Artist description Listen closely to Ellis Paul's new CD The Speed of Trees, to the spaces between the notes, and you can almost hear the sound of roots growing. On his first studio album since 1998’s breakthrough Translucent Soul, he sounds like just what he is, an artist at the sure summit of his craft, a certain star who has arrived just where he set out to, artistically, professionally, and personally. It is less a work of becoming than of being. At 35, Ellis is the star he hoped to be, with a loyal national audience, a string of successful Rounder/Philo records, 12 Boston Music Awards, and more concert work than he can handle. Millions heard his songs in the Farrelly Brothers’ films "Me, Myself and Irene" and "Shallow Hal" (Peter Farrelly calls Ellis "a national treasure"). He is regularly heard on folk and non-commercial AAA radio stations, and packs major concert halls and front-rank music clubs wherever he tours. "There's sort of a 'been-there-done-that' thing going on with me these days, and that’s nice," Ellis says. "I'm in a long-term contract with a record company I've been with for many years and I’ve had the chance to tour, develop, and become an act with a committed fan base. My career is about my fans; all my success has been based on that, and Rounder really understands that." That settled-in mood permeates The Speed of Trees. It is among his quieter discs, although exquisitely produced by Mary Chapin Carpenter guitarist Duke Levine. It sounds this way not because Ellis is trying to make a statement, but because the songs want breathing room, sweet space to unwind their finely chiseled, deeply human stories. He has richly absorbed the nutrients from his own musical roots, from the pop and folk-rock of Lennon-McCartney and Bob Dylan, and folk songwriters from Woody Guthrie to Bill Morrissey. While his sound has always been entirely his own, he now creates melodies of such organic timelessness that the first time we hear them, we can feel we’ve known them all our lives. The rootedness of the CD also comes from Ellis’s decision to rely almost entirely on Boston-area musicians, such as Levine and Hammond B-3 whiz Tom West, artists with whom he has performed live, and is likely to tour with again. He wants the CD and his concerts to feel the same way to his fans. In the four years between Translucent Soul and The Speed of Trees, Ellis has startlingly redesigned his career, no longer aiming upward but outward, toward something more settled and lasting than the fast fizzle-and-fade of today’s pop mainstream. He published a book, Notes from the Road, of the vivid, often witty vignettes and ballad poems he shares with his fans on his website. He released a double CD for Rounder/Philo, entitled Live, which offers dynamic proof why he is among the most popular headliners on the folk circuit, and another disc of previously unreleased tracks coyly called Sweet Mistakes. During that time, he was wooed by big labels, but decided to return to Rounder Records, the largest and most vibrant folk music indie in the country - and the local record company for the man the Boston Globe calls “the quintessential Boston songwriter; literate, provocative, urbanely romantic.” Ellis’s lyrics brim with what songwriters call "killer lines," images that immediately invite us inside the songs. "She fell to the mattress/ With the grace of an actress," he opens his portrait of a woman truly unhappy, yet strangely in love with that unhappiness. And who has not felt how Ellis feels, looking at his lover as he whispers, "Your eyes make me humble?" He can carve lines that are so complete they are songs unto themselves, as in the modern-day beatitude heard in "Shallow Hal." It's all there in the single refrain, "Bless your Sweet Mistakes." In his gift for using the vernacular of his times to create new songs that nestle into our lives like old companions, Ellis wears the mantle of his chief songwriting hero, Woody Guthrie. The Guthrie tattoo he has on his arm has earned so much media attention in recent years that Ellis probably owes it an agent’s commission, but the comparisons are real and revealing. Woody's daughter, Nora Guthrie, is a good friend and fan of Ellis's, and invited him to pore through her father’s archive of unpublished songs, from which he brilliantly molded "God's Promise" into a vital modern hymn. At first she resists comparing Ellis and Woody, stressing the uniqueness of each artist; but then said there was a "job description my father left behind, and that Ellis has taken on." "One of the things that is compulsory about that job plan is individuality," she says, "so the way Ellis is most like Woody is that he is true to himself. Every time I see him, there’s a brightness about him, a hopefulness, a liveliness. You never get this feeling of the drudgery of the folk singer's life, which a lot of people write songs about it. And I don't like that; I never heard it in my dad's songs. You would hear criticism, but never complaining. I feel the same thing in Ellis; there’s never anything pathetic or self-pitying in him. That really attracts me to his work - that and his humor, which is something else I would compare to my dad, that very dry, subtle, witty humor." “I put him on there as a guide," Ellis says of the tattoo, "to remind me what the mission statement was, and how committed he was to it every time he went out on the road or put pen to paper. It was almost like a little badge of courage, to remind me to write honestly, to write songs that reflect reality; to show people the hard side of life, but also the softer side." Ellis is also putting down roots personally, buying a house in the country. He continues to tour relentlessly as he has for the past decade, but hopes to have a life that, if not lived at the speed of trees, can pause now and then to visit that tranquility. It may be in this way, more than any other, that Ellis is like his hero Woody Guthrie. Over the last few years, the world has come knocking on his door, offering him the shiny promise of pop stardom, and he has said, "Thanks for asking, but I want more. I want a life." And that is good news for his loyal and growing legion of fans. His career, like his songs, is being built not to dazzle, but to last. "To call me a folk singer in a traditional sense probably doesn’t fit,” Ellis says thoughtfully. "I want to play music that reflects who I am and the music I grew up listening to, which tends to be more on the rock and pop side musically, and more on the folk side lyrically. But I'm a folk musician in that I’m writing about real life. It’s not aimed at any market; it's more journalistic, writing what I see and what I know, the times we're in, and the things that people face today."

Group Members Ellis Paul

Albums The Speed of Trees (2002), Sweet Mistakes (2001), Am I Home (2000), Urban Folk Songs (2000), Live (2000), Translucent Soul (1998), VA-End Construction (1998), A Carnival of Voices (1996), Stories (1995), Say Something (1993)

Location Boston, MA - USA

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