I just received one of the best write-ups of my musical career thus far and wanted to share it with you! Much gratitude to Wayne Robins for his time and effort, and for making a nobody like me sound interesting and relevant. (Read on for the full story:) Jeff Ellis Releases Learning How to Live Jeff Ellis is ready, willing and able to let the world know that his new album, Learning How to Live, is now available. The 13 original songs by the native of Huntington, West Virginia, range from the roaring guitar rock of opener “Where Your Memory Can’t Be Found” to tender but adventurous folk-rock finale “Lullabye.” These songs bracket a collection remarkable for variety, quality and consistency. Before introducing the rest of the songs, a brief introduction to Jeff Ellis is in order. He is a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, mandolin, keyboards, harmonica and percussion. He is a husband and father of two. He is a member of the Army Reserves who saw three tours of active duty in Iraq and Kuwait from 2002-2007, and again from 2009-2010. Maintaining a musical career is a challenging job for anyone in the post-radio, post-record store era. But Ellis knows something about challenging jobs. He is a police officer in South Charleston, West Virginia. He has been a training officer for the 528th Special Operations (Airborne) Support Battalion, and is now a drill sergeant for the Army Reserves. If you’re wondering what kind of job that is for an accomplished yet still aspiring musician, who also gives the highest value to his responsibilities as a husband and father, it deserves saying here that it is the right job for a man has always been driven by two passions: music and service. One of his musical idols is Bruce Springsteen, but there is a twist, in that Jeff Ellis is also one of the guys about whom Springsteen sings so many of his most passionate songs. “I grew up on classic and alternative rock,” Ellis says. “Pearl Jam was my favorite band through high school; then I discovered Springsteen and everything changed. Watching and listening to Bruce taught me everything I needed to know about being a performing singer/songwriter. From the importance of lyrics and melody, to the importance of good stage presence, Bruce has it all covered for any artists looking for a how-to guide.” Ellis paints from a wider palette. You can hear traces of the southern rock he loved as a kid on “Where Your Memory Can’t Be Found”; the small town storytelling of Steve Earle on “Hanging Around”; the Anglo-Irish folk roots of Fairport Convention on “Mining Town”; the heartfelt yearning of Tom Petty on “No One Goes Home (Til It’s All Gone)”. On the album, Ellis is supported by expansive the band of brothers he has played and recorded with for many years in the area bounded by southeastern Ohio, Nashville, and the greater Charleston/Huntington not-so-metropolitan area of West Virginia. They include producer/engineer Eddie Ashworth, bass player Jimmy Lykens, and regional guitar stars Bud Carroll, Jeremy Short and Bobby Withers. His musical talent, you might say, was both God-given and God-developed. “I started singing in church around age 3,” Ellis says. “My mother, thankfully, insisted that my brothers and I attend church every week and that we participate in the church youth functions, which mostly consisted of choir, sports and plays. She also provided us with an old piano in our home to tinker on, which is where I first started creating melodies. When I was in grade school, she bought me a violin and a trumpet before finally giving in and buying me what I really wanted, a guitar.” Harvest, a band developed with an older cousin, lasted through high school and into Ellis’ freshman year at Marshall University. Ellis began developing his songwriting style and sound as leader of an acoustic folk-rock band, Guinness Clarke’s Wine. GCW attained some regional popularity and recorded some EPs before breaking up in 2004. The Army career not just ran parallel, but often intersected and took precedence. “Much like I did with music, I always felt a calling to join the Army. I wanted to be a soldier and to get out and see the world,” he says. Ellis joined the Army Reserve in 1998, at 17, figuring he could enjoy the benefits of the two callings. But after September 11, 2001, the reserves became active indeed. In 2002, he was called up for deployment for Afghanistan. Before leaving, his orders were changed, and Ellis was sent to Airborne School. Assignments to Kuwait with the 261st Ordinance Company came in 2005, and Iraq with the 389th Combat Support Battalion in 2009 to help with the drawdown. But in the war zones Ellis found ways to stoke his musical passion. Told there was no room for a guitar on the transport to Kuwait, he had one shipped from home after arrival. “I also bought some harmonicas and a bunch of old Bob Dylan albums from Amazon and had them shipped to me,” he says. “Word got around that I had a guitar and was pretty good, and the next thing I know I was playing MWR (Moral Welfare Recreation) concerts, in addition to chapel services and giving weekly guitar lessons to service members and civilians in our area.” He played two Memorial Day concerts in Baghdad in 2010 for the Armed Forces Network. Many of the songs on his fifth album, “The Line” (2011) are drawn from this period. “The title track is about a deployed soldier suffering from survivor’s guilt who comes home to a place he doesn’t recognize or fit into anymore and surrounded by familiar faces that no longer understand him,” Ellis says. Though the songs on the new album are less directly about war and the dislocation of those who served, his continuing experiences as a soldier and police officer offer great grist for his storytelling abilities and commitment to serving his community and country. Check his Facebook page and you can see that amid his other responsibilities, he manages to squeeze numerous benefit performances for everything from Relay for Life, an organization that battles cancer on many fronts, to WeCan, which helps abused and neglected children. “I stay very, very busy,” Ellis says. “The police department allows me the time to perform (two weekends and a straight seven days off each month), and my shift comes to see me whenever I’m performing in town. I like to think that being the best I can be in other areas of my life makes me a better songwriter. I write mostly from life experience, so what better inspiration than to live a full life?” —Wayne Robins Wayne Robins is a longtime journalist and music critic (Newsday, Creem, Rolling Stone and many others) who lives in New York and teaches at St. John’s University.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 15:42:28 +0000
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