|
Part One
Part Two
Boston Beats: State your name, age and
occupation for the record please.
Ellis: I’m Ellis
Paul. I’m 40 and my occupation is songwriter.
BB: How did you first get into music? When did you learn how to play?
Ellis: I started playing when I was around 20, 21, when I got into
guitar. I started dabbling in music in high school, but not this kind of
thing. I was playing trumpet and band and that kind of thing, but I
didn’t have any being-in-a-band dreams at that point. I started really
playing guitar when I was 20, 21, in college.
BB: When did you write your first song?
Ellis: About the same time. I can’t remember what the name of it was, it
probably wasn’t very good, but I took to writing right away. Didn’t
learn many songs, just started writing my own right from the top.
SONGWRITING
...
BB: Tell me about your song writing style. How does a new song usually
come about?
Ellis: Usually I work on the guitar part first. I’ll just be hanging
with the guitar in between shows, back at the hotel or at home, and I’ll
come up with some sort of guitar thing that actually interests me.
Generally the music tells me what the song should be about, depending on
what mood the music is, and then I start filling in the lyrics. I kind
of use free verse in the beginning until I come up with a good catch
phrase that I can build a song around.
BB: Do you ever start with a concept or a feeling and build it from
there?
Ellis: Yeah, I usually build off the music, but occasionally I’ll go in
with a concept right from the top and that works as well, but for the
most part that’s not the way I go in.
BB: What are some of your biggest songs?
Ellis: Well, I play a song called Maria’s Beautiful Mess, and a song
called 3000 miles. The World Ain’t Slowing Down is one of my biggest
songs, a song called Angel in Manhattan and a song called Conversation
with a Ghost. That collection of songs is probably my most popular.
BB: What are your favorites of your own songs?
Ellis: I’d say Maria's Beautiful Mess is one of them. Usually it’s
whatever is the newest batch of songs is that I’ve written. I just wrote
a song called Jukebox On My Grave and a song called Take All The Sky You
Need, and those are my two my new favorites.
 BB: Have you found your songs in movies or TV?
Ellis: Yeah, the World Ain’t Slowing Down ended up being the theme song
to a Jim Carrey movie called Me, Myself & Irene. A song called Sweet
Mistakes was in a Jack Black film called Shallow Hal, and I had a song
called If You Break Down that got into Ed, and then a couple of songs on
the Real World on MTV, so I’ve had some success with that stuff.
BB: What does it feel like when someone covers one your songs?
Ellis: It’s great. I was singing a song called God’s Promise out in
California at this big music conference, and as I was playing it I could
hear somebody across the hallway in another conference room actually
covering it at the same time. I thought that was pretty cool.
BB: That is cool.
Ellis: It’s a big thrill when people do that. I don’t really write them
thinking that other people can play them but it’s great when people
actually adopt them and take them under there own wing.
BB: Do you have a favorite cover of one of your songs?
Ellis: Yeah, The Burn Sisters did a version of God’s Promise that was
far better than mine, and that was probably the one I was the most blown
away by. They’re a family music group out of New York State.
BB: What are your own musical influences?
Ellis: Well, I love the classic early 70’s singer-songwriters. Neil
Young, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan, John Prine,
Bill Withers, people like that. That sort of sparse folk rock is what
I’ve been into ever since the beginning.
BB: What do you consider to be your favorite albums?
Ellis: That’s hard. A bunch of Beatles albums, The White Album, Abby
Road, Sergeant Pepper’s. I like a lot of the early Dylan albums like
Another Side of Bob Dylan. What else? Joni Mitchell, Blue. August and
Everything After, by the Counting Crows, and a lot of U2 albums. Achtung
Baby is probably my favorite.
BB: How would you describe your own style?
Ellis: It’s a combination of folk and pop and rock music. I think if I
had been born a few decades earlier it would fit comfortably in that
same niche as some of those other people. Maybe not quality wise, I
guess that’s up to the general public, but it comes out of the classic
singer-songwriter tradition. It’s a little Neil Young, it’s a little
Dylan, it’s a little James Taylor and it’s a lot me.
RECORDING
...
BB: What’s your process of recording music? What do you do to get your
best stuff down?
Ellis: Well, a lot of times the best stuff just comes to me sitting in
front of a couple of microphones and doing things live. I’ve had some
success layering track upon track upon track, and starting with a
click-track and laying the guitar and having other people lay the drums
down, but I feel like that that process is a little bit hollow in the
long run. I prefer to record with a live band and then clean it up with
overdubs. That way you get some of the spontaneousness out of the band.
But this last record I did, I mostly worked off of loops, which is cool
too. That process was a lot of fun because the producer and I were more
in command of the choices that the instruments were making, because we
were taking things off of the Internet that we really liked.
BB: Tell me about that album.
Ellis: It’s called American Jukebox Fables, and it’s coming out on April
5th, 2005. It’s produced by a guy named Flynn, who’s a Boston
producer-songwriter-musician. And it came out great, I’m really happy
with it. We wanted to do something a little bit more contemporary
sounding, more along the lines of David Gray and Dido. So we did a lot
of midi, a lot of programming, a lot of loops. The songs themselves were
more like country songs. They were more sort of simplified story songs,
so the mix is pretty interesting. It came out pretty good, I’m pretty
proud of it.
BB: What kind of guitar do you play? How long have you had it?
Ellis: I play two acoustic guitars that I take on the road with me.
 One
is a Santa Cruz Model F. I’ve played that one probably for 8 or 9 years
now, it’s very warm sounding. Then I have a Guild D100 acoustic that has
a beautiful inlay. I have it strung up as Nashville guitar, so it is
high-strung, which is like a 12-string but just the high strings off of
the 12-string, so it’s up an octave and it’s a little more jangley.
BB: Do you prefer the studio or playing out?
Ellis: They’re so different. I like playing out to a certain point. I
don’t like being away from home that much but I love the performing
aspect. And being in a studio is really great when things are working
well. So I guess I like them about the same.
BB: Speaking of home, are you still Boston-based?
Ellis: My wife and I moved out of New England, and we’re settling near
her parents place for the next couple of years. I’m hoping that I get to
come back after that, but we’ll have to wait and see where life takes
us.
NEXT SECTION
Part One
Part Two
*Pictures courtesy of
http://www.ellispaul.com/
|
