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JPR Live Session: Robert Ellis (2018)

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Before signing with New West Records in early 2011, country songwriter Robert Ellis made a name for himself in Houston, Texas. Inspired by the country, folk, and bluegrass records he’d heard while growing up in southern Texas, Ellis began playing shows around the city, eventually landing a Wednesday night residency at a local venue called Fitzgerald’s. His audience grew as a result of those weekly shows, nicknamed "Whiskey Wednesdays" for their rowdy nature and half-drunk clientele, and Ellis earned more fans on the strength of his self-released debut, The Great Rearranger.

One of those converted fans was George Fontaine, Sr., president of New West Records, who signed Ellis in 2011. Photographs was released that summer, mixing acoustic folk songs with uptempo country numbers. The album was selected by American Songwriter as one of its Top 50 albums for that calendar year. Ellis toured the United States and Europe before relocating to Nashville.

Robert Ellis, his self-titled fourth solo album, finds Ellis exploring the struggles of a dissolving marriage and confronting the allure and cost of restlessness. In gorgeous arrangements that span a wide range of singer-songwriterly approaches to rock and soul, Ellis builds stories of love pursued, deflected, damaged and submerged — though never totally lost — as a way of confronting the limits human imperfection places on all kinds of intimacy, including self-knowledge.

As FM Network Program Director and Music Director, Eric oversees many aspects of JPR's broadcast day. He still hosts the occasional Open Air or classical music shift, and is the driving force behind JPR Live Sessions - our popular series of live in-studio music performances and conversations.