Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt & Joe Ely - Songwriters' Circle, Bush Hall, London, Britain, 10-15-2010

American singer-songwriter Joe Ely died yesterday, December 15, 2025, of age-related issues. He was 78 years old. It so happens that I'm not very familiar with his music. I've heard good things, but there's just so much music out there, I haven't gotten to everything I'd want to. So I hadn't planned to post anything to mark his passing. But it also just so happens that I had an episode of the BBC TV show "Songwriters' Circle" in which Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, and Joe Ely took turns performing their songs. I figured this was the ideal time to post that, so here it is.

Before I say anything else, I want to give a thanks to a musical friend named Peter. A few weeks ago, he sent me a bunch of high quality full-length videos of this show, including this one. So I plan on posting a few more in the near future, knock on wood. He didn't have all of them, however. Here's a list of the ones I still don't have:

Joan Baez, Matraca Berg & Gretchen Peters
Paul Heaton & Dave Rotheray, Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham, & John Martyn
Allen Toussaint, James Dean Bradfield, & John Grant
Bill Anderson, Clint Black, & Bob DiPiero

If anyone has any of those and wants to share, please do. I've noticed the one with Toussaint, Bradfield and Grant is on YouTube, but only individual songs in no particular order, and no banter between songs. So I'd rather hold out for the whole show with that one.

Another comment before I get to the details of this album: some of the videos that Peter sent me were of episodes I already had. I didn't need to make any changes to the audio for those. However, some of the album covers I made weren't very good, based on low-res YouTube videos. I was able to remake some of the covers, and they look much better now. In fact, I've made at least some changes to all the Songwriters' Circle covers I've posted so far, standardizing the font type and size, and things like that. So I recommend you redownload those. Look to the label on the side of this blog called "Songwriters' Circle." There should be five of them prior to this one.

Okay, getting to the content of this album already, if you look at the cover image, you can probably tell that all three singer-songwriters here had long careers by the time they appeared on this show in 2010. Joe Ely's first album (with the Flatlanders) is from 1972, John Hiatt's first album is from 1974, and Lyle Lovett's first album is from 1986. They all are influenced by folk and country, so their styles fit well together.

As is the usual format for the show, each of them took turns performing songs, then they came together to all perform the last song. However, there were some instances where they backed each other on guitar or backing vocals. I only included that in the song credits if it was significant, such as "Thing Called Love," a Hiatt song where Lovett also had a prominent singing role. 

The music is unreleased, and the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and two minutes long. 

01 talk (Joe Ely)
02 Billy the Kid (Joe Ely)
03 Thing Called Love (John Hiatt & Lyle Lovett)
04 talk (John Hiatt & Lyle Lovett)
05 If I Had a Boat (Lyle Lovett)
06 talk (Joe Ely)
07 My Baby Thinks She's French (Joe Ely)
08 talk (Joe Ely & John Hiatt)
09 Master of Disaster (John Hiatt)
10 She's No Lady (Lyle Lovett)
11 talk (Joe Ely)
12 All that You Need (Joe Ely)
13 talk (John Hiatt)
14 Drive South (John Hiatt)
15 talk (Lyle Lovett)
16 Simple Song (Lyle Lovett)
17 Honky Tonk Masquerade (Joe Ely)
18 Have a Little Faith in Me (John Hiatt)
19 My Baby Don't Tolerate (John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett & Joe Ely)
20 Old Dusty Road [Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad] (John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett & Joe Ely)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UVyWdHLC

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5j5miq1rhL3x2st/file

The cover image is a screenshot from a video of this exact concert.

Little Village - Orpheum Theatre, Boston, MA, 4-26-1992

Little Village was a roots rock "supergroup." It consisted of John Hiatt on guitar, piano, and vocals, Nick Lowe on bass and vocals, Ry Cooder on lead guitar and vocals, and Jim Keltner on drums. They first got together to play all the songs on Hiatt's acclaimed 1987 album "Bring the Family." Then they got together again for Lowe's 1990 album "Party of One." The third and final got together, they released the Little Village album "Little Village" in 1992. Most of the songs were sung by Hiatt, but Lowe sang two and Cooder sang one.

You may not have heard of Little Village because they only stuck around for that album, and it was a disappointing one. Even Lowe later said about it, ""Little Village was really good fun. Unfortunately, the record we did was no good. I suppose on some level, it worked, but [our record company] kind of gave us too much time to do it." However, the band promoted the album with tours of the U.S. and Europe. And I repeatedly heard that they were much better live and on that album. For instance, if you read the write-up about the band at allmusic,com, it states, "Although the record was a bit of a disappointment, the live shows were superb."

So if you like the artists involved, you should listen to one of their concerts. There aren't that many bootlegs of their shows (and no official releases). This is the best sounding one I could find. It was professionally recorded and broadcast on the radio.

One reason the concerts were better than the album was because the album was dominated by Hiatt's songs, while the concerts were more evenly split between songs by Hiatt, Lowe, and Cooder. Naturally, they played most of the songs from the album, but also many songs from their various solo careers. They had to, since the album was 45 minutes long, and this concert was almost two hours long.

More specifically, this album is an hour and 56 minutes long.

01 talk (Little Village)
02 She Runs Hot (Little Village)
03 talk (Little Village)
04 The Action (Little Village)
05 talk (Little Village)
06 Fool Who Knows (Little Village)
07 Crazy about an Automobile (Little Village)
08 Inside Job (Little Village)
09 talk (Little Village)
10 Do You Want My Job (Little Village)
11 talk (Little Village)
12 Alone in the Dark (Little Village)
13 talk (Little Village)
14 Take Another Look (Little Village)
15 talk (Little Village)
16 Solar Sex Panel (Little Village)
17 Don't Think About Her When You're Trying To Drive (Little Village)
18 talk (Little Village)
19 Memphis in the Meantime (Little Village)
20 Crying in My Sleep (Little Village)
21 talk (Little Village)
22 Don't Go Away Mad (Little Village)
23 talk (Little Village)
24 Big Love (Little Village)
25 talk (Little Village)
26 Little Sister (Little Village)
27 talk (Little Village)
28 Across the Borderline (Little Village)
29 talk (Little Village)
30 Don't Bug Me When I'm Working (Little Village)
31 talk (Little Village)
32 Half a Boy and Half a Man (Little Village)
33 talk (Little Village)
34 Thing Called Love (Little Village)
35 Lipstick Sunset (Little Village)
36 talk (Little Village)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hogzyv9Q

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/wYTD4eIEw4oEWrX/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/a2cTy

The cover is from a concert in Brussels, Belgium, on July 2, 1992. Left to right: Lowe, Hiatt, and Cooder. In the original picture, there was a big gap between Cooder and the others, but I eliminated that gap in Photoshop.