Billy Eli
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Billy Eli

Band Americana Singer/Songwriter

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"Billy Eli, Something's Going On"

This self-produced debut album from Billy Eli and friends is another example of the growing national reputation of product emanating from Austin, TX. Walking the line between rock and country, Something’s Going On combines a tight, American moderate-rock sound and vocal treatments that are somewhat reminiscent of Tom Petty or John Mellencamp, and with a true Texas-sounding lead guitar twang, courtesy of Jordan Egler. Billy Eli plays acoustic and other electrical guitars an sings all of the songs. Egler, Eli, and drummer Phil Achee are the central figures in this nine-song CD of ease going rocking songs. There are several strong selections including the title track and “Compared to What,” which was a finalist in this year’s Austin Songwriter’s Contest. Check it out. - Gray Areas Magazine , Alan Schecter


"Billy Eli"

Eli spent the last ten years bouncing around the Southwest singing and playing at every road house and honky-tonk with a neon sign. He cut his teeth in country and rock bands like Buffalo Wheels and Eastern League, during which he covered songwriters from George Jones to Jimi Hendrix and from Bob Dylan to Lefty Frizzell. An Award winning songwriter in his own right, Eli has emerged from the past decade with his own hard-earned, honest, powerful, broken voice . . . - Texas Beat, Keith Ayers


"Billy Eli's Texas Tunes"

Texas has long been fertile ground for stellar singer-songwriters, producing everyone from Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark (who'll be profiled in next week's column) and Billy Joe Shaver to Lyle Lovett, Willie Nelson and Joe Ely.

Billy Eli, who will be playing at the Rongo Saturday night and at the Nines April 14, is a recent addition to that list. His latest album, "Amped Out," contains 11 songs that sound like a roughhewn Steve Earle or John Prine.

Living in Austin for the past 20 years, Eli, 44, grew up in Livingston, Texas, just outside of Houston. "I started writing songs when I first started playing," he says. "I didn't have the skill on the guitar to play the stuff that was on the radio. Growing up far from a culture center, what you heard was Nashville country or top 40 rock; the Eagles and Bob Seger ruled the airwaves. I love all that stuff, but it didn't seem very accessible for a musician who played honky tonk to be able to play. Someone told me I should be writing my own songs; it can't be that hard. It turned out it was harder than it looked like.

Unlike the aforementioned Texans, Eli is hardly a prolific writer. "I don't write a lot. Some guys write two or three songs a week. I write four or five a year. But that's mostly because I'm lazy," he says with a laugh.

Eli cites a variety of influences. "They're so damned scattershot," he says. "I liked the Stones, Steve Earle, Tom Petty, Guy Clark, all those Texas guys, all the California stuff. I listened to the Eagles; I've heard them so much by now.

"I've kind of been influenced by almost everything I've ever heard. But I don't try to get our of my genre too much.I like the thing that I'm doing, and I've done the thing I'm doing long enough so that I'm comfortable with it. And I like being comfortable."

For his upcoming shows, Eli will be backed by Ithaca musicians Eric and Harry Aceto, Chad Lieberman and Al Hartland. Actually, this is Eli's third visit to the area; he played at the Nines last year, and made his first trip to Central New York to play at a wedding reception.

"I have a friend, John Weiss,who lives in Interlaken," says Eli. "Elaine Gill, who used to own the building where the Rongo is, has a son who works with my wife in Austin. I met John at Elaine's 80th birthday party in Santa Cruz, and he got me the wedding gig here."

In an another strange coincidence, Eli's Austin band includes ex-Ithacan Michael Cerza, who played with Lieberman and Eric Aceto in Mectapus.

Eli remains amazed by the depth of musicianship he's found in Ithaca. "I don't want to gush about the town here," he says. It's not just the quality of musicians—you find good players everywhere you go. But the depth of the musicians here—the Acetos are not only good musicians, but they can play anything.

"I wish I could play with them more—we'd be dangerously tight if we played three times a month. But I can't be here in the winter," he says with another laugh.

To learn more, visit www.billyeli.com and www.myspace.com/billyeli. - written by Jim Catalano, published in the Ithaca Journal on APril 5, 2007


"Billy Eli, The Real Deal"

It could have been a hoax. The compact disc said “Billy Eli and Lost in America – Somehting’s Going On.” The music, however, screamed Steve Earle and the Dukes.

