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9/1/2006
Steve Klingaman
William Lee Ellis is an artisan of the unadorned back porch school, as befits an avowed student of the Reverend Gary Davis and the Appalachian sound and mindset he represents. In keeping with that tradition, the production leans towards the purist camp, allowing for no-reverb vocals and you-are-there string noise artifacts to peak through the mix. But Ellis himself is not a purist. He branches out frequently, offering a fairly varied program within the genre. Ellis is not a singer’s singer, but that’s not really the point in his music. He’s documenting the thing, bringing forward the magic inherent in the material. As a writer he’s very close to the bones of the homespun spirituals he recovers. Acoustic slide guitar is the core of his sound, played mostly on a Gibson J45. His format of choice is a concise acoustic ensemble that fits like an old shoe. He opens with a full band treatment of the co-written "Snakes in My Garden" that seems to spring fully-formed out of the Robert Johnson milieu in the form of a Texas shuffle driven by a propulsive snare riffle. "Search My Heart" is a real stand-out on the outing. Ellis’ Eric Clapton 461 Ocean Boulevard era vocal is complemented by his sometime collaborator Reba Russell to great effect. Ellis offers a nod to the acoustic Jimmy Page in a brief interlude. All this is layed out over the bones of a Rev. Gary Davis take on a beautiful gospel tune. Clapton himself would love it. Ellis covers Mississippi John Hurt’s "Here I Am Lord, Send Me" in a lovely, somber duet with his wife, Julie Coffey. This lovely back porch treatment of a lovely tune backs up Ellis’ stature as being more than an archivist, while reminding us never to forget Mr. Hurt. Ellis’ own "Dust Will Write My Name" is the solo stand-out on this disk. The evocatively titled song lives up to its name in this world-weary elegy. The distance between high and low, here and the hereafter never seemed too great in the back country mountain tradition, and though Ellis lives in Memphis, his heart is clearly in the hills.