A smart, rockin' romp down the Great American Rock & Roll Superhighway. Keep your ears and eyes open and hang onto your hat. "Seatbelts haven't even been invented yet."

11 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Americana, BLUES: Texas Style



Details:
Ellsworth is a songwriter/singer/performer. He has been writing songs and performing with his band, as a duo or a solo artist since the â70âs. But he never made an album until 1999 when he and longtime partner Phil Hicks released their debut acoustic, country/blues record, Ask Around. It was selected as a finalist in the 2000 Crossroads Music Awards. Why did the first album take so long when he had so many songs under his belt? âI think I was one of those crazy people that just thought the world would find me if I was good enoughâ he says. âPeople always loved my songs in clubs and I thought that sooner or later something would happenâ¦or maybe I was just waiting for the turn of the centuryâ. Bands came and went but the consistent thing was always the songs. They come from that place down inside where things mingle and grind for months or even years before making an appearance. Like the old Blues and Country guys who sang because they had to, Ellsworth lets you know right up front that he has to.

His newest CD, American Compost, is a collection of songs, old and new, that found their way to the front of his psyche in âthose weird post 9/11 days when everything and everyone I knew were just shaken to the bone. It was like something had died and grief wasnât possible yetâ. Itâs a loose collection of rockers and ballads that look for, and sometimes find, hope in the face of decay and destruction. As he says on the liner notes, âThe cutting edge is not the whole story. Whatâs vanished is not lost. What gets passed on is the essence, the heart, the spirit, the compost, from which everything growsâ.

Besides songwriting and performing, Ellsworth began producing music shows around the New York and New England area. His summertime Sunset Music Series on âthe bargeâ in Brooklynâs Redhook has become one of the coolest, sought after gigs in NYC. He also produces the Bull Run Concert Series at the Bull Run Restaurant in Massachusetts where he brings in âAll the great performers I admired growing up.â This gave him the opportunity to meet and share the stage with some giants like Leon Russell, Levon Helm, Graham Parker, Maria Muldaur and Johnny Winter.

Some of Ellsworthâs highly original songs have been featured on radio, internet and feature films. âThe Moon is a Faithless Loverâ was in Ghetto Dawg with Drena DeNiro and Gianna Palminteri. And âThe Things I Gotta Do to Stay Alive - Are Killing Meâ was in The Clinic, an independent film that won Best Screenplay in the NYII Film Festival. His song âUp Above the Worldâ was picked for the 2004 UMO Music: The 14 Best Singer/Songwriters of Greenwich Village compilation CD.

âWhen Ellsworth brings you along for a ride you're riding shotgun in an old beat up Chevy. You feel the wind in your hair. The landscape rushes by like some old Saturday matinee and you know you've been here before. You're smiling. This is the roots of Rock and Roll. Seat belts haven't even been invented yet."... Steve Innerman, RocToc.

"...what sets [Ellsworth and Hicks] apart is the casual way they come across as throwbacks to a time when songwriters sought to make some sense of the world, rather than settle for vocal acrobatics." - Mike Wolf - Music Editor, Time Out New York.