Robert Ellis is set to return with Texas Piano Man on Valentine’s Day 2019 via New West Records. The 11-song set was co-produced by Ellis and Niles City Sound (Leon Bridges) in Fort Worth, TX and is largely comprised of songs written by Ellis, an accomplished guitarist, on grand piano.
Texas Piano Man follows Ellis’ critically acclaimed 2016 self-titled LP which was named an Album of the Year by multiple outlets including NPR Music, Rolling Stone Country, American Songwriter, among others. Its single ‘California’ was placed at #23 on NPR Music’s Top 100 Songs of 2016, with the outlet calling him “one of Americana’s most innovative young stars,” and the song “pure pop genius.”
Putting down his guitar and sitting at a piano awakened something, and Ellis likens the musical experience to being behind the wheel of “a rock solid muscle car.” It’s a heavy thing, with beautiful lines.
Texas Piano Man’s lead off song, “Fucking Crazy,” has premiered its accompanying video for the track. The Erica Alexandria Silverman-directed video was was shot in Marfa, TX and depicts a crazed couple’s adventures with a hostage in tow.
The song itself finds that two people’s jagged parts sometimes fit together perfectly. NPR Music said “Dressed head to heels in a white tuxedo, Robert Ellis has now fully embraced his role as Texas troubadour, putting a little Gram Parsons-style honky-tonk into the bedazzled piano-pop of Elton John” and “In an arrangement filled with oohs and ahhs that cross both Abbey and Yellow Brick roads, Ellis posits our hearts’ toil in the everyday insanity of the world, so that maybe the only sane approach to life is recklessly falling in love.” Rolling Stone Country said “…on his forthcoming album, Texas Piano Man, he dives deeply into a new persona: a white-suited, blue bonnet Elton John determined to challenge expectations of what it means to be a musician residing in the Lone Star State,” and “Ellis can do shit kicking honky-tonk just as well as he can inhabit an ivory-tickling Lone Star State of Mind.”
“With Texas, people expect a certain thing and they want a certain thing, and I fought that for a long time,” he says. “I’ve realised though that Texas shouldn’t be made a category. I want to redefine to the outside world what it means to be Texan a little bit.” Ellis’ Texas contains multitudes, a space so broad and wide open that it can contain the caricatures and archetypes seen from the rather narrow view so often taken from the outside, as well as the artists, oddballs and freaks who populate its many crannies. He knows the roadside attractions and the favoured drinks and foods. That’s how one ends up with the album closing song ‘Topo Chico.’
The cover artwork for the album features Ellis on top of a mountain in Marfa, TX seated at a grand piano, wearing a white tuxedo. He describes the Texas Piano Man as the guy who wears the tuxedo everywhere. If there’s a ribbon to be cut, he’s there. A groundbreaking? He’ll hold the shovel and deal with the dirty suit later. “It’s more about a spirit,” he says, “than an aesthetic. There’s the classic play of the piano man, and with a little fashion behind it. I want you to listen to the songs. But also to see the rings and the glitz and the glamor.”
Robert Ellis’ Texas Piano Man will be available on compact disc, across digital retailers, standard black vinyl, as well as limited edition Sky Blue colored vinyl available at Independent Retailers and Yellow Rose Of Texas coloured vinyl directly from New West Records. Texas Piano Man is available for pre-order now.
