Joe Ely is a great storyteller — whether he’s writing songs, sharing an anecdote onstage, or doing interviews.

And, some of the best stories aren’t planned; they just seem to come out of him, in the course of discussing something else entirely.

For example, during a recent phone interview from his Austin home, Ely— who comes to The Ark on Friday — is talking about a new song he was working on that very day, which prompts him to provide the back story for the song's inspiration.

“I was in Australia not long ago, and some theater was doing a Dennis Hopper tribute, because his health was failing pretty rapidly at the time,” recalls Ely. “And that made me think about when I met him in New Mexico in the ‘70s. I was runnin’ around New Mexico with Jerry Jeff Walker at the time, and one night — or, rather, early in the morning — I woke up on the sofa, feeling this pain in my face.

“And I looked up and Dennis had my nose in his teeth, and he says, ‘No one goes to sleep around me.’ And we began hanging out, the three of us, and he later he told about how he rode with the Hell’s Angels for a while to prepare for making ‘Easy Rider.’ “Anyway, all of those thoughts inspired this new song about a guy leaving his home and family and finding a new family, out on the road with these bikers — which really isn’t that different than being a touring musician, because you’re always leaving home, often with your band.”

Joe Ely’s gifts for such narratives have always helped him stand out as a songwriter and made him one of the more respected lyricists to come out of the Texas country-folk-rock scene over the last 35 years — which is high praise, when you consider that that scene also spawned the likes of Billy Joe Shaver, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, Walker and Guy Clark — not to mention Ely’s pals and sometime Flatlanders bandmates Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock.

What also makes Ely’s music distinctive is that, creatively, he’s a restless spirit who doesn’t like to stick with any one genre — or bandmates, for that matter — for too long.

Over the course of Ely’s career, his music has been a rotating mix of tough 'n' twangy country-rock, burbling Tex-Mex, acoustic country-folk, fiery zydeco and full-on rock 'n' roll. On his last solo album, “Live Cactus!,” from 2008, Ely and his guitar were accompanied only by the vivid accordion colorings of the masterful Joel Guzman, who’s played with Ely on various projects. They took 13 tunes from Ely’s songbook — like “All Just to Get to You,” “Up on the Ridge,” and “I’m a Thousand Miles from Home” — and gave them an earthy Tex-Mex feel that was often very different than the more sweeping arrangements on the original studio versions.

Ely explains his affection for Tex-Mex music by sharing another story: “When I was a kid, in Lubbock, my dad had a used clothing store, and in the summertime, every year, about 50,000 migrant workers would come up from Mexico, and they’d come in to shop for work clothes, and they brought their music with ‘em,” recalls Ely fondly. “So there were a lot of accordions and bajo sextos in the streets of Lubbock every summer. That was an exciting time for me. So, even now, when I hear an accordion, it’s like a childhood memory, like the smell of fresh-cut grass.

“I’ve also always just been fascinated with the border — how this third-world country (Mexico) shares a border with one of the richest countries in the world — and a lot of the music from Mexico is also inspired by that juxtaposition. A lot of Mexican songs have pretty sad lyrics, but they’re set to these happy beats.”

Ely’s latest project was a 2009 Flatlanders album, “Hills and Valleys,” wherein he joined forces with Gilmore and Hancock. The result was a typically eclectic but down-home synergy of the above-mentioned styles. Listen to The Flatlanders "Homeland Refugee" (MP3).

“But this new record is going to be more of a rock 'n' roll album than anything else,” says Ely. “I’ve been bringing in a lot of the musicians I’ve played with over the years, several of the different guitar players” — including David Grissom, from Ely’s crack mid-‘80s band.

“I don’t know if it has a theme, really, but a lot of the songs are about stuff I’ve been thinking about lately, reflecting on where I’ve been, and how I’ve been playing music all these years — it’s sort of a collection of snapshots from my life.”

Ely will spend his summer splitting his time between hitting the road to do a series of solo-acoustic shows, like the one at The Ark, and hooking up with “some of my old pals from Los Super Seven” — a mostly Latin-American supergroup that includes a couple of members of Los Lobos, and in the past has also included Flaco Jimenez, John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett, Delbert McClinton, and the late Freddy Fender.

“I just like to work with different people, and play different kinds of music,” says Ely. “So I never seem to be able to stay with one band for very long.”

Which brings us back to the Flatlanders. They reunited as a recording and touring unit in 2002, and have done three records since then. Except five years passed between the second disc (’04) and the third one (’09). Which could mean that fans will have to wait a few more years for another Flatlanders fix.

“What’s kept us friends for so long is that we don’t get together because we have a record contract; it’s because we’re friends and like each other’s company,” explains Ely. “When we get together, sometimes we’ll write, to see what songs come out. And if they’re interesting songs, we just keep pursuing it until it becomes a record.

“But I go way back with those guys, to when we were just youngsters — so they're very important to me,” says Ely. “Butch and Jimmie Dale are older than me, so when we were young, they gave me a look at this whole other way of looking at how to write songs. If I hadn’t met them, maybe I wouldn't have continued writing songs for the rest of my life — which has obviously been a huge part of my life.”

Kevin Ransom is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.

Joe Ely performing at South by Southwest earlier this year: