Ellis Paul

As the world shut down from the Covid Pandemic in 2019, Ellis Paul, like many musicians, turned to the internet as a safety net to catch the fall of his tumbling
livelihood. He set up microphones and lights in a spare bedroom and performed
livestream shows, songwriter sessions, one on ones with fans and relied on the good
will of an audience built over three decades of touring. Together, he was able to
hobble enough to keep he and his family alive, and he did it all from his home .
He also began to write. He’d never had the luxury of space at home while writing in the
before times. HIs previous songs and recordings were often created on the fly between
open calendar dates that fell in frenetic years of over two hundred nights away on the
road. Rushing to studios, rushing to a shows. Writing on airplanes. But now he was
home with time on his hands.
He was turning 55, and not struggling with the idea of the age, but the consequences
of it. Dupuytren’s contracture, a disease that tightly closes the fingers into a fist, had
settled into both of his hands. He wondered how long he had left as a guitarist
and piano player before it rendered his playing impossible.
So he just began. Song by song. While he had the time and the use of his fingers. Until
his journals held over 40 sets of lyrics and melodies etched into in them.
He wrote about turning 55 during a pandemic, about the catharsis of out-surviving the
things he’d grown up with— fax machines, 8 track tapes, milk men at the door— while
at the same time losing his hero John Prine to Covid-19.
He underwent successful hand surgery in December 2022 and in 2023 as both the world and Ellis’ hands are opening up, he is celebrating his 30th anniversary of being a touring musician. What better way than with a the release of a new album. With “55” he will be stepping into a calendar full of shows to celebrate the best of the old songs refreshed by the perspective of new ones.