Chronicle interlocutor Doug Freeman chat it up over Zoom (Screenshot by Doug Freeman) Butch Hancock is running a few minutes late on Zoom, but Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore catch up onscreen, running through the speculative current whereabouts of various folks as lifelong friends do. Wrangling the three songwriters together remains one of the Flatlanders' biggest challenges, even in a virtual setting. Yet the natural camaraderie and jokes flow easily when Hancock appears from his home in Terlingua. The Flatlanders remain a celestial event, three stars moving in their own orbits that happen to align at rare but spectacular intervals.