For alt-country fans in the 1980s and early '90s, the Flatlanders were one of those mythical bands on a par with the Million-Dollar Quartet, the original Silver Beatles or Billy Eckstine's mid-'40s bop big band.
As with those other bands, the Flatlanders (playing Friday at Anthology in San Diego) were mythologized by fans because of the irresistible combination of having only a few songs recorded early in the members' careers, and what said members did after.
The Silver Beatles dumped Pete Best for Ringo Starr and became the Beatles. The Million Dollar Quartet was a single recording session featuring Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash goofing around in the Sun Records studio (whose owner, Sam Phillips, was smart enough to roll tape while they played). And while Eckstine's band featured Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro, Kenny Dorham and Art Blakey, he had the misfortune to lead this band during the musicians' recording strike against the record labels during World War II.
With the Flatlanders, the band's 1972 recording session was made on a fluke -- and for 20 years, the only copies in existence were the original master tapes and some 8-tracks the small Plantation label had made.
But if the band went nowhere fast, members Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock went on to become stars of the Texas alt-country scene, releasing numerous solo albums and writing songs that became hits for other musicians.
Still, despite their individual success, Ely, Gilmore and Hancock always had this other mantle to deal with -- members of the legendary Flatlanders, a situation that was only exacerbated in 1990 when Rounder Records bought rights to the original 1972 sessions and reissued them on CD.
What makes it all surreal for the three men involved is that the original Flatlanders were never even a band, according to Ely.
"You know, it's incredibly strange," he said by phone last week from the band's tour bus on the road in Oregon.
"People have a misconception. People think we were some band that got together years ago, went out and played and did all this stuff.
"But really, the whole history of the ancient Flatlanders -- when we actually started playing together -- really lasted six months. We really never considered ourselves a band, because we didn't have a name. We just considered ourselves some friends who lived together in Lubbock.
"We had virtually no paying gigs -- we played in people's living rooms, and a wedding. We probably played six shows -- I wouldn't really call them shows because we didn't have a PA (system). We played once at a honky-tonk, and there were maybe four people there.
"When we went to Nashville and made that record, we had to come up with a name because we didn't have one. The whole idea of this being a band from the past is really funny because we were never a band."
But if the Flatlanders were more legend than band in 1972, in 2002 the three men headed back into the recording studio, and came up with "Now Again." For that record, the three men did something they'd never done in their original go-round: They wrote music together.
"It's the hardest thing I've ever done is write with two other close friends, because we all have our own kind of standard of what the melody should be and how words should be put together. We're kind of difficult to please, all of us. Butch says when the three of us are writing a song together, it's like having six people write the song, because each of us has that inner critic."
While the band's 2004 release, "Wheels of Fortune," was different from "Now Again" in that it was a collection of songs the men wrote individually, this year's "Hills and Valleys" again features songs the three wrote together.
The different approaches to writing music for the band's three most recent albums was intentional, Ely said.
"That was on purpose. When we got off the Now Again tour, I just thought … if we went to Texas and went our separate ways, it'd be five years before we got together again. … while the band is together, why not record these songs we had? Basically we just went from on tour straight into the studio and recorded songs that we'd each already written.
"This last record took five years to actually get us together in order to make enough songs for a record -- and we never plan on whether it's going to be a record or not, we just get together and write."
Writing together was something they not only didn't do in their youth, it was something they considered beneath them, Ely said.
"Back in the early Flatlander days, we considered it a sin to write with anybody else -- we thought it was against the law. I think it was just because all the people we knew who were songwriters were very independent and would not dare write with somebody else."
But Ely allowed that there have been some pretty solid songwriting teams, and he hopes people think of the current Flatlanders in that light.
"Some of my favorite songs ever are Lennon-McCartney, and lots of teams going back to the Gilbert and Sullivan days. It's kind of rare where there's really a songwriting team that works out, but every once in a while it does.
"It's kind of the appeal when we write together. Whatever comes out, I'll look at it and say, this is like nothing any of us would ever do!
"Three different personalities came together and put these songs together. It's beyond any kind of rational thought as to how it happens."
The Flatlanders
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday
Where: Anthology, 1337 India St., San Diego
Tickets: $18-$51 (plus $15 minimum food and drink)
Info: 619-595-0300 or anthologysd.com
Web: theflatlanders.com
