, to the exhaustion after weeks of touring. Ely''s road trips begin as he rides the rails to Manhattan
Trade Review
[The book] compresses the maddening minutiae of touring life into verses of such jarring imagery and black humor, it’s a wonder anyone ever decides to become a musician at all. And yet they do. It’s a remarkable book. Often enough, Ely makes it plain just how much he and his fearless, possibly foolish compadres are taking their lives into their own hands, or how much their sanity is at stake. * Houston Chronicle *
Table of Contents
- 52 Cities till Christmas
- Iron Rhinos
- Bonfire of Roadmaps
- One Fuse of a Summer
- Lord of the Highway
- Gulf War One
- Jim Beam
- Laredo East and West
- On the Run Again
- Afterword