When the lean, long-haired, scruffy and determined-looking Eli, fronting an equally lean, hungry and scruffy looking Lost in America launched into a recent set of stand-and-deliver rock ‘n’ roll at Tycoon Flats, patrons who were there to gobble burgers and nachos caught whiplash. Everyone else wished they were hearing that American music in Taco Land or Doza’s so they could feel the thump and twang in their sternums.

Austin-based Eli and Lost in America, whose debut, “Something’s Going On,” is picking up steam, will be at Wacky’s Kantina, 2718 N. St. Mary’s St., at 10pm Thursday. There’s no opening act. Call 732-7684.

Eli and company are the real deal.

“I would call it rock ‘n’ roll,” drawled Eli, a 32 year=-old Livingston native, about his music. “But I think I’m the only that does. I think a lot of how people hear the band depends on when they grew up. People who grew up in the ‘50s and ‘60s recognize the rock ‘n’ roll. Other people think it sounds kind of like new country. When people compare me to Steve Earle, that’s fair. He’s too rock for country and too country for rock.”

Eli worked on oil and gas pipelines and learned to play the guitar because he was too young to hang out in bars.

“I was in South Dakota, and you had to be 21 to drink and to get into bars. I was only 18.”

And Eli started writing songs out of self-defense.

“I didn’t start writing songs until I was in my early 20s and I did that because I was so limited to what I could play. I only knew seven or eight songs, so I had to start writing my own songs so I’d have something to sing,” he said with a laugh.

The songs Eli writes are basic heartland rock with a topics ranging from love lost to love found.

“I try to highlight the original stuff, but I like to play covers,” he said. “Besides, audiences like our covers. But I cover songs, I don’t cover artists. I don’t havea problem reworking songs so they’ll fit my style. I like the music of California bands like the Byrds, and I also like Steve Earle songs and the things Peter Case writes.”

“Something’s Going On” developed almost by accident.

“This is about the fifth or sixth rebuilding of Lost in America,” he said. “I’d go out to clubs to hear bands and I’d hear two or three songs I liked and five or six I didn’t care fo. I put a band together to hear a night of music played in the same style. I had some new material and went in to do some demo tapes. Wayne Gathright (the engineer and producer of the album) said he’d been thinking about starting a label, so the demo kind of built itself into an album.”

Lost in America is Tom Quigley, drums; Dan O’Brien, bass; and former San Antonian Pete “The Friendly Biker” Barnes, guitar.

“Pete was a great addition,” Eli said. “He can do so many styles of music well, but he didn’t come into the band with any preconceived notions. He just plugged in and played. And he could win a tattoo contest.”
- San Antonio Express-News, Jim Beal Jr.


"Something's Going On"

This is an eclectic mixture of country and rock deftly executed to perfection. Simple arrangements and very tasteful lead guitar fill out these songs about life.

After an extended tour of Colorado, Eli is back in Austin and enjoying his unexpected popularity in Holland, of all places. Eli’s songs are road weary tales of life with a little extra realism added for maximum pleasure, the result being an unpretentiousness rarely found in today’s music.
- Austin Arena Magazine


"Billy Eli"

With an easy acoustic/electric groove, tight and crisp like Tom Petty when he lets his Southern roots show, Billy Eli’s lazy countrified pop songs are an instantly likable as Darden Smith’s, a comparison that extends to this local’s fine new release, “Something’s Going On.” - Austin Chronicle, Recommended Section


"Billy Eli"

Some J.J. Cale cool kick-back replete with Tom Petty-esque hooks on top of an already heavy BoDeans feel – thanks to Eli’s one man vocal approximation of Sammy Llanas and Kurt Neumann. Shake it up and you’ve got tight, lean songs played with an inviting groove that is fed by Eli and Jordan Egler’s smooth guitar symbiosis. - Raoul Hernandez, Austin Chronicle


Discography

Something's Going On, 1995
Trailer Park Angel, 2001
Amped Out, 2006
People Like Us, coming in 2009

Photos

Bio

Billy Eli plays country that rocks and rock that’s country, delivering songs that are vivid slices of real life lived to the fullest and chased down with a stiff shot of whiskey. With a style that’s rooted in his small town Southeast Texas origins that transcends the Lone Star State to achieve an international reach, the Austin, TX-based singer and songwriter has been compared by critics to such stellar American music artists as Tom Petty, Steve Earle, John Prine and John Mellencamp, to name a few. And like them, Eli’s music bears an indelible trademark that’s all his own, nimbly riding the fulcrum where rock and country converge, and singing with fervent heart and soul about the range of human experience from sin to salvation.

