Rave on

For Hancock, The Flatlanders draw him back into music at a time when he's been involved in some of his many other interests. Now living in Terlingua, he's become a family man since the birth of his son Rory, now two years old. He's also been working as a whitewater river-rafting guide for the Terlingua-based Far Flung Adventures, which sponsors trips on the Rio Grande and other rivers that feature nightly campfire entertainment by musicians like Hancock. He's indulging his training and offbeat inclinations as an architect by building his own home as well.

"If you think my songs are in any bit askew, you ought to see my buildings," Hancock says. "It'll be rock and mud and adobe, and everything else too. The whole thing's gonna be an experiment."

Brave old world (clockwise from top): Butch Hancock, Joe Ely, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore have reunited as The Flatlanders, and it feels so good.

Details

January 29

Bass Performance Hall, 525 Commerce St., Fort Worth

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More About

• Joe Ely
• Butch Hancock
• Jimmie Dale Gilmore
• Lubbock
• Austin

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But experiments seem to be what all three Flatlanders tend to favor. Even though the band is a 30-year-old proposition, "We're kinda looking at it as a work in progress," says Ely. For the tour, they'll be backed by guitarist Rob Gjersoe (who has worked with Gilmore in recent years) and the current Ely Band rhythm section of Gary Herman on bass and Rafael O'Malley Gayol on percussion. It will allow the threesome to test the waters for their renewed collaboration and to try out the songs they've written together onstage.

"All the songs that we've written together are just totally different," notes Hancock. "None of us would ever write one of those songs. And yet it makes sense. It's not like you can guess who wrote what line, but you can totally understand that the three of us were the agents of the song coming about."

In the end, Ely insists the tour is "just an excuse to make music together. We could have done this at several different times in our lives. But I guess there's a reason we're doing it now," he concludes. "For one thing, we're able to write together as kind of a discovery process. We're not writing for anything. We're writing to see what we come up with. And to take everything that we've all learned from working with music for years, and applying it and seeing what happens. Then take it on the road, and if it feels good..." He trails off. "And if it doesn't, we'll drop it and just go out to dinner together."