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Arts & Entertainment

EDDIE OWEN PRESENTS AT THE RCT - An Evening with Ellis Paul

ELLIS PAUL is one of the leading voices in American songwriting and one of the top songwriters to emerge out of the fertile Boston folk scene. He helped create a movement that revitalized the national acoustic circuit with an urban, literate, folk rock style that helped renew interest in the genre in the 90's. His charismatic, personally authentic performance style has influenced a generation of artists away from the artifice of pop, and closer towards the realness of folk. Though he remains among the most pop-friendly of today's singer-songwriters - his songs regularly appear in hit movie and TV soundtracks - he has bridged the gulf between the modern folk sound and the populist traditions of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger more successfully than perhaps any of his songwriting peers.Β 

Yet to hear him at this crossroads moment in his career, you would think he was just getting started. For years, he has been among the folk circuit's most popular and dependable headliners, with a mailing list of over 20,000 fiercely loyal fans. He has released 14 CDs, and recently explored new media avenues with a documentary/concert DVD called "3,000 Miles," and "Notes from the Road," a critically acclaimed book of poems and stories.

Paul is today regarded as such a classic urban songwriter that it's hard to fathom what a small-town boy he was. He grew up in northern Maine, in a potato farming community so remote that his exposure to music came almost entirely from the one top-40 station he could get on his radio, and his school band, where he played trumpet well enough to earn a summer scholarship to the Berklee College of Music. It was there that he discovered songwriting, completely out of boredom when a track-career-ending knee injury left him bedridden for months, and he began making up songs on a guitar a friend had given him. By 1989, he was haunting the open mic scene that would soon produce the most important generation of Boston folk stars since the early '60s, including Paul, Dar Williams, Vance Gilbert, Jonatha Brooke and Jennifer Kimball (then performing as The Story), Martin Sexton, Patty Griffin, and Catie Curtis.

Almost immediately, Paul's infectious melodicism, literate lyrics, and honest performing style drew attention. As early as 1993, the Boston Globe was calling him a songwriter's songwriter, adding that "no emerging songwriter in recent memory has been more highly touted and respected by songwriters." His skyrocketing career is still the stuff of legend in Boston folk circles; how quickly he climbed from opening act for the likes of Morrissey, Shawn Colvin, and John Gorka, to national headliner and recording star. Paul remains the most mainstream-friendly folk songwriter to emerge from Boston since Tom Rush. He has won an unprecedented 14 Boston Music Awards, sung at Fenway Park for the Red Sox, The Boston Garden for the Celtics and even had the mayor of Boston, Thomas M. Menino, proclaim it "Ellis Paul Day in Boston" on July 9th, 2010 when Ellis celebrated his 20th year in making music. Ellis' worldwide audience has grown from several high profile song placements and hundreds of thousands of YouTube video plays. His songs are heard in various commercials, documentaries, TV shows such as "Ed" and MTV's "Real World"; and in the soundtracks of blockbuster films, including 3 Farrelly Brothers films: "Hall Pass", starring Owen Wilson and Alyssa Milano, "Me, Myself, & Irene," starring Jim Carrey, and "Shallow Hal," with Jack Black and Gwyneth Paltrow. Director Peter Farrelly has called Ellis Paul "a national treasure".

- Purchase Tickets Here -

http://www.eddieowenpresents.com/

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