The Ithaca Journal in 2007 called Eli a “recent addition” to the blue ribbon roster of notable Texas singer-songwriters like Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Billy Joe Shaver, Lyle Lovett, Joe Ely and Willie Nelson. His talents as a entertainer and storyteller in song have been honed to razor sharpness over decades of gigs, first in the honky-tonks and barrooms of Southeast Texas, and then later in his Austin home base as well as clubs throughout the American West, Southeast and in and around the city of Ithaca in Upstate New York, which has become Eli’s second musical hometown.

As Americana-uk.com notes, “In a whiskey-soaked, honky-tonk drawl, Eli tells us tales of eating cheese enchiladas whilst doomsday beckons, gambling a life away on the slots of El Paso, how much whiskey mends a broken heart, and the simple idea that as long as you have a barmaid who is willing to sell you beer, what else matters?” Or as the San Antonio Express-News puts it more succinctly, Eli is “the real deal.”

Up until now, even for all the praise, Eli has been one of those “best-kept musical secrets” that Austin’s vibrant music scene is famous for. But with [Title TK], his fourth album, that’s now all about to change. It was produced by Patrick Conway (whose credits include recording work with Chrissie Hynde, Chuck Prophet, Jerry Harrison, Jim Campilongo and I See Hawks In LA, among others, as well as being a talented musical artist in his own right), and recorded in Trumansburg, NY and then polished to a fine finish in Austin with some of the finest players from the heart of New York State and the capital of Texas.

[Title TK] opens with a muscular one-two punch: the populist anthem “People Like Us” that rocks out the country with nationwide appeal, and then the Lone Star State sounds of “Spook Lights of Marfa.” Eli proudly shows his Texas pride as he serves up a tasty plate of “Cheese Enchiladas,” and summons up the spirit of a rowdy and rocking night of big fun at your favorite bar on such fiery numbers as “Down on the Border,” “High Flyer,” “Tore Down in Texas” and “Spur That Pony.” He takes listeners for a ride on the road where he’s spent a good part of his years on “White Lines and Passing Lanes,” reminds of American music icon Johnny Cash with the Tex-Mex horns of “Try Looking At Me,” and gets down to the essence of love and heartache on “I Won’t Be Waiting” and “Way Up Lonesome.” All told, [Title TK] draws its strength from the best roots music traditions and then gives them a smart update to create country-rock that’s custom made for the 21st Century we live in.

Eli creates tales of such compelling true life resonance thanks in part to growing up in modest circumstances in the rural town of Livingston, Texas within the rolling hills and piney woods of East Texas some 55 miles north of Houston. It’s a small town where the options for work are laboring on oil and gas pipelines or at the local sawmill and feed store. His family may have been poor, but their home was rich in music. “We always had a record player and lots of records,” Eli recalls.

His father was a fan of such Sun Records pioneers as Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins, while his mother favored country crooners like Ray Price and Conway Twitty. Uncles and aunts close to his age hipped Eli to the rock, pop and soul sounds of the 1960s. He later was also drawn to the California country-rock of the early 1970s. “All I ever wanted to do was play in Poco or with [steel guitarist] Sneaky Pete in the Flying Burrito Brothers or with those musicians who were doing that old-time country style with a rock energy,” Eli says with a chuckle.

He got a drum kit when he was 12, but “banged on it and put a bunch of holes in it and never really got to where I could play it.” During the summer after his high school graduation, Eli was doing pipeline work in North Dakota when a guitar-playing friend at a party asked him to sing along. Impressed with what he heard from Eli, his friend insisted that they get Billy a guitar so he could teach him how to play.

On arriving back in Livingston, he started fronting “beer joint bands,” as he calls them. “When I found out I could get paid for this rather than work a real job, that was it,” Eli says. He