He liked the song okay, but not the last line of the chorus: âHoney, I know your love wonât let me down.â Hallmark blather, he thought. The blind optimism nagged at him. Robert Ellisâs heroes are meticulous songwriters like Paul Simon and Randy Newman, and like them he worries each word until heâs certain itâs the right one. If heâs even a little uncertain, he puts the whole song in a drawer, from which it may not ever emerge.
Thankfully, âSteady as the Rising Sunâ didnât suffer that fate. Itâs the centerpiece of the 25-year-old Lake Jackson nativeâs third album, The Lights From the Chemical Plant (New West Records), a record that heralds the arrival of Texasâs next great singer-songwriter. A bold statement, sure, but weâll stand on Steve Earleâs coffee table and say it.
Ellisâs exacting work on âSteady as the Rising Sunâ illustrates why. Swapping one four-letter word with another, he realized, would change everything. âHoney, I hope your love wonât let me down,â he sings on the version that made it onto the album. One word carried on its back the dark cloud of doubt that the song needed.
Watch the video on Noise11.com: Robert Ellis â Steady As The Rising Sun
âFor a long time, the song felt dishonest,â says Ellis. âBut when you swap those words, youâve got verses about how constant and steady your lover is, betrayed by the last line of the chorus. That betrayal made something sappy become something real.â
For a guy in his twenties, Ellis is an old soul, and a bit of a nervous wreck. âSometimes I feel like Iâve made a series of foolish decisions,â he says. Take, for instance, his choice to divide his 2011 official debut, Photographs, into two very different halves: an A side of delicate, James Taylorâlike folk songs and a B side of honky-tonk-inspired country music. The album sent a mixed message about who he was and risked alienating anybody who loved one side more than the other. And then thereâs The Lights From the Chemical Plant, for which he appealed to his label to pony up extra money to work with big-name producer Jacquire King (Kings of Leon, Modest Mouse, Norah Jones). New West cut the check and got back a record with nary a song it could easily promote to radio; the album is, by design, a series of nuanced moments best digested whole.Â
And itâs as hard to classify as its predecessor, featuring forays into bossa nova and bluegrass; a woozy, sax-enhanced six-minute meditation on alcohol and cocaine; and a song that Ellis describes as a âseven-minute nonrepeating word jam.â The album may or may not reflect some foolish decisions on Ellisâs part, but itâs certainly going to be a hard sell.
âWhen we made this record, I was still dealing with the repercussions of the country half of Photographs,â says Ellis, who recorded the new album in Nashville, where, for professional reasons, he moved in late 2012. âI get a lot of die-hard country fans who are looking for a savior in this sea of shitty music, and they really want me to be that. And obviously, Iâm not that guy. Weâd play live shows, and Iâd see the look of disappointment on some of these peopleâs faces when weâd do four-minute free improvs. And the folk stuffâsongs I really love, songs that are maybe more meaningfulâput people to sleep.Â
âBut at the same time, seeing how audiences responded to the country stuff was really impactful to me. Jacquire and I spent a lot of time on this record trying to figure out a way to bridge the gap between the A side and B side of Photographs, so that people can come to my shows and move their heads, and I can still be satisfied as a songwriter.â
To his credit, what Ellis finds satisfying about The Lights From the Chemical Plant isnât likely to please the purists. Texas songwriters who model their music on a love for George Jones and Townes Van Zandt arenât rare, but few of them also love Joni Mitchell and Hall and Oates. Those disparate influences, Ellis believes, take some of the âtwang and kitschâ out of his songs, which in turn instills a greater emphasis on storytelling.
In truth, heâs been trying to figure out how to merge older forms of country music and more-contemporary pop, R&B, and singer-songwriter fare since his early days in Houston, when he was working as a sacker at Whole Foods and a cashier loaned him a copy of Gillian Welchâs Time (The Revelator). âIt was very bluegrass and very modern at the same time. It really changed my whole mind-set,â says Ellis, who grew up making family pilgrimages to the Bluegrass Music Weekend, an annual gathering at the Coushatte Recreation Ranch, in Bellville. âIt showed me I could be true to where I come from but still somehow make it interesting.âÂ
Around the time he discovered Welchâs album, Ellis began playing shows in Houston coffeehouses. Much of what he knows about entertaining crowds came from a two-year gig at Mangoâs and then at Fitzgeraldâs, dubbed Whiskey Wednesdays. The residency, which earned him a mantel full of Houston Press music awards, featured him and his band playing as many as ten new covers a week from the likes of Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and Ray Price.
âStudying the best songs ever written definitely shaped my songwriting,â says Ellis, who dropped out of Brazoswood High School and took a year of music classes at a community college before settling in Houston. âWe didnât rehearse the songs, which was probably apparent if you were a sober listener. It was trial by fire and a lot of fun.â
In early 2012 Ellis and his wife, Destiny, decamped for San Marcos for the better part of the year, and he picked up another Houston Press award in what he says was a bittersweet victory: Best Band to Leave Houston. Ellis had made his first recordings in Houston, and the cityâs music scene had nurtured him and saw his departure as a betrayal, the sort he writes songs about. âWhen I came here I was a boy, and now Iâm leaving a man,â Ellis sings matter-of-factly on the new albumâs âHouston.â âWhen I came here I was lost, but now I know who I am.â Â
âItâs a great city for music, and I felt like it was in some ways better than Austin,â says Ellis. âItâs not super-saturated in a way that makes it hard to get people to come out to your shows. But I wasnât really writing. I thought that if I changed my scenery and rearranged the furniture in my mind, maybe I could write a little bit more. I donât think I could be doing what Iâm doing if I hadnât relocated.â
Ellis says that because of his heavy touring schedule, he spent only a handful of weekends in San Marcos during the time he lived there. Reconciling his marriage with the road is at the heart of whatâs sure to be the albumâs most discussed tune, âTour Songââa brutally honest account of touring hipster bars and playing on bills with lousy bands, but also of the nagging fear of infidelity and the likelihood that his career is hurting his marriage.Â
âItâs a dismal song,â Ellis says. âIf youâve been drinking every day for a week, itâs easy to get emotionally run-down and look around and say, âWhat am I doing here? This is terrible.â I miss my wife all the time. How can you protect that part of your life and yet wake up every day and be thankful that your job is to share songs with people from the stage? Thatâs my struggle.â
For the foreseeable future, that struggle will continue: Ellis has done the math and concluded that life away from home is the price heâs willing to pay for making less-than-commercial albums. And there are promising signs. Heâs fallen in with a brotherhood of similarly high-minded acts, like Dawes and Deer Tick, who like having him on the road as an opener. The scene doesnât yet have a name but its audience is sizable. Whether thatâs enough still keeps him up at night.
âI get intimidated by the notion that this could all fall out from under me,â Ellis says. âBut it doesnât worry me enough that I would sacrifice the songs. Maybe Iâm a little bit selfish and stupid in that way. But I just feel like there are other compromises that I can make without dumbing down the songs. That has to be the line in the sand.â
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