Ellis moves deftly through the Texas music ecosystem. He spent the first half of March touring in the U.K. before returning to his home state of Texas amid the rush of SXSW. His week began with a performance for hotelier Liz Lambert — a friend of his — and ICON’s announcement it would build a 3D-printed 21-acre hotel in West Texas, where he played guitar with alternative artist St. Vincent.
“We’re buds," he says of the Dallas-bred rocker. "We played a bunch of her tunes. We also covered 'Crazy' by Willie Nelson. It was a really fun show. She’s just the fucking best.”
On the final Friday and Saturday of SXSW, he played three show days packed with press. You could have caught him playing piano for a Leon Russell tribute set with Beau Bedford with guests such as Sierra Ferrell and Margo Price. Or at The Mohawk playing with Texas-based indie-rock artist Ben Kweller.
“It was a very long and emotionally exhausting and beautiful day,” he says of that Friday in particular.
Ellis grew up south of Houston in Lake Jackson, where his mother taught piano.
“I played with her all the time and learned the fundamentals and pretty quickly started playing tunes," he says. "She played a lot of classical and jazz. I still have tunes memorized from then … just songs she used to play.”
Ellis has 1-year-old and 4-year-old kids now.
“Music is around our house obviously, but I never push it on to [the kids]," he says. "I don’t think it was pushed on me either. I just think certain kids, like, get it. And it’s just like, this is what I want to do.”
His musical diet grew with age. He acquired an obsession for jazz guitar, which has not since faded. In high school, Ellis’ musical taste ventured into indie and alternative rock.
“That whole polyvinyl record scene… I was super into American football," he says. "I had a high school band, and we played rock ‘n’ roll.”
Before that, though, he was performing throughout his Gulf Coast community. His first paid gig was captured on VHS, a trio of him and two friends from his middle school days.
“My little trio band played at a LULAC [League of United Latin American Citizens] festival," he remembers. "I guess my mom or somebody knew something and got us a set. I think we covered Stevie Ray Vaughan, like 'Pride and Joy.' We played a Red Hot Chilli Peppers song too.”
His guitar coach left town to tour with a band soon after, leaving him to inherit his coach’s students.
“From the time I was very young, I started teaching and learning that teaching private students was a viable way to make money," he says.
Two years later, Ellis dropped out of high school to pursue music.
“I just knew I wanted to play music, and the idea of going to college for another four years to do the thing I wanted to do didn’t make sense," he says.
Still today, he doesn’t regret that sense of urgency.
“I do think the best advice for anyone who wants to play music is to do it now," he says. "Don’t put anything between you and your goal. If the goal is to play music, make a record. Figure it out. Do whatever you can. Record it in your bedroom, and do it right now.”
That’s what he did.
He says his parents had set aside a college fund for him, something like $5,000. He used that money to make his first record, on vinyl. The album was called The Great Rearranger.
"And I was like 18 years old," he says. "I pressed 300 vinyl copies and made CDs.”
Shortly after, New West Records owner George Fontaine picked up one of his very first songs at a record store in Houston.
“I think he gave me a little money to record, but, after it was recorded, he was like cool, do you want to sign?” Ellis says.
“Every artist wants to have that one single that is going to change their career ... Everyone in the music business tells you, you need that song. And every artist strives to make it ... Usually, it’s their least favorite song on the fucking album." – Robert Ellis
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He recorded his first album, Photographs, with the label at SugarHill studios in Houston, then worked with New West Records for a decade on his successive albums The Lights from the Chemical Plant, Robert Ellis and Texas Piano Man. (Another album, Dear John, was with the Refuge Foundation for the Arts label.)
The artist's newest album, however, will be with his own label, Niles City Records.
“Me and my partner at the studio Niles City Sound [Josh Block] and my manager Cara Merendino were like, let’s start a record label,” he says.
After a year of setting up the business and logistical infrastructure of Niles City Records, they are ready to start releasing music.
“I definitely don’t want this to be my vanity label where I release just my music,” he says.
In fact, the partners recently released works from Texas-based artists Brody Brice and Jake Paleschic, and they plan to release Ellis’ own album Yesterday’s News on May 19.
The first two singles off Yesterday’s News, the title track and “Gene,” capture the thematic breadth of the album. In the title track, Ellis’ voice guides a quaint ensemble of an upright bass and nylon string guitar with his simple yet pointed lyrics.
“I think it is funny to be putting out a record … that is winking at all the insecurities all artists feel," he says. "Like, ‘OK, this is it. I am forgettable news now.’ I found it a little liberating to lead with that.”
Ellis sees “Yesterday’s News” as emblematic of the classic, melancholy jazz standard, but regards “Gene” as a more hopeful folk tune for his oldest son. In an interview with Variance magazine, Ellis says, “The whole tune spilled out early one morning in a sort of half-awake stream of consciousness. When I was a kid, it felt like the adults had a lot of answers to a lot of things. Becoming a grown-up was pretty disorienting. I don't really feel like I have things figured out like I thought I would. I'm anxious, I'm scared. I guess I just want my kids to know that sometimes 'I don't know' is OK. I don't have all the answers, but I'm here for you, and I love you.”
Yesterday’s News stands in stark contrast to his past album Texas Piano Man, a rowdy rock album galvanized by a grand piano. The album cover features him sitting in an all-white suit and cowboy hat get-up on the bench of a grand piano decorated with Texas memorabilia amid the rolling plains of Texas.
“The last record, Texas Piano Man, was literally the opposite," he says. "The whole tour was a big party.”
Ellis plans to tour the album with multiple 10-day stretches in the U.S. (Dallas included), the U.K., and possibly other countries as well, kicking it off with an album release party in Houston.
The album is an homage to making music you love — a quiet resistance of sorts to putting out music to please the music industry or other entities that lobby for a say in a musician's creations.
“Every artist wants to have that one single that is going to change their career," he says. "Usually [that is] song two or three on the record, and it’s three minutes long, and it has a really memorable chorus. And it’s, like, pretty easy to digest. Everyone in the music business tells you, you need that song. And every artist strives to make it.
"Usually, it’s their least favorite song on the fucking album. And they just do it because it is what [they] have to do to play the game. [They] have to have this single. And I was just kind of like, with this is whole record, fuck that. I just want to make cool music and have it exist as an album.”
Ellis sees the album as a lullaby, the type of music to which you could fall asleep. He wrote most of the project in the early morning or late at night when others around him were still asleep.
“That quiet and stillness is when I connect most deeply with music," he says. "And that was the point of this record to hopefully imprint that feeling on a collection of songs. So that when you listen to it, suddenly for a second everything slows down.”
