Bristol’s Stone Church Coffee House at the First Congregational Church welcomes for the first time Ellis Paul on Saturday, January 24.
Ellis Paul has been traversing lands and discovering their riches since 1965. Born in the potato farming country of upstate Maine, he struck out for Boston after excelling as a middle and long-distance runner in high school on the strength of results good enough to earn an athletics scholarship to Boston College. It was there that he turned to guitar and songwriting after fate intervened to sideline his athletics career in the form of a knee injury.
Open mic stages and New England coffee houses were the incubator that set him on the fast track to honing his craft as a singer-songwriter-guitarist in the early 1990s. Before long he had emerged as one of the brightest lights in the galaxy of prodigiously talented stars working the Boston-area folk scene at the time, a cohort that included Patty Griffin, Patty Larkin, Vance Gilbert, Dar Williams, and Martin Sexton, among others. Paul’s distinguished discography, released on the Rounder, Black Wolf, and his own Rosella labels, was also launching at around this time. The 1990s and early 2000s saw him accumulate a cabinet full of music awards, maintain heavy annual touring schedules, and steadily build a nation-wide audience of loyal fans, an audience that continues to grow with the release of each new album.
His 22nd and latest album, 55 (2023), culminates a string of outstanding recent releases stretching back at least as far as Chasing Beauty (2014) and The Storyteller’s Suitcase (2019), each of which has continued to set the bar ever higher on his oeuvre.
From the emotionally charged, sophisticated Americana of “Plastic Soldiers” and “Kick Out the Lights (Johnny Cash)” from Chasing Beauty, to the abject pathos of “I Ain’t No Jesus,” the metaphysical heartbreak of “The Innocence and the Afterlife” and the hilariously unreliable narration of “4th of July,” all from The Storyteller’s Suitcase, Paul turns his attention to midlife reflections on 55.
Bristol’s Stone Coffee House is an affordable, family-oriented, handicap-accessible musical venue. Doors open at 6:45PM and the show starts at 7:30PM. Seating is limited and reservations are recommended. Light refreshments will be available. Tickets are $25.00 per person (students are half price; children 5 and under are free). For ticket information or to make a reservation, please call 253-4813.
The First Congregational Church is located at 300 High Street (corner of High and Bradford Streets) in Bristol, RI.
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