Bruce Springsteen joins Joe Ely on song from new album: Listen

Country singer-songwriter Joe Ely has announced a new album, Driven to Drivewhich comes on August 2nd. Leading the LP is a new song with Bruce Springsteen, “The Blues' odds.” Listen to the track below.

Ely and Springsteen have performed together sporadically since the early 1990s. In 1995, Ely recruited Springsteen to sing on two Letter to Laredo Pieces, “All just to reach you” and “I'm a thousand miles from home.”

Discussing the new song in a press release, Ely said:

I got the idea for the song from a group at an after-hours all-nighter on the edge of east Lubbock called TV's…. There was always a dice game in the back room. the pool table had a bad lean; and the jukebox played mostly old blues songs. I wrote the song later when I set up my studio in Austin. I recently asked Bruce if he would like to sing with me on this song and he said he would love to. We are long lost friends. One of my memories of us singing together was in Dublin, Ireland when we both got on stage with Jerry Lee Lewis and Shane MacGowan and sang “Great Balls of Fire”.

Self-produced Ely Driven to Drive. The new release follows Ely's 2022 collection Flatland Lullaby and the 2020 album Love in the middle of chaos. Last year, the musician reissued his first three studio albums: 1977's; Joe Ely1978 Honky Tonk Masqueradeand of 1979 Down on the Drag.

Driven to Drive:

01 Drivin' Man
02 Odds of the Blues [ft. Bruce Springsteen]
03 For Your Love
04 Watching Them Semis Roll
05 We didn't Robbie
06 Nashville is a catfish
07 Motorcycle ride
08 San Antonio Brawl
09 Slave to the West Wind
10 Gulf Coast Blues
11 Driven to Drive
12 Jackhammer Rock