During its heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, beloved Houston live music venue Rockefeller’s hosted everyone from B. B. King and The Band to Townes Van Zandt and Warren Zevon. After the club closed as a music venue at the end of 1997, it reopened as Rockefeller Hall, a private event facility.

Hundreds of live music aficionados got the chance to recapture the magic of Rockefeller’s at a benefit for the Houston International Festival (iFest) education programs on Friday night.

Popular Texas troubadour Joe Ely was responsible for many unforgettable shows at Rockefeller’s during its tenure. This weekend, he returned to the Washington Avenue venue for a take-no-prisoners set that featured guitar ace David Grissom and the outstanding rhythm section of Davis McLarty on drums and bassist Jimmy Pettit.

After an 80-minute set that included many of Ely’s best-loved rockers, including “Musta Notta Gotta Lotta”, “Lord of the Highway”, and “Letter to L.A.”, the band left the stage, only to be called back for an extended encore that included Billy Joe Shaver’s “Live Forever” and Terry Allen’s “Gimme a Ride to Heaven.”

Not ready to say goodnight to Rockefeller’s again quite yet, the crowd clapped and cheered for more, and the band obliged with a second encore of high-energy versions of “Lucky” and “Dallas”.

Houston singer-songwriter Mike Stinson kicked off the evening and won over many new fans with his well-crafted honky-tonk songs.

The Joe Ely Band will return to Houston on Sunday, May 8, to close out iFest, and they’ll be bringing saxophonist Bobby Keys (from the Rolling Stones) with them. Other headliners from the iFest lineup include Lucinda Williams, Robert Cray Band, Jonny Lang, and Michael Franti, and Spearhead. Tickets for the festival are $12 per day before April 26 and $18 per day after that early-bird discount.

For more details on the iFest lineup, read Caroline Gallay's CultureMap story.

Darrow works with the Houston International Festival staff and freely admits she is not exactly impartial. Currently in her 13th year (give or take) of working with the iFest team in some capacity or other, Darrow figures she’s been attending the Houston International Festival for at least 20 of the 40 years the festival has been around, which makes her feel pretty old.