KNUCKLEHEADS F re e S h u tt le in S u rr o u n d in g A reth e a
JANUARY:
29: Outlaw Jim & The Whiskey Benders 30: Shinetop Jr’s Impromptu Sessions
THURSDAY, JAN. 30 JASON BOLAND & THE STRAGGLERS
31: Jeff Bergen’s Elvis Show 31: Jason Eady CD Release
FEBRUARY: 1: Greg Brown & Bo Ramsey
5: The Crayons 6: Nikki Hill 7: Bob Schneider
8: Gary Nicholson & Nick Nixon
TUESDAY, FEB. 11 JOHN CORBETT
For more info & tickets: knuckleheadshonkytonk.com 2715 Rochester, KCMO
816-483-1456
24
the pitch
music
Go outside
Free of a major label, Tim Ellis’ debut as Outsides is a summertime escape.
By
N ata l ie G a l l a Ghe r
T
im Ellis was trapped two years ago. He had a record deal with Warner Bros. but found himself lost in the shuffle as the major label acquired and merged its properties. Warner Bros. bounced Ellis from label to label and forbade him from playing live shows to test new material that he’d been writing. Last April, Warner Bros. finally dropped Ellis. At long last, the shackles were off. A month later, under the moniker Outsides, Ellis released “Seesaw” into the fuzzy white noise of the Internet. He wondered if people would notice. Did they ever. The song was snapped up by hype-heavy music blogs and tucked into the regular rotation of KEXP 90.3 in Seattle. The opportunity that had seemed so promising with his Warner Bros. deal was finally happening, except Ellis was doing it by himself from his Kansas City apartment. The irony isn’t lost on Ellis. He sips black coffee in a booth at the Brick and laughs, flashing white teeth framed by dimples. “‘Seesaw’ was a demo,” he says. “But it had been so long since I had put something out because, for so long, I couldn’t put anything out. So I cleaned it up a bit, took a chance and just threw it out there.” It’s easy to see why the track has caused Ellis: “I wrote what I liked.” a stir (along with another song, “Pastures”) since its November release. “Seesaw” is like Where Sk ybox embedded quirks a nd a spoonful of raw sugar in a granulated pop twists — a vaudevillian flavor on one track, computerlike bleeps on another — Outsides world. Synths boom and soar alongside Ellis’ is more distilled and concentrated. silvery voice, destined for car stereos, sweaty “The reason that I’m so excited about this dance floors and packed concert halls. After being silenced by his record label, project in particular is because I feel like it’s closer to me,” Ellis says. “When I was in SkyEllis seems to have come out of nowhere with box and I was writing the material, I was still his synth-pop cocaine. But the suave-looking 30-year-old with a pompadour and a vintage writing parts with the mindset of, ‘He might leather jacket had a previous life as the front- not like this song if I don’t include these sorts of things or if it’s too this direction or too man of Skybox. Formed in 2005, Skybox enjoyed moder- that direction.’ “You sort of write for other people someate commercial success and helped establish Ellis’ music career while he was living in times. With this project, I wrote what I liked and I wrote parts that I Tempe, Arizona. His tenure wanted to write, and as with Skybox lasted through Outsides directly from my head as I a relocation to Chicago, unSaturday, February 1, possibly could.” til the release of the band’s at Czar W hen E l l i s relea ses second full-length album his self-titled debut EP as in 2010. Skybox’s members Outsides on February 1, he’s likely to garner disbanded and scattered, with Ellis moving comparisons with Passion Pit and MGMT. back to his native Kansas City. But the four songs on Outsides are more than “Towards the end of Skybox, I was really high-fructose anthems. wanting to do some of my own stuff,” Ellis Ellis’ bright synths compose the driving says. “I had so many things in my head that force in his music. But he reinforces them I had been dying to just put down on tape.” with elements from other instruments: Ellis’ new sound, with an emphasis on electric guitar riffs rather than regurgitated upbeat, hook-heavy songs, bears some samples, man-made drumbeats instead of surface-level similarities to his old band.
january 30 -february 5, 2014
Barrett emke
WHERE THE BEST MUSICIANS IN THE WORLD PLAY
pitch.com
drum machines. “Secret Places” starts as a pseudo-acoustic lullaby. These are subtle odes, Ellis says, to an unlikely influence. “My dad was a producer and started as a folk musician, and then started making electronic music,” Ellis says. “You wouldn’t necessarily think of [that] when you listen to my stuff, but Americana and folk music is one of the bigger influences on my writing. It’s also helped me focus a lot on lyrics — with some pop music, that’s sort of a side thought, and for me, one of the more important things is the structure of the lyrics.” Ellis’ words are (mostly) wistful. “Pastures,” “Secret Places” and the 1980s-style “In a Dream” may sound like summer and the outdoors. But Ellis wrote them in his “dungeonlike” Kansas City apartment, recalling lost times and brighter days. “I was just working in my bedroom and writing and recording, and it felt like I was in a basement — there was concrete everywhere in the apartment: a concrete floor, concrete up halfway on the brick wall,” Ellis says. “Whenever I could get outside of the apartment and just walk around, getting out and feeling the fresh air, that’s sort of the feeling that I wanted my music to give people — the freedom of that emotion.”
E-mail natalie.gallagher@pitch.com