Accordionist Ponty Bone grew up in San Antonio, where he began studying the accordion at the age of five. He played trumpet in his high-school marching band, and after spending some time in Houston and Louisiana following such musical heroes as Lightnin' Hopkins and Clifton Chenier, he enrolled at Texas Tech in Lubbock. There, he fell in with a musical community that included Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Eventually he moved to Phoenix, where he led a blues band called New Moan Hey. By the early '70s, he was back in Lubbock playing in Tommy Hancock's backup band, the Roadside Playboys. In 1976, he was hired by Joe Ely and spent seven years playing with him, including recording five albums. In 1982, by now based in Austin, he left Ely and began leading his own band, the Squeezetones. The group went on to tour North America and Europe over the next two decades while recording the albums Easy as Pie, My, My, Look at This, Dig Us on the Road Somewhere, and Fantasize. Ponty Bone died in Austin in 2018 at the age of 78. ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi