55 is the forthcoming new album from acclaimed folk/Americana singer-songwriter and illustrator Ellis Paul. From over two hundred nights per year spent on the road, he found a lot of time on his hands during the giant pause of the pandemic. Also, upon turning 55, he found himself struggling not with the idea of age, but the consequences of it. Dupuytren’s contracture, a disease that tightly closes the fingers into a fist, had settled into both of his hands. He was wondering how long he had left as a guitarist and a pianist before it rendered playing and writing almost impossible. It eventually would.
Grabbing spare moments to pen songs in his journals, he ended up with 40 new songs – he wrote about turning 55 during a pandemic, about the catharsis of outliving the things he’d grown up with – milkmen delivering to the door, 8-track tapes, fax machines – while at the same time losing his hero John Prine to Covid-19.
One of those songs is Who You Are, co-written with Abbie Gardner. Ellis Paul’s songwriting has been described as coming from the “show-don’t-tell” philosophy of lyric writing. Part of the beauty of this is that the listener gets to fill in the gaps with their own imagination. That philosophy extends to this co-write on which we are afforded hints of the narrator’s life:
Every tear drop
Every Blind spot brought you this far
What you gave up
Still hold on to
Every lover, every scar
Is who you are
Who you are
On ‘Who You Are’, he says:
I wrote this with Abbie Gardner of Red Molly, who sings and plays beautifully on it. It’s about taking a hike of solitude in the desert and freeing yourself of all the weight that clouds your mind. Everything that’s holding you back. All the baggage. I like the idea of how footsteps in a desert disappear behind you. I asked Eric Parker (who has played for Bonnie Raitt, Joe Cocker, Orleans, John Hall and countless others) to provide spacious drums to suggest storms and open horizons – thunder claps, and dust devils. He did a great job of interpreting the environment that the song is painting. Abbie’s dobro solo is so melodic, thoughtful. It’s a bit of a prayer really.
55 is released on June 9 2023 on Rosella Records.